This element plays a great part in the body; it is used in three ways. In the first place, the ingredients of water, hydrogen and oxygen, combine with the food, and effect its digestion. The starch which we eat in farinaceous and vegetable food cannot without water be converted into sugar. And the latter being transformed into fat, we should have no fat if we took no water, though it may seem strange that water should make us fat. And there is the second task, viz., the preservation of all the fluids necessary to our body. This, also, is performed by water; and as they are excreted their loss is compensated for by water. We lose it constantly by breathing, perspiring, and urinating; therefore we must continually take it anew. Those who perspire and breathe much, as, for example, workmen or foot-travellers, must take it in greater quantities. The third reason of its importance lies in this, that it gives us much of the salts and other ingredients that are dissolved in it, and which the human body needs for its support. Those are wrong, therefore, who prefer cistern or distilled water to spring-water; the former being, as it were artificially, free from all metallic and mineral parts which are so beneficial to our health; while spring-water contains them in abundance, and ought, therefore, to be taken in preference even to the purest rain-water. But one of the most excellent qualities of water is, that one can scarcely ever drink too much of it. If but for a moment in the stomach, it is absorbed there and goes immediately into the blood. From this arises its rapid cooling quality; which, however, may become very dangerous when one is heated. There is but one case in which water is not readily absorbed by the stomach; when it contains salts that make it heavier than blood, for example, Glauber's salt and bitter-salt. It passes then into the intestinal canal, and produces here--partly as liquid, partly by its salts exciting the nerves of the intestines--that medicinal effect for which it is famous. Many water-cures, especially those applied in cases of abdominal diseases, are of similar effects. Common water, however, which is immediately transmitted to the blood, effects by this accelerated secretion of perspiration, respiration and urine; this constitutes the beneficial effects of water-cures, where a glass of water often produces better results than a bottle of medicine. If we can control our thirst until several hours after dinner have passed, a glass of beer will be a welcome beverage to us. Beer contains nutriment; it includes more or less albumen, sugar, gluten, hops, and alcohol. Owing to the variety in its fermentation and manufacture, we have many kinds of beer, such as, for example, porter, ale, and, above all others, the lager-beer.