The bases of the temperance reform: an exposition and appeal./ With replies to numerous objections. By Rev. Dawson Burns.

Alcohol iot an Aid to Dizrstion.
if the view just stated could be sustained, a point would
be made on strictly physical grounds for the utility of alcoholic drinks. But it does not seem reasonable to suppose that the all-wise Creator would have left the soundness of digestion-an act so essential to the health of the
living being-to depend upon the use of a substance
whose production is the result of a twofold process of
decay-first of some nitrogenous matter, and then of sugar
acted upon by this decaying agent-a substance, too, of
whose very existence mankind might conceivably have
remained in utter ignorance, and from whose use millions
of men have, in all ages, been debarred by want of knowledge or by deliberate choice. Again, if the function of
digestion is aided by alcohol, we might expect this aid to
be most required in the case of the very young and tender; whereas, by universal consent, its use in any degree
by these is treated as unnecessary and unwise. Further,
if the theory were well founded, persons using alcohol
would be free from indigestion, or suffer less from this
ailment than persons abstaining from its use. But the
reverse of this is the patent fact. The use of alcohol is
prevalent, and so is indigestion among the users, proving
that the supposed assistance is very inefficient and equivocal; while the lesser prevalence among abstainers of
this same complaint not only refutes the notion of some
special virtue in alcohol, but is calculated to excite suspicion whether a mischievous delusion does not inhere in
the traditional belief. This suspicion, we think, would be
deepened into conviction if enquiry were directed to the
action of alcohol within the stomach. Were the process
of digestion at all assisted by alcoholic fluids, they must
act by increasing the functional activity of the stomach,
or by augmenting the secretion of the gastric fluid, or by
rendering the food received more digestible than it
would otherwise be. But it has been made clear that
alcohol acts in none of these ways. Dr. Carpenter has
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