They cannot be _nourishment_, in the ordinary acceptation of that word, because the quantity of nutritive matter in them is so small. Liebig, no enemy of beer, says this: "We can prove, with mathematical certainty, that as much flour or meal as can lie on the point of a table-knife is more nutritious than nine quarts of the best Bavarian beer; that a man who is able daily to consume that amount of beer obtains from it, in a whole year, in the most favorable case, exactly the amount of nutritive constituents which is contained in a five-pound loaf of bread, or in three pounds of flesh." So of wine; when we have taken from a glass of wine the ingredients known to be innutritious, there is scarcely anything left but a grain or two of sugar. Pure alcohol, though a product of highly nutritive substances, is a mere poison,--an absolute poison,--the mortal foe of life in every one of its forms, animal and vegetable. If, therefore, these beverages do us good, it is not by supplying the body with nourishment. Nor can they aid digestion by assisting to decompose food. When we have taken too much shad for breakfast, we find that a wineglass of whiskey instantly mitigates the horrors of indigestion, and enables us again to contemplate the future without dismay. But if we catch a curious fish or reptile, and want to keep him from decomposing, and bring him home as a contribution to the Museum of Professor Agassiz, we put him in a bottle of whiskey. Several experiments have been made with a view to ascertain whether mixing alcohol with the gastric juice increases or lessens its power to decompose food, and the results of all of them point to the conclusion that the alcohol retards the process of decomposition. A little alcohol retards it a little, and much alcohol retards it much. It has been proved by repeated experiment, that any portion of alcohol, however small, diminishes the power of the gastric juice to decompose. The digestive fluid has been mixed with wine, beer, whiskey, brandy, and alcohol diluted with water, and kept at the temperature of the living body, and the motions of the body imitated during the experiment; but, in every instance, the pure gastric juice was found to be the true and sole digester, and the alcohol a retarder of digestion. This fact, however, required little proof. We are all familiar with alcohol as a _preserver_, and scarcely need to be reminded, that, if alcohol assists digestion at all, it cannot be by assisting decomposition.