covered with the rice grains. Several had developed marked symptoms of polyneuritis and the remainder were in a droopy apathetic state. Two died of polyneuritis the avian beriberi of fowls. Autopsies made on these two birds showed fatty heart with enlarged right auricle. The bones were fragile but contained no blood nor marrow; the mesentery had a greasy look and the intestines were strongly injected. The liver was soft and easily torn. The kidneys were soft with cortex highly injected, giving the appearance of general parenchymatous inflammation.

After placing the surviving pigeons on a dietary of special foods mentioned, it was interesting to watch improvement from day to day. They soon recovered from the apathy and droopiness which marked the polyneuritic syndrome and became more alert, appetite returned and finally they ate the new food ravenously and, as shown in the weight table, gained in two weeks as follows:

the experiment shows that the special food used contains the normal amount of Water Soluble B vitamine to sustain life and to promote growth and development.1

Composition of Vitamine: Laboratory experimentation has been made to determine the exact chemical composition and physiologic action of vitamines. Patient research into the subject has established the fact that they do not possess toxic properties but even in infinitesimal amounts they promptly relieve the symptoms of deficiency diseases in both man and animal. Clinical experimentation has definitely proven that a dietary deficient in vitamines leads to the development of deficiency diseases, such as beriberi, scurvy, rickets, pellagra, etc. Just what these accessory food substances vitamines — are, and the exact rôle they play in the body metabolism, is at present the subject of extended research and investigation by the leading biochemists and food experts of every country in the world. The vitamine content of fresh food is

Coop No. 3-One bird gained 6 ounces, and the other 64 ounces.

Coop No. 4-One bird gained 101⁄2 ounces, and the other 74 ounces.

The birds in coop 2 were registered White Kings, about two years old, and raised three sets of young the previous summer. At the end of the feeding experiment with the special nutrient diet they were respectively 51⁄2 and 6 ounces heavier than at the beginning of the experi

ment.

In view of the results recorded there can be no question but that all the pigeons would have died of polyneuritis - avian beriberi-if they had been left on the polished rice dietary; and on the other hand,

reach their highest state of perfection and in meats when the animal or fowl reaches maturity and is well fed and physically fit. The animal body is unable to produce vitamines from vitamine-free food. All the higher animals, including man, get their vitamine supply directly or indirectly from the vegetable kingdom. Plant life synthesizes the vitamine, and man obtains the required vitamine supply by partaking either of animal or vegetable food. The cow stores up vitamine from the grasses, grains and fodder which she consumes. tion of the vitamine is secreted in her milk, supplying the calf with the necessary vita

A por

'I am, at the present time, preparing to conduct experiments with puppies and guinea pigs to test out the Fat Soluble A vitamine and with grown dogs to test Water Soluble B vitamine.

mine. The balance of the vitamine is stored in the flesh of the cow, furnishing a valuable source of vitamine for man. The hen derives vitamine from the cereals and herbs she eats, and transfers a part of it to the eggs she lays. The vegetable kingdom, therefore, furnishes the vitamine supply so essential to animal life, and the plant laboratory builds up vitamine from simple inorganic compounds.

Colonel Vedder, M. C., U. S. A., in writing on the vitamines, says: "It should also be noted that all canned food must be regarded as possible beriberi producers. It has been shown by numerous investigators, including the writer, that heating to 120° C. destroys the beriberi, preventing vitamines in certain foods. All protein foods that are 'canned' must be subjected to about this amount of heat in order to kill all the putrefactive organisms, and such canned foods are, undoubtedly, beriberi producers, when used in excess."

F. Gowland Hopkins, chairman of the Medical Research Committee appointed by the British Royal Society to report upon the present state of knowledge concerning accessory food factors (vitamines), says: "Tinned *** meats can be dismissed in a word, as offering no possible protection from scurvy. Meat, in its fresh condition, contains the anti-scurvy factor in comparatively low concentration, and after exposure to the temperature necessary for sterilization it is impossible that any significant anti-scurvy properties should be retained."

The heat necessary to sterilize milk destroys its vitamine content, and a child fed exclusively on sterilized milk, unless given fresh orange juice, will develop scurvy-a deficiency disease. Moreover, the heat necessary to sterilize fresh fruits and vege

tables and meats in the canning process destroys the vitamine content of most canned foods.

Vitamines are very susceptive to high temperatures and more especially if the high temperature is long continued. It is generally accepted that a temperature of 120° C. (270° F.) destroys the vitamine content of foods. In the process of ordinary cooking, food may be subjected to 100° C. (212° F.) without seriously impairing the vitamine content, but if subjected for a long period of time to a temperature of 250 to 270° F. the vitamine content will be absolutely destroyed.

405 Lexington Ave., N. Y.

IS COFFEE A DRINK OR A DRUG?

BY

EDWIN F. BOWERS, M. D.,

New York City.

There are any number of bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked men who used to drink a quart of whiskey a day-before the country became Sahara-ized, and booze, in quantity, became a luxury fitted only for the very wealthy.

Then there are men, who take their pipe or cigar out of their mouths only to speak, spit, eat or sleep.

Also, many people can pour tea and coffee into themselves from dewy dawn until night draws the sable mantle of her starry robe around her, and never bat an eye.

But I, for one, am not built in any of these ways. A quart of whiskey-barring fishing excursions or other accidents—I should figure a liberal month's supply. If I smoke more than four or five cigars a day I am as nervous as an old witch. Also, I palpitate like a débutante. And, if I drink even one cup of tea or coffee anywhere

within two or three hours of bedtime, I increase my pulse rate from five to fifteen, stiffen up the tension about a half dozen degrees, and stay awake for five or six hours to repent my foolishness.

I am only an average individual. With but rare exceptions, the whole well-known human race is constructed along substantially the same lines. For if ye prick us, de we not bleed; and if ye poison us, will we not curl up and die?

All of which brings me to the crux of my tale-which is, that tea and coffee are poisons, having potentialities for harm quite as dangerous as has rum, tobacco, opium, or any of the narcotics, the sale of which is so jealously safeguarded by our kind and noble government.

There is no guess-work about this proposition. It is not a mere abstraction, susceptible to three or four different correct explanations. It is a theorem almost as much in accord with the law of cause and effect as is the proposition that if a man picketh up a red-hot coal he'll casteth it away two and one-half times more quickly than he picked it up. Or, if he steppeth on a tack, he won't stay in one spot a single moment longer than is necessary to change the location of all two of his feet.

And, why should not it be so? Is there any particular reason why a drug found in a common beverage should not be quite as poisonous as a drug found in any other combination, or location, or connection?

Just because we consume sixteen billion cups a year of the toxic beverage-more or less-is no reason we should pat ourselves between the shoulder blades, and contend that caffeine and thein are inert drugs quite as harmless as lycopodium. Really, the fact that we are not all dead, or in the insane asylum, is a wonderful trib

ute to our toughness. It proves conclusively that old Mithridates had a nifty idea when he pickled himself in all varieties of poison, taking them in increasing doses. He established such a tremendous degree of toleration for these poisons that his loving subjects finally had to kill him with an

axe.

But we cannot all become Mithridateses. Too many of us would perish in the attempt, or else adorn a psychopathic pavilion.

As it is, the death list from tea and coffee addiction must be fairly high, if one only gave the poison the credit it had justly earned.

The Most Prevalent of all Forms of Narcotic Addiction. So tea and coffee intoxication is probably the most prevalent of all forms of narcotic addiction. That it is not recognized more frequently, and treated for what it is, is merely because we are too close to the forest to observe the trees.

In other words, the symptoms of tea and coffee addiction are so common, and stimulate so closely a host of other conditions. with seemingly definite pathologies, that we have neglected to ascribe to the poisonous influences of these beverages the conditions for which they are indubitably responsible.

But evidence is gradually accumulating, tending to show that coffee is a poison, with all the potentiality for harm that follows the unnecessary taking of drugs.

Likewise with tea, the alkaloid of which, thein, is identical in chemical and pathologic action with the alkaloid caffein-the only difference being that if the tea is freshly made, by the quick-steeping process, one does not get quite so much of the alkaloid out of the tea and into the system as is the case with boiled coffee.

On the other hand, there seems but little doubt that the caffeine in tea is combined with tannin, in the form of tannate of caffeine. This substance is not very soluble in cold water, but it is readily soluble in hot water. And, if the drug will produce that fine healthy condition of tan that is the pride and joy of the leather manufacturer, its preserving and pickling action upon human stomachs-and upon the albuminous food that is put into human stomachsmay well be taken for granted.

Coffee Has No Food Value.- Coffee can assuredly not be classed as a food, for it does not build tissue, and its nutritive value is negligible. It contains no starch; it carries only 1.26 per cent. of protein, and its 12 per cent. of oil (caffeine) remains mostly in the grounds.

Coffee does, however, contain trifling amounts of sugar and dextrine, as well as traces of alcohol, which are absolutely unimportant from a physiologic viewpoint. So the sugar and cream added at the table are, by all odds, the most nourishing elements in a cup of coffee.

It is, however, the 1.23 per cent. of caffeine contained in coffee, which is the real factor that has made coffee one of the most insidious poisons that now menace the health of the human race.

There may, of course, be certain debilitated states in the organism which may temporarily require the administration of small doses of poison. This is a point that is somewhat beside the scope of our present argument, however.

And, if the physician feels impelled to prescribe nux vomica, hyoscyamus, conium, cocaine, opium or caffeine, that is his business and it should be his exclusive business, for he knows what he is giving them for, and how much to give, and how long to keep on giving them.

But this does not excuse the daily use of caffeine-containing coffee as a general beverage any more than it would excuse the persistent and protracted use of strychnine, cocaine, or any other drug.

No one can deny that we are a caffeinesaturated race. One-half of all the world's production of coffee is consumed in America. It is estimated that our per capita consumption of coffee is now more than fifteen pounds for every man, woman and child in the United States, as against about seven pounds consumed in England. Every pound of coffee carries about 1.23 per cent. of caffeine. Estimating that each pound is sufficient for about thirty-five cups of coffee, of the strength ordinarily drunk in America, it can readily be seen that each cup of coffee carries from two to three grains of the drug caffeine.

This is about the usual dose prescribed by physicians who feel that their patients need this drug as a heart stimulant.

And so hundreds of thousands of our good folks, who consume from three to five. cups of this poisonous beverage each day, are whipping themselves over the turnstiles of life at a rate that yearly lands thousands upon thousands of them in the sanitarium.

Yet, the wonder is not that there are so many cases of nervous, or heart, or kidney disorders among Americans, but that there are not more of them. The marvel is not that we are the most neurotic race of civilized beings on the face of the earth, but that we are not more neurotic and triggertempered than we are.

The drug is served up morning, noon and night, at our tables, not to adult males and females alone, but even to little children.

Mr. Charles B. Towns, who has had unique opportunities for studying the effects of drugs on the human organism, and who has had equally unique opportunities