First Book In Physiology And Hygiene Part 18

~16.~ There are also other kinds of alcohol. Fusel-oil, a deadly poison, is an alcohol. A very small amount of this alcohol will make a person very drunk. Fusel-oil is found in bad whiskey. (All whiskey is bad, but some kinds are worse than others.) This is why such whiskey makes men so furiously drunk. It also causes speedy death in those who use it frequently. There are still other kinds of alcohol, some of which are even worse than fusel-oil. So you see this is a very bad family.

~17.~ Like most other bad families, this alcohol family has many bad relations. You have heard of carbolic acid, a powerful poison. This is one of the relatives of the alcohol family. Creosote is another poisonous substance closely related to alcohol. Ether and chloroform, by which people are made insensible during surgical operations, are also relatives of alcohol. They are, in fact, made from alcohol. These substances, although really useful, are very poisonous and dangerous. Do you not think it will be very wise and prudent for you to have nothing to do with alcohol in any form, even wine, beer, or cider, since it belongs to such a bad family and has so many bad relations?

~18.~ Some persons think that they will suffer no harm if they take only wine or beer, or perhaps hard cider. This is a great mistake. A person may get drunk on any of these drinks if a sufficient amount be taken.

Besides, boys who use wine, beer, or cider, rarely fail to become fond of stronger liquors. A great many men who have died drunkards began with cider. Cider begins to ferment within a day or two after it is made, and becomes stronger in alcohol all the time for many months.

~19. "Bitters."~--There are other liquids not called "drinks" which contain alcohol. "Bitters" usually contain more alcohol than is found in ale or wine, and sometimes more than in the strongest whiskey. "Jamaica ginger" is almost pure alcohol. Hence, it is often as harmful for a person to use these medicines freely as to use alcoholic liquors in any other form.

~20.~ Alcoholic liquors of all kinds are often adulterated. That is, they contain other poisons besides alcohol. In consequence of this, they may become even more harmful than when pure; but this does not make it safe to use even pure liquor. Alcohol is itself more harmful than the other drugs usually added in adulteration. It is important that you should know this, for many people think they will not suffer much harm from the use of alcohol if they are careful to obtain pure liquors.

~21. Some Experiments.~--How many of you remember what you have learned in previous lessons about the poisonous effects of alcohol? Do people ever die at once from its effects? Only a short time ago a man made a bet that he could take five drinks of whiskey in five seconds. He dropped dead when he had swallowed the fourth gla.s.s. No one ever suffered such an effect from taking water or milk or any other good food or drink.

~22.~ A man once made an experiment by mistake. He was carrying some alcohol across a lawn. He accidentally spilled some upon the gra.s.s. The next day he found the gra.s.s as dead and brown as though it had been scorched by fire.

~23.~ Mr. Darwin, the great naturalist, once made a curious experiment.

He took a little plant with three healthy green leaves, and shut it up under a gla.s.s jar where there was a tea-spoonful of alcohol. The alcohol was in a dish by itself, so it did not touch the plant; but the vapor of the alcohol mixed with the air in the jar so that the plant had to breathe it. In less than half an hour he took the plant out. Its leaves were faded and somewhat shrivelled. The next morning it appeared to be dead. Do you suppose the odor of milk or meat, or of any good food, would affect a plant like that? Animals shut up with alcohol die in just the same way.

~24. A Drunken Plant.~--How many of you remember about a curious plant that catches flies? Do you remember its name? What does the Venus's fly-trap do with the flies after it catches them? Do you say that it eats them? Really this is what it does, for it dissolves and absorbs them. In other words, it digests them. This is just what our stomachs do to the food we eat.

~25.~ A few years ago Mr. Darwin thought that he would see what effect alcohol would have upon the digestion of a plant. So he put a fly-catching plant in a jar with some alcohol for just five minutes. The alcohol did not touch the plant, because the jar was only wet with the alcohol on the inside. When he took the plant out, he found that it could not catch flies, and that its digestion was spoiled so that it could not even digest very tender bits of meat which were placed on its leaves. The plant was drunk.

~26.~ Mr. Darwin tried a great many experiments with various poisons, and found that the plants were affected in much the same way by ether and chloroform, and also by nicotine, the poisonous oil of tobacco.

Sugar, milk, and other foods had no such effect. This does not look much as though alcohol would help digestion; does it?

~27. Effects of Alcohol on Digestion.~--Dr. Roberts, a very eminent English scientist, made many experiments, a few years ago, to ascertain positively about the effect of alcohol upon digestion. He concluded that alcohol, even in small doses, delays digestion. This is quite contrary to the belief of very many people, who suppose that wine, cider, or stronger liquors aid digestion. The use of alcohol in the form of beer or other alcoholic drinks is often a cause of serious disease of the stomach and other digestive organs.

~28. Effects of Alcohol on Animal Heat.~--A large part of the food we eat is used in keeping our bodies warm. Most of the starch, sugar, and fat in our food serves the body as a sort of fuel. It is by this means that the body is kept always at about the same temperature, which is just a little less than one hundred degrees. This is why we need more food in very cold weather than in very warm weather.

~29.~ When a person takes alcohol, it is found that instead of being made warmer by it, he is not so warm as before. He feels warmer, but if his temperature be ascertained by means of a thermometer placed in his mouth, it is found that he is really colder. The more alcohol a person takes the colder he becomes. If alcohol were good food would we expect this to be the case? It is probably true that the alcohol does make a little heat, but at the same time it causes us to lose much more heat than it makes. The outside of the body is not so warm as the inside.

This is because the warm blood in the blood-vessels of the skin is cooled more rapidly than the blood in the interior of the body. The effect of alcohol is to cause the blood-vessels of the outside of the body to become much enlarged. This is why the face becomes flushed. A larger amount of warm blood is brought from the inside of the body to the outside, where it is cooled very rapidly; and thus the body loses heat, instead of gaining it, under the influence of alcohol. This is not true of any proper food substance.

~30. Alcohol in the Polar Regions.~--Experience teaches the same thing as science respecting the effect of alcohol. Captain Ross, Dr. Kane, Captain Parry, Captain Hall, Lieutenant Greely, and many other famous explorers who have spent long months amid the ice and snow and intense cold of the countries near the North Pole, all say that alcohol does not warm a man when he is cold, and does not keep him from getting cold.

Indeed, alcohol is considered so dangerous in these cold regions that no Arctic explorer at the present time could be induced to use it. The Hudson Bay Company do not allow the men who work for them to use any kind of alcoholic liquors. Alcohol is a great deceiver, is it not? It makes a man think he is warmer, when he is really colder. Many men are frozen to death while drunk.

~31. Alcohol in Hot Regions.~--Bruce, Livingstone, and Stanley, and all great African travellers, condemn the use of alcohol in that hot country as well as elsewhere. The Yuma Indians, who live in Arizona and New Mexico, where the weather is sometimes much hotter than we ever know it here, have made a law of their own against the use of liquor. If one of the tribe becomes drunk, he is severely punished. This law they have made because of the evil effects of liquor which they noticed among the members of their tribe who used to become intoxicated. Do you not think that a very wise thing for Indians to do?

~32. Sunstroke.~--Do you know what sunstroke is? If you do not, your parents or teacher will tell yow that persons exposed to the heat of the sun on a hot summer day are sometimes overcome by it. They become weak, giddy, or insensible, and not infrequently die. Scores of people are sometimes stricken down in a single day in some of our large cities. It may occur to you that if alcohol cools the body, it would be a good thing for a person to take to prevent or relieve an attack of sunstroke.

On the contrary, it is found that those who use alcoholic drinks are much more liable to sunstroke than others. This is on account of the poisonous effects of the alcohol upon the nerves. No doctor would think of giving alcohol in any form to a man suffering with sunstroke.

~33. Effects of Alcohol upon the Tissues.~--Here are two interesting experiments which your teacher or parents can make for you.

_Experiment 1._ Place a piece of tender beefsteak in a saucer and cover it with alcohol. Put it away over night. In the morning the beefsteak will be found to be shrunken, dried, and almost as tough as a piece of leather. This shows the effect of alcohol upon the tissues, which are essentially like those of lower animals.

_Experiment 2._ Break an egg into a half gla.s.sful of alcohol. Stir the egg and alcohol together for a few minutes. Soon you will see that the egg begins to harden and look just as though it had been boiled.

~34.~ This is the effect of strong alcohol. The alcohol of alcoholic drinks has water and other things mixed with it, so that it does not act so quickly nor so severely as pure alcohol; but the effect is essentially the same in character. It is partly in this way that the brain, nerves, muscles, and other tissues of drinking men and women become diseased.

Eminent physicians tell us that a large share of the unfortunate persons who are shut up in insane asylums are brought there by alcohol. Is it not a dreadful thing that one's mind should be thus ruined by a useless and harmful practice?

SUMMARY.

1. Alcohol is produced by fermentation, and obtained by distillation. It will burn like kerosene oil and other burning fluids.

2. The vapor of alcohol will burn and will sometimes explode.

3. Alcohol may be separated from beer and other fermented liquids by boiling.

4. Brandy is distilled from fermented fruit juice, whiskey and gin from beer or fermented grains, rum from fermented mola.s.ses.

5. Alcohol is the result of a sort of decay, and much good food is destroyed in producing it.

6. Besides ordinary alcohol, there are several other kinds. Naphtha and fusel-oil are alcohols.

7. All the members of the alcohol family are poisons; all will burn, and all will intoxicate. The alcohol family have several bad relations, among which are carbolic acid, ether, and chloroform.

8. Cider, beer, and wine are harmful and dangerous as well as strong liquors. "Bitters" often contain as much alcohol as the strongest liquors, and sometimes more.

9. Alcoholic liquors are sometimes adulterated, but they usually contain no poison worse than alcohol. Pure alcohol is scarcely less dangerous than that which is adulterated.

10. Death sometimes occurs almost instantly from taking strong liquors.

11. Alcohol will kill gra.s.s and other plants, if poured upon them or about their roots.

12. Mr. Darwin proved that the vapor of alcohol will kill plants; also that plants become intoxicated by breathing the vapor of alcohol.

13. Alcohol, even in small quant.i.ties, hinders digestion.

14. Alcohol causes the body to lose heat so rapidly that it becomes cooler instead of warmer.

15. The danger of freezing to death when exposed to extreme cold is greatly increased by taking alcohol.

16. Stanley, and other African explorers, say that it is dangerous to use alcoholic drinks in hot climates.

17. In very hot weather, persons who use alcoholic drinks are more subject to sunstroke than those who do not.

18. Beefsteak soaked in alcohol becomes tough like leather. An egg placed in alcohol is hardened as though it had been boiled.

19. The effect of alcohol upon the brain, nerves, and other tissues of the body is much the same as upon the beefsteak and the egg.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW.

CHAPTER I. THE HOUSE WE LIVE IN.--What is the body like? Does the body resemble anything else besides a house? How is it like a machine? Name the different parts of the body. What is anatomy?

physiology? hygiene?