1914 Beverages de luxe

that the only perfectly clean food factory is the brewery, and beer an absolutely clean article of food. The average composition of American beer is 5.29 per cent, extract, consisting chiefly of sugar, dextrin, albumen and min- eral substances, and .'5.82 per cent, by weight of alcohol, the rest being water. This makes a content of about i) per cent, nutritive matter. The solid content of milk runs ordinarily from 12 to 14 per cent. It is thus seen that beer possesses considerable nutri- tive value. It is chiefly as a food relish, however, that beer maintains that great popularity, which in the year 1913 showed in the consumption of 66,933,393 barrels. It is thoroughly understood by physiological chemists — and while perhaps not .scientifically understood by the people generally, carried out in practice that relishes are quite as important in the nutrition of man as tho.se articles which supply the chemical constituents recjuired for building tissue and supplying energy. It is not so important irhat we eat as hoiv we eat. A meal enjoyed "sets" well. The best meal taken without relish, will not benefit a man. Beer supplies relish to the taste, and by the alcohol content stimulates the mind and enhances the social pleasures of the meal. Therein lies its chief virtue. By the moderate stimulation it afl'ords, it gives to the .system the relief from the monotony of the work- a-day world which every normal person craves, and, satisfying it in a proper way, fore.stalLs excess. It is thus one of the most effective agencies of temperance. It would be unheard-of to conclude an article on beer with- out saying .something of its history. Much has been written on that subject, but it was never dealt with in a really thorough- going manner until Mr. John P. Arnold, of Chicago, published his book on the "Origin and History of P>eer and Brewing," which was was gotten out in 1911 as a memorial of the twenty- fifth anniversary of the founding of the Wahl Henius Institute of Fermentology. A few passages from this monumental worlv will shed a better light on the anti(iuity of beer in the history of the human race and its intimate entwining with the customs of i)i'iniitive society than could any other statement. Mr. Arnold shows that the use of intoxicants was not only a \ery earl\- practice, but most closely a.ssociated with religion. Ceremonial dances, vapors of a narcotic character, and intoxicants of various kinds were early employed to produce those states of spiritual exaltation or self-hypnose which were believed to place man in direct intercourse with deity. The following quotations are from Mr. Arnold's book : "Cerevisia (the Latin name for beer), to judge by its ety- mological derivation and its history, stood originally for fer-