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.

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 liver, The blood,
The heart, The lungs, The brain,
The bones, The muscles, 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.