Besides the fact that alcohol had, before this committee's existence, been proved to be neither a drink nor a food nor a medicine, it had also been shown to be the cause of disease. Over five thousand of the most prominent physicians in this country had so stated it, and the proportion was equally great in all the enlightened countries of Europe. The most pronounced in this way, perhaps, have been the great leaders in medical science in Austria, Germany and France. Some of the points made against the use of alcohol were that it interferes with digestion by rendering insoluble the active principle of the gastric juice, and especially by preventing the solution of body-building foods. The natural action of various organs of the body is more or less arrested by alcohol, thus reducing the temperature. This from Dr. Edmunds already quoted: "The blood carries certain earthy matters in it in a soluble state, these earthy matters being necessary for the nutrition of the bones and other parts of the body. You all know that when wine is fermented and turned from a weak sweet wine into a strong alcoholic wine, you get what is called a 'crust' formed on the inside of the bottle. What is that crust? That crust consists of saline or earthy matters which were soluble in the saccharine grape juice, but which are insoluble in the alcoholic fluids. We find in drunkards that the blood vessels get into the same state as the wine bottles from the deposit of earthy matter which has no business to be deposited, and forms the 'beeswing' or crust in the blood vessels of the drunkard, in his eye and in all of the tissues of the body." Alcohol had been found to prevent the elimination of waste, thus the body is loaded with worn and decaying tissues, leaving the system an inviting field for all sorts of diseases. Life insurance companies, influenced by business interests wholly, make a distinction between liquor users and non-users. Nelson, a distinguished actuary of England, employed as an expert by life insurance companies, found after investigating over 7,000 cases, none of which were drunkards, that between the ages of 15 and 20 the proportion of deaths in total abstainers to those in moderate drinkers is as 10 to 18; between the ages of 25 and 30, as 10 to 31; between 30 and 40 as 10 is to 40.