"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, whisky, 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." (p. 64.) We would give something to know how many readers, outside of the medical profession, may have detected at the first glance the fatal fallacy lurking in this argument. Of its existence Mr. Parton himself is blissfully unconscious. The experiment, no doubt, seems quite complete and conclusive. We have the gastric juice mixed with alcoholic liquor, we have the suitable temperature, and we have an imitation of the motions of the stomach. What more can be desired? We reply, the most important element in the problem is entirely overlooked. It is the old story,--the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out; and nothing can better illustrate the extreme danger of reasoning confidently from what goes on outside the body to what must go on inside the body. For in order to have made their experiment complete, Mr. Parton's authorities _should have manufactured an entire nervous system_, as well as a network of blood-vessels through which the alcohol might impart to that nervous system its stimulus. In short, before we can make an artificial digestive apparatus which will work at all like the natural one, we must know how to construct a living human body! In the case before us, _the nervous stimulus_, ignored by Mr. Parton, is the most essential factor in the whole process. There is no doubt that a given quantity of undiluted gastric juice will usually perform the chemical process of food-transformation more rapidly than an equal quantity of gastric juice which is diluted.[9] But there is also no doubt that when we take a small quantity of alcohol into the stomach, _the amount of gastric juice is instantly increased_. This results from the stimulant action of alcohol both upon the pneumogastric nerves and upon the great splanchnic or visceral branches of the sympathetic. Just as when tobacco is smoked, though probably to a less extent, the gastric secretion is increased; and the motions of the stomach are also increased.