Experiment 2. Break an egg into a half glassful 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 molasses.
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.