Science

OUR scientific chat is usually devoted to the mention of such comparatively new suggestions and discoveries as are of especial interest, and it was not designed for the regular instruction of our readers in the rudiments of the various sciences to which we may have occasion to refer. A communication lately received has, however, determined us to vary our general plan and impart to at least one of our readers a slight modicum of instruction in elementary physiology. In a letter which came to us the other day, all the way from England, we are asked to correct the “ preposterous error ” which we “put into circulation ” in our number for August, in saying that when we drink wine, some of the alcohol passes off unchanged through the lungs, and in so doing becomes perceptible in the breath. “ Your contributor,” says our correspondent, “ appears to believe that some of the wine drunk passes from the stomach into the blood and thence into the lungs unchanged! Permit me to tell him that wine does nothing of the kind, and that the phenomenon he notices does not proceed from the cause he imagines. Wine is. . . . . very odorous : its bouquet hangs about the mouth and palate a long time after the wine itself has been consumed. Exhalations from the stomach may also betray the presence of wine when it has been taken in undue quantity. Those persons who have eaten cheese may be detected some time afterwards by the smell of their breath ; but surely your contributor would not argue that therefore the cheese was ‘ eliminated unchanged ’ from the lungs ! ”

So earnest an appeal for instruction ought not to pass unnoticed, especially as it reminds us that it may not be wholly superfluous to state explicitly, for the benefit of the general reader, the precise question at issue between those who assert and those who deny that alcohol is food. First, however, let us observe that what our correspondent says about the bouquet of wine lingering in the mouth is true, but was not included in our remarks because wholly irrelevant to our purpose, which was not to give a complete explanation of the presence of vinous odor in the breath, but to consider the assertion of sundry eminent French physicians, that all the alcohol taken into the system passes out unchanged through the lungs, skin, and kidneys. Let us also observe that we did not say that wine passes from the Stomach into the blood and thence into the lungs unchanged. And finally, let us state what actually does happen when wine is drunk.

The solid food which is eaten passes into the stomach and anon into the small intestine, where it undergoes sundry changes which result, speaking roughly, into the separation of it into two parts. The one part is eliminated through the large intestine, the other part is absorbed by the lacteals and becomes transformed into venous blood, which on entering the lungs gives forth carbonic acid and water through the nostrils. On the other hand, the water which we drink undergoes no chemical change whatever in the system, but is absorbed unchanged into the blood, of which it forms a main physical constituent : it percolates untransformed through the tissues, and leaves the system through the lungs, skin, and kidneys, all the while remaining simple water ; that is to say, while it is physically mixed with other substances, it does not form a chemical combination with any of them whereby it loses any of its oxygen or hydrogen and ceases to be water. Now when wine or brandy is drunk, several things happen. Some of the œnanthic ether, to which the bouquet is due, lingers in the mouth or passes straight out through the nostrils ; whatever fruity or saccharine matter is present undergoes digestive changes which it is not necessary for us now to consider ; but as for the alcohol, some of it is, like water, absorbed unchanged into the bloodvessels, passes mixed with blood into the lungs, and is breathed out through the nose, always remaining simple alcohol. Some of it, in like manner, finds its way to the sweat-glands, front which it is exuded in perspiration ; and yet again, some of it passes away unchanged through the kidneys. When a man has taken too much wine or brandy overnight, the alcoholic odor of his breath next morning may still be partially due to the presence of œnanthic ether about the mouth, and to “exhalations front the stomach” ; but it is mainly due to the fact that minute particles of alcoholic vapor are constantly rushing out from the lungs in quantity quite sufficient to produce a chemical reaction when the requisite chemical test is applied. Accordingly, when we incidentally observed that some alcohol passes unchanged through the lungs, we were by no means “ putting into circulation a preposterous error,” but were stating an elementary truth which is known to every one at all conversant with standard text-books on the physiology of digestion.

Now the great question at issue between those who assert and those who deny that alcohol can properly be called a food is just this : — does all the alcohol imbibed in our beer, wine, and spirits pass out of the system unchanged, or does some of it undergo chemical transformation ? In the former case, it behaves like the water we drink; in the latter case, it behaves like the solid food we cat. For this reason it has always seemed to “ our contributor ” a matter of small moment as regards the practical inquiry of the usefulness or harmfulness of wine-drinking. If we are to deny that alcohol is food because it is not transformed within the system, we must also deny that water is food ; so that we thus get but little way toward determining whether alcohol is good for us. Considered on its own merits, however, the problem of the elimination of alcohol is one of great interest and importance, and during the past twelve years many experiments have been directed toward the solution of it, though with indifferent success. While MM. Lallemand, Duroy, and Perrin regard their own experiments as showing conclusively that no alcohol is transformed within the system, it is maintained on the other hand by M. Baudot and Dr. Anstie that these experiments are not decisive. For our own part, while equally willing to see either alternative established, we hold that M. Lallemand and his confrères have thus far proved merely that when a great deal of alcohol is imbibed, the larger portion of it escapes without change.

We are glad to see that the unseemly troubles at Kew Gardens have at last ended in the snubbing of Mr. Ayrton and the vindication of Dr. Hooker. In 1840 the Botanic Gardens at Kew were virtually created by the late Sir William Hooker, at the sacrifice of more than half his income. During twenty-five years, under the management of this noble friend of science, the library and collections of specimens at these gardens were increased to such an extent that in the recent memorial addressed to Mr. Gladstone it was said that “ in no particular does England stand more conspicuously superior to all other countries than in the possession of Kew : the establishment is not only without a rival, but there is no approach to rivalry as regards the extent, importance, or scientific results of its operations.” In 1855 Dr. Joseph Hooker, who had for nearly twenty years been employed in the faithful service of science and of the government, and who had obtained for himself that rank among living botanists which Lyell holds among geologists, was appointed Assistant-Director to his father; and in 1865, he became chief Director of the establishment. It is needless to say that such a man in such a place is a possession for which any nation had reason to be grateful, the more so, where, as in Dr. Hooker’s case, administrative ability is added to scientific pre-eminence. But in 1871, if our memory serves us, the office of First Commissioner of Works became occupied by one Mr. Ayrton, who appears to be some one of the numerous relations of Mr. Podsnap, or what Matthew Arnold would call a “ Philistine.” Thinking it high time to take the administration of such a great establishment as Kew Gardens out of the hands of an unpractical man of science, this Mr. Ayrton began by depriving Dr. Hooker of the supervision of the heating of hot-houses, whereby the lives of thousands of valuable plants were of course endangered, and continued by addressing orders on various matters to the Director’s subordinate officials, replying to his just remonstrances with words of coarse and vulgar insolence. Several letters exchanged between Dr. Hooker and the government went but little way toward mending the matter, until lately the case was taken up by Darwin, Lyell, Rawlinson, Tyndall, Huxley, and others, the scientific papers gave vent to their just indignation, and so the other day Mr. Gladstone felt it necessary to tell his First Commissioner to mind his own business in the future. The whole case affords a good illustration of the dislike and distrust with which the ignorant so often regard men of learning and genius.

We have now got into a sufficiently captious and grumbling mood to make some fit mention of the verdict of stupidity which the French Academy of Sciences has for the second time passed upon itself in re Darwin. We learn from Nature that the choice of a foreign correspondent of the society “ has resulted in the defeat of Mr. Darwin and the election of M. Loewen, of Stockholm, who received thirty-two votes, against fifteen given to the English naturalist.” M. Quatrefages was again Mr. Darwin’s chief advocate, while M. Blanchard was most conspicuous on the other side. An eminent academician observes that none of Mr. Darwin’s advocates espoused his theory of the origin of species (which we can easily credit, as we have thus far found but few French naturalists who clearly understand what “ natural selection ” means), and that none of his opponents assigned their dissent from this doctrine as the ground of their opposition. “ What has closed the door of the Academy to Mr. Darwin is that the science of those of his books which have made his chief title to fame — the ‘ Origin of Species,’ and still more the ‘ Descent of Man ‘ — is not science, but a mass of assertions and absolutely gratuitous hypotheses, often evidently fallacious. This kind of publication and these theories are a bad example, which a body that respects itself cannot encourage.” In view of this statement we need not observe that even if Mr. Darwin had never indulged in “ this kind of publication,” he would still have sent down to posterity a name quite as illustrious as that of any contemporary member of the French Academy, his explanation of coral-building having been a scientific achievement of the highest eminence. We need only call attention to a curious coincidence. On the one hand, while the doctrine of natural selection has quite won the day in Germany and England, and very nearly won it in America, it has made but little headway in France. On the other hand, leaving out such questions as this, in original scientific thinking in the department of natural history the achievements of the French during the past twenty years have been about on a par with their recent achievements in warfare. And the remarks of the academician just quoted show wherein their central deficiency has consisted. They have allowed the commentatorial, weighing-and-measuring, and herb-collecting tendency to get the upperhand of them. It is a common mistake of scientific specialists to suppose that sound science can be made of observations and experiments alone, without the aid of philosophizing ; and among scientific specialists none have been of late years so prone to this kind of error as the French. But in its “ three long sittings in secret committee,” the Academy should not have failed to remember that Mr. Darwin is no less remarkable as an industrious collector of facts than as a bold theorizer. His works are immense arsenals of facts which it will take a whole generation of speculators to do justice to in the way of interpretation. And if the highest type of the scientific mind be that which unites the power of originating grand generalizations with endless patience and caution in verifying them, then it is not too much to say that since the death of Newton this type has been in no one more perfectly realized than in Mr. Darwin.