The stomach meanwhile, in response to this fiery invitation, secretes from its myriad pores its juices and watery fluids, to protect itself as much as possible from the invading liquid. It does not digest alcoholic drinks; we might say it does not attempt to, because they are not material suitable for digestion, and also because no organ can perform its normal work while smarting under an unnatural irritation.
Even if the stomach does not at once eject the poison, it refuses to adopt it as food, for it does not pass along with the other food material, as chyme, into the intestines, but is seized by the absorbents, borne into the veins, which convey it to the heart, whence the pulmonary artery conveys it to the lungs, where its presence is announced in the breath. But wherever alcohol is carried in the tissues, it is always an irritant, every organ in turn endeavoring to rid itself of the noxious material.
171. Effect of Alcoholic Liquor upon the Stomach. The methods by which intoxicating drinks impair and often ruin digestion are various. We know that a piece of animal food, as beef, if soaked in alcohol for a few hours, becomes hard and tough, the fibers having been compacted together because of the abstraction of their moisture by the alcohol, which has a marvelous affinity for water. In the same way alcohol hardens and toughens animal food in the stomach, condensing its fibers, and rendering it indigestible, thus preventing the healthful nutrition of the body. So, if alcohol be added to the clear, liquid white of an egg, it is instantly coagulated and transformed into hard albumen. As a result of this hardening action, animal food in contact with alcoholic liquids in the stomach remains undigested, and must either be detained there so long as to become a source of gastric disturbance, or else be allowed to pass undigested through the pyloric gate, and then may become a cause of serious intestinal disturbance.[[27]]
This peculiar property of alcohol, its greedy absorption of water from objects in contact with it, acts also by absorbing liquids from the surface of the stomach itself, thus hardening the delicate glands, impairing their ability to absorb the food-liquids, and so inducing gastric dyspepsia. This local injury inflicted upon the stomach by all forms of intoxicants, is serious and protracted. This organ is, with admirable wisdom, so constructed as to endure a surprising amount of abuse, but it was plainly not intended to thrive on alcoholic liquids. The application of fiery drinks to its tender surface produces at first a marked congestion of its blood-vessels, changing the natural pink color, as in the mouth, to a bright or deep red.
If the irritation be not repeated, the lining membrane soon recovers its natural appearance. But if repeated and continued, the congestion becomes more intense, the red color deeper and darker; the entire surface is the subject of chronic inflammation, its walls are thickened, and sometimes ulcerated. In this deplorable state, the organ is quite unable to perform its normal work of digestion.[[28]]
172. Alcohol and the Gastric Juice. But still another destructive influence upon digestion appears in the singular fact that alcohol diminishes the power of the gastric juice to do its proper work. Alcohol coagulates the pepsin, which is the dissolving element in this important gastric fluid. A very simple experiment will prove this. Obtain a small quantity of gastric juice from the fresh stomach of a calf or pig, by gently pressing it in a very little water. Pour the milky juice into a clear glass vessel, add a little alcohol, and a white deposit will presently settle to the bottom. This deposit contains the pepsin of the gastric juice, the potent element by which it does its special work of digestion. The ill effect of alcohol upon it is one of the prime factors in the long series of evil results from the use of intoxicants.
173. The Final Results upon Digestion. We have thus explained three different methods by which alcoholic drinks exercise a terrible power for harm; they act upon the food so as to render it less digestible; they injure the stomach so as seriously to impair its power of digestion; and they deprive the gastric juice of the one principal ingredient essential to its usefulness.
Alcoholic drinks forced upon the stomach are a foreign substance; the stomach treats them as such, and refuses to go on with the process of digestion till it first gets rid of the poison. This irritating presence and delay weaken the stomach, so that when proper food follows, the enfeebled organ is ill prepared for its work. After intoxication, there occurs an obvious reaction of the stomach, and digestive organs, against the violent and unnatural disturbance. The appetite is extinguished or depraved, and intense headache racks the frame, the whole system is prostrated, as from a partial paralysis (all these results being the voice of Nature’s sharp warning of this great wrong), and a rest of some days is needed before the system fully recovers from the injury inflicted.
It is altogether an error to suppose the use of intoxicants is necessary or even desirable to promote appetite or digestion. In health, good food and a stomach undisturbed by artificial interference furnish all the conditions required. More than these is harmful. If it may sometimes seem as if alcoholic drinks arouse the appetite and invigorate digestion, we must not shut our eyes to the fact that this is only a seeming, and that their continued use will inevitably ruin both. In brief, there is no more sure foe to good appetite and normal digestion than the habitual use of alcoholic liquors.
174. Effect of Alcoholic Drinks upon the Liver. It is to be noted that the circulation of the liver is peculiar; that the capillaries of the hepatic artery unite in the lobule with those of the portal vein, and thus the blood from both sources is combined; and that the portal vein brings to the liver the blood from the stomach, the intestines, and the spleen. From the fact that alcohol absorbed from the stomach enters the portal vein, and is borne directly to the liver, we would expect to find this organ suffering the full effects of its presence. And all the more would this be true, because we have just learned that the liver acts as a sort of filter to strain from the blood its impurities. So the liver is especially liable to diseases produced by alcoholics. Post mortems of those who have died while intoxicated show a larger amount of alcohol in the liver than in any other organ. Next to the stomach the liver is an early and late sufferer, and this is especially the case with hard drinkers, and even more moderate drinkers in hot climates. Yellow fever occurring in inebriates is always fatal.