From 1911: Liquor Harmful If Alcohol Is Removed

The following article is from 100 years ago today, published in the Hartford Courant on April 17th, 1911. David Day Whitney was a native of Vermont who graduated from Wesleyan in 1904. After receiving his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1909, he returned as an instructor to Wesleyan for a few years, before settling into a permanent position at the University of Nebraska. Whitney’s research was primarily on the factors which determine the sex of rotifers, which are microscopic, mostly fresh-water animals. He was a prolific scientist in this area, publishing many papers in the Journal of Experimental Zoology.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there was much agitation in Middletown and elsewhere about the dangers of alcohol, culminating in 1919 with passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibited"...manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors..." With the temperance movement quite active in Middletown, Whitney's comments on the effects of 'liquors' on 'lower animals' would have been of considerable interest.

I can find no publications by Whitney on his research with alcohol and rotifers.

Later in life, he wrote two popular books on human genetics, using photographs of his own family and ancestors to illustrate the inheritance of traits such as dark eyes, cupid-bow lips, ear lobes, high hairline, retracted left eyelid, and even a phlegmatic nature, a sense of humor, and good taste in dress.
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So Says Dr. D.D. Whitney of Wesleyan University.

Hard Cider and Claret the Most Poisonous; Brandy, Gin and Whiskey Least Injurious.

After a comprehensive investigation of the problem and observation of the effects of dealcoholized liquors upon low forms of animal life, Dr. David D. Whitney of Wesleyan’s biological department has reached two rather startling conclusions:--
“The harmfulness of intoxicants is not removed with the removal of alcohol from their composition.
“With their alcoholic contents reduced to the same percentage, ordinary hard cider and claret are the most poisonous beverages and brandy, gin and whiskey are the least poisonous.”
Dr. Whitney’s work in the Wesleyan laboratories has been to investigate the report of a committee of fifty experts made some time ago on the liquor problem. The committee state that alcohol is the only poisonous ingredient of liquors and state that if all liquors were reduced to the same percentage of alcohol, their injurious effects would be equal. A method of dealcoholization has been discovered in England by which it is possible to remove all the alcohol from the beer and still leave it practically the same in taste and in color as the ordinary beer. This new kind of beer is said to be harmless and at the same time as satisfying as the regular kind.

Dr. Whitney has been experimenting to find out whether there are other injurious components than alcohol in ordinary liquors, or whether liquors containing the same amoutn of alcohol are equally injurious, and finally to determine whether dealcoholized liquors are entirely harmless. He used some small water-living animals called rotifers in his experiments. He placed varying amounts of the different liquors into the water in which these animals lived and noted in what percentage of alcohol they could live two or three days and produce young. Tests were made with wines such as claret, cider and sherry; with malt liquors, such as beers and ales; with distilled liquors, such as whiskey, brandy, and gin, and with pure alcohol.

The results of these experiments proved, when the alcoholic contents of all liquors were reduced to the same percentage, that ordinary hard cider and claret are the most poisonous beverages and that brandy, gin and whiskey the least poisonous. In other experiments, in which sherry and claret were evaporated and their residue put into water, it was found that these two dealcoholized beverages were even more poisonous than the same percentage of pure alcohol.

In summary of his report, Dr. Whitney says: “It is readly seen that the wines are the most toxic, the malt liquors stand second in point of toxicity, and lastly the distilled liquors are the least toxic of all the beverages. The value of these experiments is to show that in the three main kinds of alcoholic beverages there are other important toxic ingredients than ethyl alcohol and also to demonstrate that the various alcoholic liquors, when reduce to the same percentage of alcohol, differ widely in their point of toxicity.

“The results perhaps explain why different alcoholic beverages have such different effects upon the drunkard even though an equal intoxication is produced. It is generally recognized that brandy produces a certain type of drunkenness and that elder produces another type widely different. Many of the other liquors also produce a particular type of drunkenness, the characteristics of which are typical for each liquor. These types of drunkenness are doubtless partly caused, at least, by the non-alcoholic ingredients in the liquors.