Men often drink to keep themselves from taking cold. The alcohol really makes them more liable to take cold. It causes the blood to flow near the surface of the skin; there it is easily cooled, and the drinker soon becomes chilled; then he feels colder than ever. The cold harms the cells of his body, and then the white blood cells cannot easily fight disease germs. For this reason a drinker easily takes cold and other diseases.
120. Alcohol lessens the warmth of the body.—Alcohol causes the blood tubes in the skin to become larger. Then more blood will touch the cool air, and the body will become cooler. But because more warm blood flows through the skin, a man feels warmer. But he is really colder. Alcohol makes men less able to stand the cold. Travelers in cold lands know this and do not use it.
121. How tobacco affects breathing.—We would not live in a room with a smoking stove. But tobacco smoke is more harmful than smoke from a stove, for it has nicotine in it. Tobacco smoke in a room may make a child sick.
Cigarette smoking is very harmful to the lungs, for the smoke is drawn deeply into them, and more of the poison is likely to stay in the body. The smoke of tobacco burns the throat and causes a cough. This harms the voice.
WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED
1. Air is always being breathed into little sacs inside the body. The sacs form the lungs.
2. The red blood cells pass through the lungs, and take little loads of air. They then carry the air through the arteries to the capillaries.
3. In the capillaries the air leaves the red blood cells, and goes to the cells of the body.
4. The air unites with the cells, and slowly burns them to smoke and ashes.