The Present Truth, vol. 15
August 17, 1899
“More ‘Oppositions of Science Falsely So-called’” The Present Truth 15, 33, pp. 525, 526.
SO-CALLED science has made another immense contribution to the tide that is already flooding the world. Prof. W. O. Atwater, of the Wesleyan University, has announced that “scientific” discovery that alcohol “is a food.” “After long and careful experiments on various men,” he made the announcement, June 13. Harper’s Weekly summarizes his report, as follows:— PTUK August 17, 1899, page 525.1
Alcohol in limited quantities is not a poison, but serves some of the uses of food, like sugar and starch: it supplies heat and energy, and protects the material of the body from consumption, but does not make new tissue. It is useful as a fuel, but not to repair the machine. Professor Atwater does not recommend it as a food. He says that its effect on the brain and nerves is often such as to counteract its food value, and that the moderate use of it often leads to excess. But he holds that, taken in small quantities, it is a food, and not a poison, and that from two to two and a half ounces may be consumed without harm in the course of a day. PTUK August 17, 1899, page 525.2
It would be difficult to get more false teaching and contradictions into the same space than is set down it that paragraph. PTUK August 17, 1899, page 525.3
1. Alcohol in any quantity is poison, and does not and can not serve any of the uses of food. Alcohol, in its whole course in the human system, acts contrary to nature. It affects the nerves first of all; indeed it affects only the nerves, first, last, and all the time. It tears down, instead of building up. It gets strength out of a man without putting strength into him. Anything that acts that way in the human system is a poison, and a poison only; and can not be in any sense a food. PTUK August 17, 1899, page 525.4
2. It is literally impossible to supply “heat and energy,” and to “protect the material of the body from consumption,” without making new tissue. The statements that it does do so are not only contradictory to the truth, but are contradictory to themselves; for it is recognized that new tissue must be made, that the machine must be repaired. Yet alcohol is given the wonderful property of supplying heat and energy, and protecting the material of the body from consumption! It is possessed of the amazing quality of causing the machine to go, and at the same time of keeping it from wearing out! That is simply not true. Alcohol is not divine, nor does it bear in itself “the promise and potency” of perpetual motion. PTUK August 17, 1899, page 525.5
The truth is, and is here recognised, that there is waste of tissue, in fact, every motion in or of the human system, even to thinking, consumes material of the body, and so causes loss of tissue. Now anything that induces energy without supplying tissue, does it simply, and can do it only, by consuming the material of the body. But anything that induces consumption of the material of the body without supplying new tissue, only tears down and destroys the human system; and that is poison. It is confessed in this “scientific” announcement, that alcohol “does not make new tissue,” does not “repair the machine” while it does induce energy; and that is in itself a confession that alcohol is not a food, but a poison. PTUK August 17, 1899, page 525.6
It is exceedingly proper, therefore, that Professor Atwater “does not recommend it as a food.” Yet what a contradiction it is that “a food” can not be recommended as a food by the very person who, by “long and careful experiments,” has scientifically discovered that “it is a food”! PTUK August 17, 1899, page 525.7
But he can not recommend it as a food because “its effect on the brain and nerves is often such as to counteract its food value;” that is to say, the effect of a food is such as to destroy its food value! That simply demonstrates again that it is not a food at all, but poison only. PTUK August 17, 1899, page 525.8
Yet after all this contradiction of the truth, and self-contradiction in the statements themselves, which demonstrate that it is a poison, he still “holds that, taken in small quantities, it is a food, and not a poison, and that from two to two and a half ounces may be consumed without harm in the course of a day.” Now when it is understood that alcohol can not be taken raw, and that in the course of a day a person must take about three average drinks of whisky, or two quarts—about fourteen glasses—of lager beer, or a pint and a half of claret, in order to consume two and a half ounces of alcohol, it can in some measure be estimated what an immense contribution to the tide of drunkenness is made in this latest “scientific” “discover” and announcement by a professor of high standing in his profession and in a Methodist university and theological school. PTUK August 17, 1899, page 525.9
If ever the divine warning were needed, to “avoid ... oppositions of science false so-called,” that time is just now, when all the evils of drunkenness and of Spiritualism are “scientifically” commended to the world. PTUK August 17, 1899, page 526.1
A. T. JONES.