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Cook County Hospital, Chicago, sent figures for two years only, 1907, and 1908. With 28,932 patients treated in 1907, the bill for wines and liquors amounted to only $719.40. In 1908 with 31,202 patients the bill for liquors amounted to $970.65. This makes a per capita expenditure for liquors for 1907 of .024 cents, and for 1908 a per capita expenditure of .031 cents. The per capita expenditure for liquors during the same years in Bellevue and Allied Hospitals of New York city, with from 30,000 to 40,000 patients treated was .0246 and .029. Two or three cents as the yearly per capita expenditure for alcoholic liquors in the two largest hospitals in America is striking evidence that the physicians practicing there have not large faith in whisky, or other alcoholic liquors as remedial agents.

Long Island, N. Y., State Hospital: – “We are not using more than half the amount of alcohol we used ten years ago.”

Manhattan State Hospital, Ward’s Island, New York City: – “Our patient population has averaged nearly 4,500 the last four years, and we have had about 750 employees, many of whom are prescribed for by institution physicians. The per capita cost of distilled liquors for the last fiscal year was .0273 at this hospital.”

Milwaukee City Hospital: – “No alcoholic liquors are used to any extent in this hospital, or prescribed by the staff. I know of no move against such use of liquors, but venture the assertion that the physicians believe they have more reliable agents at their command for most cases.”

Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia: – “We are now using about one-third the amount of liquor that was used in the Pennsylvania Hospital ten years ago.”

The Presbyterian Hospital of Philadelphia sent figures for the years from 1900 to 1908. Those for 1900 show the cost of liquors to be $774.20 and for 1908 only $331.48. The number of patients was not given.

Grady Hospital, Atlanta, Georgia: – “That less liquor is now used than formerly is a fact well known to all connected with the institution.”

Garfield Memorial, Washington, D. C., sent figures for ten years. For 1899 the cost of liquors was $490.08, with a steady decrease to 1908 when the cost was $274.58. Number of patients in 1899 was 1,171; in 1908, 1,898 patients. The per capita for 1908 was .144 cents.

University Hospital, Ann Arbor, Michigan: – “Very little alcohol is prescribed in this hospital.”

Maine General Hospital, Portland: – “Comparatively speaking, we use but little alcohol for the reason that we now have many remedies which, especially for continued use, are superior to alcohol, which twenty years ago we did not have. For the conditions or emergencies in which we think alcohol has a value it is used when required or deemed best.”

Buffalo, New York, State Hospital sent figures for six years which include cost of alcohol used in the manufacture of pharmaceutical preparations, which, of course, makes a very decided difference. Per capita for 1903 was 22 cents; for 1908 it was 18 cents.

Buffalo, New York, General Hospital: – “The use of alcohol as a drug in this hospital has diminished about one-third in the past ten years, but I wish to add in this connection that the use of all drugs has diminished in this hospital, and to the best of my knowledge in other institutions of a like character. The use of the microscope, and other studies have advanced the science of medicine the same as all other branches of learning, and other methods are coming to be used beside the use of drugs.”

Mount Sinai, New York City: – “The use of alcoholic beverages here for medical purposes is the exception rather than the rule. The majority of our cases are surgical cases, and in these alcoholic liquors are rarely prescribed for any purpose whatsoever.”

Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital, Boston, sent figures for five years. For 1904 the cost of alcoholic liquors was $197.69 with 3,720 patients; for 1908, the cost was $69.82 with 4,543 patients. The per capita cost for the five years is as follows: 1904, cost .0531 cents; 1905, cost .0474; 1906, cost .034; 1907, cost .0171; 1908, cost .0153.

In the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal of April 15, 1909, Dr. Richard C. Cabot gave a table showing the decrease in the use of alcoholic liquors, and of other drugs in Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.

The following is his table:

Dr. Cabot says: —

“Since there has been no fall in the price of stimulants or medicine, the diminished expenditure corresponds to a diminution in the number of doses of medicine and stimulants, and indicates a rapid and striking change of view among the members of the staff of the hospital, especially in the past five years, when it has become generally known that alcohol is not a stimulant but a narcotic and that drugs can cure only about half a dozen of the diseases against which we are contending.

“There has been during this period no increase in the proportion of surgical cases among the whole number treated, so that the decreased use of medicines and alcoholic beverages has not resulted from an increased resort to surgical remedies. On the other hand, there has been a great increase in the utilization of baths (hydrotherapeutics), of massage, of mechanical treatment and of psychical treatment, all of which accounts no doubt for part of the falling off in the use of alcohol and drugs.”

CHAPTER V.
THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON THE HUMAN BODY

The body is made up mainly of cells, fibres and fluids. The cell is the most important structure in the living body. Life resides in the cell, and every animal may be considered a mass of cells, each of which is alive, and each of which has its own work to accomplish in the building up of the body.

The matter which forms the mass of a cell is called protoplasm, or bioplasm. It resembles somewhat the white of a raw egg, which is almost pure albumen. Cells make up the body, and do its work. Some are employed to construct the skeleton, others are used to form the organs which move the body; liver-cells secrete bile, and the cells in the kidneys separate poisonous matters from the blood in order that they may be expelled from the system.

These cells, composing the mass of the body, being very delicate, are easily acted upon by substances coming into contact with them. If substances other than natural foods or drinks are introduced into the body, the cells are injuriously affected. Alcohol is especially injurious to cells, “retarding the changes in their interior, hindering their appropriation of food, and elimination of waste matters, and therefore preventing their proper development and growth.”

“Bioplasm is living matter; it is structureless, semi-fluid, transparent and colorless. It is the only matter that can grow, move, divide itself and multiply, the only matter that can take up pabulum (food) and convert it into its own substance; and is the only matter that can be nourished. The bioplasm in the cell gets its nourishment by drawing in of the pabulum through the cell wall, and in that way building up the formed material while it is being disintegrated on the outer surface. This process is continually being carried on, and is what is meant by nutrition. Disintegration of the formed material is as essential as the building up of it. All organic structure is the result of change taking place in bioplasm. These small cell-like bioplasts are the workmen of the organism. All wounds are repaired by them, all fractures are united, and all diseased tissues brought back to their normal and healthy condition, unless there is not vitality enough to overcome disease, or they have been injured or killed by poisonous material. The body is kept in repair by this living matter, and all the functions of the body are but the result of its action. We may examine, watch and study bioplasm under the microscope; we see it take up pabulum and convert that which is adapted to itself into its own substance, while all other substances are rejected. We take a solution of what we call a stimulant and immerse the bioplasm in it, and we find that it increases its activity, moves faster, takes up more pabulum, and divides more rapidly than in the unstimulated condition. We next add an astringent, and it begins to move more slowly, and soon contracts into a spherical shape and remains contracted, or may move slowly to a limited extent, depending on the strength of the solution. We next take a relaxant, and gradually the living matter begins to spread in all directions, in a laxy-like manner, and becomes so thin as to be almost undiscernible, and takes up very little, if any, pabulum. If sufficiently relaxed or astringed, the movements may entirely cease so as to appear lifeless, but when a stimulant is again added the same result is obtained as before – it begins to move, and acts as vigorous as ever, which shows that it was not injured in the least by the agents used. Alcohol is called a stimulant. We take a weak solution of alcohol and try it in the same way; but we find that almost instantly the living matter contracts into a ball-like mass. Now, we may through ignorance suppose that alcohol acts as an astringent, and so we try to stimulate it with the same harmless agent before used, but no impression is made on it; it does not move; it is dead matter. These are demonstrable facts, and lie at the foundation of physiology, pathology and the practice of medicine. Alcohol destroys the very life force that alone keeps the body in repair. For a more simple experiment as to the action of alcohol, take the white of an egg (which consists of albumen, and is very similar to bioplasm), put it into alcohol, and notice it turn white, coagulate and harden. The same experiment can be made with blood with the same result – killing the blood bioplasts. Raw meat will turn white and harden in alcohol. Alcohol acts the same on food in the stomach as it does on the same substances before introduced into the stomach, and acts just the same on blood and all the living tissues in the system as out of it; and this alone is enough to condemn its use as a medicine.” From Alcohol, Is It a Medicine? by W. F. Pechuman, M. D., of Detroit, Michigan.

ALCOHOL AND STOMACH DIGESTION

The nitrogenous portions of the food are the only ones digested in the stomach. The oily and fatty, as well as the starchy portions, are digested in the small intestines.

Very little was known about digestion until 1833, when Dr. Beaumont published the results of his investigations upon the stomach of Alexis St. Martin. St. Martin received a severe wound in the left side from a shot-gun. The wound in healing left an opening into the stomach about ⅘ of an inch in diameter, closed on the inside by a flap of mucous membrane. Through this opening the interior of the stomach could be thoroughly examined. Dr. Beaumont made hundreds of observations upon this young man, who was in his home several years. He says: —

“In a feverish condition, from whatever cause, obstructed perspiration, excitement by alcoholic liquors, overloading the stomach with food, fear, anger or whatever depresses or disturbs the nervous system, the lining of the stomach becomes somewhat red and dry, at other times pale and moist, and loses its smooth and healthy appearance, the secretions become vitiated, greatly diminished or entirely suppressed.”

One day after giving St. Martin a good wholesome dinner, digestion of which was going on in regular order, Dr. Beaumont gave him a glass of gin. The digestive process was at once arrested, and did not begin again until after the absorption of the spirit, after which it was slowly renewed, and tardily finished.

Gluzinski made some conclusive experiments with a syphon. He drew off the contents of the stomach at various times with and without liquor. He concluded that alcohol entirely suspends the transformation of food while it remains in the stomach.

Dr. Figg, of Edinburgh, fed two dogs with roast mutton; to one of them he gave 1½ounces of spirit. Three hours later he killed both dogs. The dog without liquor had digested the mutton; the other had not digested his at all. Similar experiments have been made repeatedly with like result.

The elements of our food which the stomach can digest depend upon the pepsin of the gastric juice for their transformation. Alcohol diminishes the secretions of the gastric juice, unless given in very minute quantities, and kills and precipitates its pepsin. It also coagulates both albumen and fibrine, converting them into a solid substance, thus rendering them unfit for the action of the solvent principles of the gastric juice. Hence, any considerable quantity of alcohol taken into the stomach must for the time retard the function of digestion.

Many experiments have been made with gastric juice in vials, one, having alcohol added, the other, not having alcohol. The meat in the vials without alcohol, in time dissolved till it bore the appearance of soup; in the vials to which alcohol was added the meat remained practically unchanged. In the latter a deposit of pepsin was found at the bottom, the alcohol having precipitated it. Dr. Henry Munroe, of England, one of the experimenters in this line of research, says: —

“Alcohol, even in a diluted form, has the peculiar power of interfering with the ordinary process of digestion.

“As long as alcohol remains in the stomach in any degree of concentration, the process of digestion is arrested, and is not continued until enough gastric juice is thrown out to overcome its effects.” —Tracy’s Physiology, page 90.

In The Human Body, Dr. Newell Martin says: —

“A vast number of persons suffer from alcoholic dyspepsia without knowing its cause; people who were never drunk in their lives and consider themselves very temperate. Abstinence from alcohol, the cause of the trouble, is the true remedy.”

Sir B. W. Richardson: —

“The common idea that alcohol acts as an aid to digestion is without foundation. Experiments on the artificial digestion of food, in which the natural process is closely imitated, show that the presence of alcohol in the solvents employed interferes with and weakens the efficacy of the solvents. It is also one of the most definite of facts that persons who indulge even in what is called the moderate use of alcohol suffer often from dyspepsia from this cause alone. In fact, it leads to the symptoms which, under the varied names of biliousness, nervousness, lassitude and indigestion, are so well and extensively known.

“From the paralysis of the minute blood-vessels which is induced by alcohol, there occurs, when alcohol is introduced into the stomach, injection of the vessels and redness of the mucous lining of the stomach. This is attended by the subjective feeling of a warmth or glow within the body, and according to some, with an increased secretion of the gastric fluids. It is urged by the advocates of alcohol that this action of alcohol on the stomach is a reason for its employment as an aid to digestion, especially when the digestive powers are feeble. At best this argument suggests only an artificial aid, which it cannot be sound practice to make permanent in place of the natural process of digestion. In truth, the artificial stimulation, if it be resorted to even moderately, is in time deleterious. It excites a morbid habitual craving, and in the end leads to weakened contractile power of the vessels of the stomach, to consequent deficiency of control of those vessels over the current of blood, to organic impairment of function, and to confirmed indigestion. Lastly, it is a matter of experience with me, that in nine cases out of ten, the sense of the necessity, on which so much is urged, is removed in the readiest manner, by the simple plan of total abstinence, without any other remedy or method.”

In Medicinal Drinking, by John Kirk, M. D., this passage occurs: —

“Especially in the matter of support, it is essential to our inquiry to examine fully into alcoholic influence on the change by which food introduced into the stomach becomes capable of passing into the circulation and constituent elements of the living frame. It may be best to suppose a case for illustration. Here, then, is a child of, say, six or seven years of age. This child is of the slenderer sex and has been brought into a state of extreme weakness as the consequence of fever. The fury of the disease is expended, but it has, as nearly as may be, extinguished life. The medical man’s one hope for saving this child is now concentrated in what he fancies to be ‘support.’ Beef-tea, arrowroot and port wine are prescribed. Let it be kept in mind that the pure wine of the grape is discarded in favor of alcoholic wine. Our question is, What effect will the alcohol in this wine have on that process by which the food is to prove really nourishing, and so to be that support which is the only hope for this child? Will it help her? or will it so hinder the necessary change in the food as to kill her, unless she has sufficient strength left to get above its influence? These are surely important questions. Neither of them can be set at rest by the fact that she recovers; for she may have strength enough, as many have had, to survive even a serious error in her treatment.

“What light, then, does true science throw on these important questions? All who know anything on the subject are aware that alcohol, instead of dissolving food, or aiding in its dissolution, is one of the most powerful agents in preventing that dissolution. On what principle, then, is it possible that its being mixed with the materials of food, in this case, can aid in their dissolution, so that they may more easily be changed into the fresh blood required to sustain and recover life in this child?”

He then refers to the experiments with gastric juice in vials, and proceeds: —

“Here, then, is indisputable evidence that alcohol effectually prevents that process which is known as digestion, and which is essential to food’s being of any use to support life in man. On what principle can the physician explain his introduction of it into the stomach of a child whose thread of life is attenuated to the slenderest hair?

“We urge the chemical truth that the alcohol, given to promote support, is of such a nature as to prevent that which would nourish, from effecting the end so much to be desired, and for which true food is adapted.”

The pure, unfermented juice of the grape, free from chemical preservatives, is now used by many physicians where the miserable concoction of drugs and alcohol, known as port wine, was once considered essential. Unfermented grape juice contains all the nutriment of the grape, without any of the poison, alcohol. After being opened it should be kept in a cool place, or it will ferment and produce alcohol. Fruit juices are very grateful to a fever patient, and should not be withheld as they are in so many cases. Dr. J. H. Kellogg, and other non-alcoholic physicians, recommend them highly. They are better than milk, as milk frequently produces “feverishness,” while fruit juices allay it.

For those who think beer or ale an incentive to appetite, Dr. N. S. Davis, and others, recommend an infusion of hops, made fresh each day. It is the bitter which promotes appetite, not the alcohol. For the sake of the little bitter in beer, it is not wise to vitiate the tone of the stomach with the alcohol it contains, and which is its active principle. Many mothers have become drunkards, secret drunkards, possibly, through the use of beer as a fancied aid to digestion. Multitudes of men suffer untold horrors from dyspepsia, caused by the beer which they mistakenly suppose to be a friend to their stomach.

EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON THE BLOOD

“The blood is a thick, opaque fluid, varying in color in different parts of the body from a bright scarlet to a dark purple, or even almost black.” If a drop of blood be placed under a microscope, immense numbers of small bodies will be seen. These are called blood-globules, or corpuscles, or discs. There are both red, and white or colorless, corpuscles. Each red corpuscle is soft and jelly-like. Its chief constituent, besides water, is a substance called hemoglobin, which has the power of combining with oxygen when in a place where that gas is plentiful, and of giving it off again in a region where oxygen is absent, or present only in small quantity. Hence, as the blood flows through the lungs, which are constantly supplied with fresh air, its corpuscles take up oxygen, which, as it flows on, is carried by them to distant parts of the body where oxygen is deficient, and there given up to the tissues. This oxygen-carrying is the function of the red corpuscles.

Hemoglobin, as the coloring-matter of the blood is called, is dark purplish-red in color; combined with oxygen it is bright “scarlet red.” Accordingly, the blood which flows to the lungs after giving up its oxygen is dark red in color, its dark color being due to the impurities it contains; and that which, having received a fresh supply of oxygen, flows away from the lungs is bright scarlet – having been cleansed of its impurities. The bright red blood is called arterial, and the dark red venous.

The work assigned to the blood in the economy of the human system is: first, to pick up nutriment in its course through the walls of the alimentary canal, and oxygen, as it flows through the lungs, and convey these to all other parts of the body. Second, to act as a sort of sewage stream that drains off waste matter, and to carry this to the organs of excretion by which waste is expelled from the body.

“The blood is the great circulating market of the body, in which all the things that are wanted by all parts, by the muscles, the brain, the skin, the lungs, liver and kidneys, are bought and sold. What the muscles want they buy from the blood; what they have done with, they sell back to the blood; and so with every other organ and part. As long as life lasts this buying and selling is forever going on, and this is why the blood is forever on the move, sweeping restlessly from place to place, bringing to each part the thing it wants, and carrying away those with which it has done. When the blood ceases to move, the market is blocked, the buying and selling cease, and all the organs die, starved for lack of the things they want, choked by the abundance of things for which they have no longer any need.” – Foster.

This is one way of saying that the processes of repair and waste are constantly going on in the body. Every action of the body, every impulse of the mind uses up some cell-matter, which must then be passed from the body as waste. This is called tissue disintegration. New cells to repair tissue waste are built up from the nutriment which the blood carries from the alimentary canal after the process of food digestion is accomplished. This is called tissue construction, or the process of assimilation. Technically, these are the metabolic, or destructive and constructive processes. Both are essential to health and life. Any substance taken into the body, which will interfere with these processes of nutrition and waste is inimical to health, and in time of disease, dangerous to life.

Alcohol is such a substance.

The cells and tissues of the body which are touched by alcohol are more or less hardened and injured by it, hence are less perfectly nourished than they are when alcohol is not present in the blood. Even a teaspoonful of alcohol to a ½ gallon of water hinders natural growth. If liquor is given to puppies it keeps them small. Young growing-cells are most affected by it, because they are most tender. There are growing-cells in adults as well as in children, for people are growing and changing all through their lives.

Hence, when alcohol is administered in sickness the cells are hindered in the full performance of their function of taking up food for the building up of tissue, and as a consequence, the patient’s body is really robbed of nutriment by the agent which is supposed to be “keeping up his strength.” Truly, “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.”

That alcohol interferes with the passage of waste matter from the body is generally conceded. Indeed this is claimed by the advocates of its medicinal use as one of its virtues: the fact that less waste passes from the body being urged as evidence that there is less waste, that in some way alcohol preserves tissue from being used up in the natural way. Those who speak thus seem to think that they know better than the Creator how the body should be treated. He made the body so that in health, work, waste and repair should be equal to one another.

Dr. Ezra M. Hunt says in Alcohol as a Food and as a Medicine: —

“We believe that any one who will candidly review the claims put forth for alcohol, in that it delays in any of these hypothetical ways, tissue-change, will conclude that it has no such power in a salutary sense, and that it is unwarrantably assumed that to retard tissue metamorphosis (change) is equivalent to tissue nutrition.”

Dr. N. S. Davis says: —

“It seems hardly possible that men of eminent attainments in the profession should so far forget one of the most fundamental and universally recognized laws of organic life as to promulgate the fallacy here stated. The fundamental law to which we refer is, that all vital phenomena are accompanied by, and dependent upon, molecular or atomic changes; and whatever retards these retards the phenomena of life; whatever suspends these suspends life. Hence, to say that an agent which retards tissue metamorphosis is in any sense a food, is simply to pervert and misapply terms.”

Non-alcoholic physicians unite in declaring that the retention of waste matter in the system, caused by alcohol, invites disease, and tends to inflammatory action; and in illness retards, and frequently prevents, recovery, for the germs of disease remain longer in the body than they would were it not for the delay in the passage of effete matter.

Alcohol not only hinders the blood in its work of tissue nutrition; it also prevents the full oxidation of the blood in the lungs.

“In order that a steam engine may work and keep warm it is not merely necessary that it have plenty of coal, but it must also have a draft of air through its furnace. Chemistry teaches us that the burning in this case consists in the combination of a gas called oxygen, taken from the air, with other things in the coals; when this combination takes place a great deal of heat is given off. The same thing is true of our bodies; in order that food matters may be burnt in them and enable us to work and keep warm, they must be supplied with oxygen; this they get from the air by breathing. We all know that if his supply of air be cut off a man will die in a few minutes. His food is no use to him unless he gets oxygen from the air to combine with it; while he usually has stored up in his body an excess of food matters which will keep him alive for some time if he gets a supply of oxygen, he has not stored up in him any reserve, or, if any, but a very small one, of oxygen, and so he dies very rapidly if his breathing be prevented. In ordinary language we do not call oxygen a food, but restrict that name to the solids and liquids which we swallow; but inasmuch as it is a material which we must take from the external universe into our bodies in order to keep us alive, oxygen is really a food as much as any of the other substances which we take into our bodies from outside, in order to keep them alive and at work. Suffocation, as death from deficient air supply is named, is really death from oxygen-starvation.” – Martin’s Human Body.

Much of the food taken into the body is burned to supply energy and heat. This burning is called oxidation. When food is burned, or oxidized, either in the body, or out of it, three things are produced, carbon dioxide (carbonic acid gas), water and ashes. These are waste matters, and must be expelled from the body, or they will clog up the various organs, as the ashes and smoke of an engine would soon put its fire out if they were allowed to accumulate in the furnace. It is the duty of the lungs to pass the carbon dioxide out to the air. With every breath exhaled, this poison gas, generated in the body through the oxidation of food, passes from the system. With every breath inhaled the life-giving oxygen is taken into the body; providing that the person is not in a close room from which the fresh air is excluded.

Any substance taken into the body which interferes with the reception of oxygen into the blood, and with the giving off of carbon dioxide from the same is a dangerous substance.

Alcohol is such a substance.

It has already been stated that it is the duty of the little red corpuscles in the blood to take up oxygen in the lungs, and carry it to every part of the body, and upon the return passage to the lungs to convey the débris, or used-up material, from the tissues, called carbon dioxide gas. A little vapor and ammonia accompany this gas. The action of alcohol upon these little corpuscles, or carriers of the blood, is to somewhat harden and shrivel them, so that they are unable to take up and carry as much oxygen as they can when no injurious substance is present in the blood. In consequence of this, the blood can never be so pure when alcohol is present, as it may be in the absence of this agent.

The following is taken from The Temperance Lesson Book, by B. W. Richardson, M. D.: —

“When the blood in the veins is floating toward the right side of the heart, which communicates with the lungs, it carries with it the carbonic acid (carbon dioxide), and, as I have found by experiment, a great part of this gas is condensed in these little bodies, the corpuscles. Arrived at the lungs, the blood comes into such contact with the air we breathe, that the oxygen gas in the air is freely absorbed by the little corpuscles, while the carbonic acid is given up into the air-passages of the lungs, and is thrown off with every breath we throw out. In this process the blood changes in color. It comes into the lungs of a dark color; it goes out of them a bright red. * * * * * The parts of the blood on which alcohol acts injuriously are the corpuscles and the fibrine. The red corpuscles are most distinctly affected. They undergo a peculiar process of shrinking from extraction of water from them. They also lose some of their power to absorb oxygen from the air. In confirmed spirit-drinkers the face and hands are often seen of dark mottled color, and in very bad specimens of the kind, the face is sometimes seen to be quite dark. This is because the blood cannot take up the vital air in the natural degree. * * * * *

“If anything whatever interferes with the proper reception of oxygen by the blood, the blood is not properly oxidized, the animal warmth is not sufficiently maintained, and life is reduced in activity. If for a brief interval of time the process of breathing is stopped in a living person, we see quickly developed the signs of difficulty, and we say the person is being suffocated. We observe that the face becomes dark, the lips blue, the surface cold. Should the process of arrest or stoppage of the breathing be long continued the person will become unconscious, will stagger and fall, and should relief not be at hand, he will in a very few minutes die.

“I found by experiment that in presence of alcohol in blood the process of absorption of oxygen was directly checked, and that even so minute a quantity as one part of alcohol in five hundred of blood proved an obstacle to the perfect reception of oxygen by the blood. The corpuscles are reduced in size, when large quantities of alcohol are taken, and become irregular in shape.”

Dr. J. J. Ridge says in Addresses on the Physiological Action of Alcohol: —