HARM DONE BY ALCOHOL IN VARIOUS PARTS OF THE BODY.
Raw alcohol does not do much harm to people because it is too strong for them to drink much of it; but the alcohol hidden in cider, ale, wine, whiskey, and other alcoholic drinks kills not less than sixty thousand persons in this country every year, besides those who die from its use in other parts of the world.
There is great excitement when there is a mad dog around; and, if any one is bitten and dies from the dreadful hydrophobia, people are ready to destroy all the dogs of the neighborhood; but when a drunkard dies from delirium tremens or alcohol craziness, how few take any notice of the cause of his death, or do all they can to wage war against the use of alcoholic liquors.
But why do we say such hard things against these liquors which some people love so well and think so harmless? In what way do they hurt and kill people? Let us see. Where does what we drink go after it has been put into the mouth?—"Into the stomach." If it were the right thing to go into the stomach, into what would it be changed?—"Into something which helps to make good blood."
Learned men, who have examined and carefully studied about these things, tell us that the stomach is hurt by alcohol,
because the fiery fluid is not food, but poison which makes the stomach very sore, and gives it hard work to do. The veins of the stomach take it up and send it into the liver. The liver, which is a large organ weighing about four pounds, lies on the right side below the lungs; its work is, to help make the blood pure. It can do nothing with alcohol, so it drives it along to the heart; the heart sends it to the lungs; the lungs throw some of it out through the breath, which smells of the vile stuff that has been poisoning every part it has passed through since it entered the mouth.
Some of the alcohol does not get out of the lungs through the breath, but goes with the blood back to the heart, and from the heart is sent through the arteries to every part of the body. No part of the body wants it.
The Skin drives some of it out, through its little pores, with the perspiration.
The Kidneys, which lie in the back below the waist, on each side of the spine, send off some of the poison.