The way which the body fights disease is partly by means of the white blood-corpuscles, which totally destroy the germs, and partly by the increase in the blood of those chemical substances which are antidotes for the poisons given out by the germs.
Alcohol taken into the stomach is quickly absorbed and reaches the blood in two minutes. The maximum of alcohol is found in the blood in fifteen minutes after it is swallowed.
The blood is the medium by which food and oxygen are conveyed to the tissues, and by which the refuse material from the tissues is carried away; alcohol interferes with both these processes.
The red cells are liable to become damaged and anemia results. It has now been proved that even tiny doses of alcohol paralyze more or less the white cells, and thus interfere with their power of destroying microbes. Chemical substances tend to exert a delaying or inhibitory influence over the chemical processes of the body. These chemical processes are oxidation, the storing up of nutriment, the manufacture of secretion, the production of energy and muscular movement, and the excretion of waste materials.
The greatest possible difference exists as to the rate at which oxidation goes on. When there is nothing to hinder its occurrence, the poisonous toxins and waste matters are rapidly burned up and eliminated and health prevails. Alcohol, by its affinity for oxygen, robs the tissues of oxygen which they would otherwise use for combustion. Hence the tissues are kept starving for oxygen, metabolism is interfered with, and they cannot get rid of their waste material.
This delayed oxidation tends to increase the body weight. The cells in an intermediate stage of fatty degeneration clog the body, and, of course, add to its weight. The natural effect of taking alcohol is to make the body obese. On abstaining from alcohol, the superfluous tissue is often burned away, and the weight of the body reduced, and a look and feeling of youth is recovered.
The Effect of Alcohol on the Heart and Circulation.—By the circulation we understand the driving of the fluid blood around the body, through the blood-vessels, such driving being maintained by the pumping power of the heart, which is practically a hollow muscle.
In consequence of this pumping power of the heart, the blood in the vessels is under considerable pressure, which is naturally increased if the blood-vessels are narrowed or contracted, and diminished if the blood-vessels are expanded or dilated.
Gradual deterioration in the heart power is a cause of premature death. One of the early indications that the foregoing changes may be occurring in a heart is a sense of fatigue and breathlessness on slight exertion, or a feeling of disinclination for normal effort. The result of such depression of the efficiency of the heart is often seen when the individual is attacked by some disease; she succumbs to heart failure, instead of being able to resist the disease. This probably accounts for a great many deaths between forty and sixty years of age.
Further, it must be remembered that all the nutritive action of the blood depends on its power of rapidly filtering through the walls of the blood-vessels to the tissues, and, conversely, its power of drawing off the waste-products of the tissues depends on the facility with which such products can penetrate its walls.