Yet some of it gets into the brain, and there does very much mischief, of which you will learn more by and by. You know, if the brain is hurt, the mind cannot do its work of thinking properly; thus, alcohol does great harm to the mind through the brain.
The muscles and the bones are hurt by not being supplied with pure blood; the heart gets tired out with overwork, and the lungs become diseased through this same terrible alcohol.
Therefore, if you would be strong and healthy, have nothing to do with alcoholic liquors; for
| ALCOHOL POISONS | ||
| The stomach, The heart, The bones, | The liver, The lungs, The muscles, | The blood, The brain, The skin, |
| And every part of the body. | ||
IN THE STOMACH.
Children who have learned the Lesson on Digestion, and know about the coats of the stomach, about mastication and chyme-making, are easily made to understand why anything which has alcohol in it is unfit to go into the stomach.
If we touch a drop of alcohol to the eye, it will make it sore; so alcohol in the stomach irritates its coats and makes them sore.
Alcohol poisons the gastric juice. If we get some of this juice from the stomach of a calf which has just been killed, and mix alcohol with it, the alcohol will separate the watery part from the pepsin or white part. This is what alcohol does in the stomach. It takes up water from the gastric juice, which prevents the pepsin from mixing well with the food, and hinders the change of the food into chyme, which cannot take place without pepsin.