Sandow, the modern Samson, wrote his methods of training in one of the magazines a few years ago, and stated that he used no alcoholic beverages. The ancient Samson was not allowed to taste even wine from birth. A question worthy of serious consideration is: how are the sick to be strengthened and "supported" by drinks which athletes are warned to specially shun as weakening to the body? Either the sick are mistakenly advised, or the athletes are in error. Which seems the more likely? Dr. Richardson says in _Lectures on Alcohol_:-- "I would earnestly impress that the systematic administration of alcohol for the purpose of giving and sustaining strength is an entire delusion." In another place he says:-- "Never let this be forgotten in thinking of strong drink: that the drink is strong only to destroy; that it never by any possibility adds strength to those who drink it." Sir William Gull, late physician to the Prince of Wales, said before a Select Committee of the House of Lords on Intemperance:-- "There is a great feeling in society that strong wine and other strong drinks give strength. A large number of people have fallen into that error, and fall into it every day." Any unprejudiced person can readily see that experience and experiment unite in testifying that alcohol does not give strength, hence differs radically from most substances commonly classed as foods. Yet millions of dollars are spent annually by deluded people upon supposedly strength-giving drinks, and thousands of the sick are ignorantly, or carelessly, advised to take beer or wine to make them strong and to _support_ them when solid food cannot be assimilated. Truly, "My people is destroyed for lack of knowledge." _Foods give force to the body._ Dr. Richardson says:-- "We learn in respect to alcohol that the temporary excitement is produced at the expense of the animal matter and animal force, and that the ideas of the necessity of resorting to it as a food, to build up the body or to lift up the forces of the body, are ideas as solemnly false as they are widely disseminated." Dr. Benjamin Brodie says in _Physiological Inquiries_:-- "Stimulants do not create nerve power: they merely enable you, as it were, to use up that which is left." Dr. E. Smith:-- "There is no evidence that it increases nervous influence, while there is much evidence that it lessens nervous power." Dr. Wm. Hargreaves, of Philadelphia:-- "It is sometimes said by the advocates and defenders of alcohol, that by its use force is generated more abundantly. This it certainly cannot do, as it does not furnish anything to feed the blood or to store up nourishment to replenish the expenditure. For by their own theory, the increase of action must cause an increase of wear and tear; hence alcohol instead of sustaining life or vitality, must cause a direct waste or expenditure of _vital force_."