Object Lessons on the Human Body Part 22

Where is your brain?--"In my skull." What color is it?--"Gray and white."

What does it resemble?--"Marrow." What work is done in the brain?--"The work of thinking." You may repeat what you have learned about the membranes of the brain. (See Formula for the Lesson on the Nervous System.)

You say "the inner membrane is a net-work of blood-vessels." If these are blood-vessels in the membranes, what fills them?--"Blood." Do you think alcohol can get into the brain?--"Yes." How can it get there?--"It goes there with the blood." How can we know that alcohol does mischief in the brain? You cannot answer? Did you never see a drunken man? Now tell me how you might know his brain has been hurt by alcohol.--"He talks funny; he acts strangely; he is very cross; he does not know what he is doing; he walks crookedly; he falls down; sometimes he falls asleep, and is almost like a dead man; he is dead drunk."

Let us study to learn why the drunken man does such strange things. The alcohol in this bottle, and this egg which you see, will help us find the cause of the mischief. You may tell what is in the egg.--"A white liquid and a yellow liquid." How could they be made hard?--"By making the egg hot; by boiling." We will try what alcohol will do to the white part. You see when it is poured upon the white of the egg it hardens this part as boiling would harden it. This white portion is composed of water and something called _alb.u.men_. The alcohol dries up the water and thickens the alb.u.men.

Alb.u.men is found not only in eggs but in some seeds, as beans, peas, corn, etc., also in the gray part of the brain and in the nerves.

We will talk first of the harm alcohol does to the nerves. You know they are the grayish-white cords which pa.s.s from the brain and the spine to every part of the body. What do they act like in the kind of work they do?--"Like telegraph wires." What is their work?--"To carry messages to and from the brain." What kinds of nerves have you learned about?--"Nerves of feeling and nerves of motion."

When alcohol touches a nerve, it draws away the moisture or water from it, and hardens the white part or alb.u.men; this makes the nerve shrivel as if it had been burned; it loses its power to feel and move, or, to use a long word, is _paralyzed_.

Alcohol paralyzes all the nerves it touches. It makes them so stupid that they cannot understand what the brain says to them, and they do not carry the right messages back to it. For instance: when the nerves of the stomach are poisoned by the alcohol in beer, wine, etc., they do not feel the pain of hunger as much as they otherwise would, and they let the brain think the stomach is satisfied and does not need any more food, when it is only stupefied by these liquors.

Again, it is the work of some nerves to tell the muscles of the small arteries to tighten, or contract, when too much blood is coming into them.

Alcohol so paralyzes these nerves that they do not carry their message; the arteries let in the blood, and become swollen and enlarged. They tell the mischief done to them, by causing the skin to be red or flushed. If people drink much of any intoxicating liquor, and often, their skin is always a bad color, or, as grown folks say, becomes permanently discolored. All this because the nerves have been made unfit to do their duty by alcohol poison.

The nerves also lose power over the muscles of the limbs. This is plainly seen in the trembling of the hands and the unsteady walking of the drunkard; but is equally true of those who drink only a little now and then. Their nerves are not as strong and wide-awake to control the machinery of the body as they would be if no alcohol were troubling them.

Sometimes the nerves of hearing and sight tell the brain queer stories, and the poor brain believes them all, for it, too, is stupefied by the same fire-water which has hurt the nerves. Indeed, the harm done by alcohol to the brain is greater than that done to any other part of the body. It takes the water from the alb.u.men, and makes the white part of the brain hard, as if it had been cooked. It kills the little, circle-shaped, red parts of the blood--the corpuscles; these collect in the blood-vessels of the brain, and keep the blood from flowing as fast as it ought, which causes disease and very often death. Sometimes the brain is so much injured by the poison that the drinker becomes crazy, and is a great deal of trouble to himself and everybody else.

Since all this is true, wise children will let cider, lager, ale, wine, and every other kind of alcoholic drink alone, and never, NEVER,

"Put an enemy into their mouths, To steal away their brains."

HARM DONE BY ALCOHOL TO THE NERVES. BRAIN.

Takes away their moisture, and Fills or congests its paralyzes them. blood-vessels with impure Takes away their power to blood.

control the muscles. Collects in it, and paralyzes Makes them unfit to carry it.

messages to and from the Hardens its alb.u.men.

brain. So hurts it as to cause craziness (insanity) and death.

MORE ABOUT THE HARM DONE BY ALCOHOL.

In the lessons you have learned you have been taught about the harm done by alcohol to the body and the mind; can you tell, from what you have seen of drunken people, in what other way alcoholic liquors hurt them?--"They make people waste their money; they make them waste their time; they make them cross; they make them fight; they make them say silly and wicked words; they sometimes make fathers and mothers hurt their children; they make people lose their good name; they often make them do things for which they are sent to prison."

Yes, this is only some of the mischief done by alcohol. If you could fly around the world and see everybody who has been hurt in any way by this terrible poison, what a sad, sad sight you would behold! At least half the trouble in the world comes from strong drink.

Are _you_, little girl, little boy, going to join the army of drunkards?

No, indeed! you think; but probably no one who has become a drunkard ever intended to do so. They all began with one gla.s.s, a few drops of some alcoholic liquor,--cider, wine, or beer perhaps,--and thus learned to love the taste of alcohol, and soon became its slaves. For this poison has the strange power of making those who drink it want more and more of itself, though they know it is doing them harm.

The only safety is in letting alcoholic liquors alone, forever.

BLACKBOARD OUTLINE.

ALCOHOLIC LIQUORS HURT The body, The mind, and The soul; AND MAKE PEOPLE WASTE LOSE UNFIT TO UNFIT TO SERVE Money, Strength, Think, or Themselves, Talents, and Health, and Work. Their neighbor, Time. Good name. or G.o.d.

STORIES ABOUT THE HARM DONE BY ALCOHOL.[6]

A YOUNG BEGINNER.--The hardest drinker I ever knew commenced on cider when he was only five years old. He would go to the barrel of cider in the cellar, which had been put there to make vinegar, and, getting a straw, would suck all the cider he wanted; and then, after he had played awhile, he would go back and get more. He kept on drinking alcoholic liquors of some kind, until he died a drunkard.

CIDER DELIRIUM.--Dr. J.H. Travis, of Masonville, N.Y., was once called to a child six years old, who was raving in the wildest delirium. His symptoms were so peculiar that he questioned the family closely, and found that the day previous, at a raising, the child had drank freely of cider. After the men left he had procured a straw and gone to the barrel and drank till he was senseless, and after this the delirium came on. He exhibited undoubted symptoms of delirium tremens. Cider was the common beverage of the family.

Dr. Travis has been called to several other cases of delirium tremens from the use of cider.--_Mrs. E.J. Richmond._

A CAUTION TO MOTHERS.--One of the first literary men in the United States said to a temperance lecturer: "There is one thing which I wish you to do everywhere; entreat every mother never to give a drop of strong drink to a child. I have had to fight as for my life all my days to keep from dying a drunkard, because I was fed with spirits when a child. I thus acquired an appet.i.te for it. My brother, poor fellow, died a drunkard."

A GIRL DRUNKARD.--A young girl of eighteen, beautiful, intelligent, and temperate, the pride of her home, was recommended to take a little gin for some chronic ailment. She took it; it soothed the pain; she kept on taking it; it created an artificial appet.i.te, and in four years she died a drunkard.--_Medical Temperance Journal._

"A LITTLE WON'T HURT HIM."--I was the pet of the family. Before I could well walk I was treated to the sweet from the bottom of my father's gla.s.s.

My dear mother would gently chide with him, "Don't, John, it will do him harm." To this he would smilingly reply, "This little sup won't hurt him."

When I became a school-boy I was ill at times, and my mother would pour for me a gla.s.s of wine from the decanter. At first I did not like it; but, as I was told that it would make me strong, I got to like it. When I became an apprentice, I reasoned thus: "My parents told me that these drinks are good, and I cannot get them except at the public-house." Step by step I fell.... I have grown to manhood, but my course of intemperance has added sin to sin. My days are now nearly ended. Hope for the future I have none.--_Dying Drunkard._

DANGER.--In one of Mr. Moody's temperance prayer meetings at Chicago, a reformed man attributed a former relapse of drunkenness wholly to a physician's prescription to take whiskey three times a day!

KILLED BY THE POISON.--Many years ago, when stage coaches were in use in England, during a very cold night, a young woman mounted the coach. A respectable tradesman sitting there asked her what induced her to travel on such a night, when she replied that she was going to the bedside of her mother, of whose illness she had just heard. She was soon wrapped in such coats, etc., as the pa.s.sengers could spare, and when they stopped the tradesman procured her some brandy. She declined it at first, saying she had never drank spirits in her life. But he said, "Drink it down; it won't hurt you on such a bitter night." This was done repeatedly, until the poor girl fell fast asleep, and when they arrived in London she could not be roused. She was stiff and cold in death, and the doctor, on the coroner's inquest, said that she had been killed by the brandy.--_Mrs. Balfour._

IN CASE OF s.h.i.+PWRECK.--In the winter of 1796 a vessel was wrecked on an island of the Ma.s.sachusetts coast, and five persons on board determined to swim ash.o.r.e. Four of them drank freely of spirits to keep up their strength, but the fifth would drink none. One was drowned, and all that drank spirits failed and stopped, and froze one after another, the man that drank none being the only one that reached the house at some distance from, the sh.o.r.e, and he lived many years after that.

IT EXHAUSTS STRENGTH.--Concerning one cold winter when there were very severe snow-storms in the Highlands of Scotland, James Hogg, the poet, says: "It was a received opinion all over the country that sundry lives were lost, and a great many more endangered, by the administration of ardent spirits to the sufferers _while in a state of exhaustion_. A little bread and sweet milk, or even bread and cold water, proved a much safer restorative in the fields. Some who took a gla.s.s of spirits that night never spoke another word, even though they were continuing to walk and converse when their friends joined them. One woman found her husband lying in a state of insensibility; she had only sweet milk and oatmeal cake to give him, but with these she succeeded in getting him home and saving him."--_Bacchus._

s.h.i.+PMASTER OF THE KEDRON.--"I was brought up in a temperance school, and when I s.h.i.+pped before the mast I stuck to my principles, though everyone else on board drank excepting two boys whom I persuaded to abstain. In a very severe storm off a lee-sh.o.r.e, when it was so cold they had to break the icicles off the ropes to tack the s.h.i.+p, all drank but myself and these two boys. The men would work very well for a few minutes, and then slack off and take another drink, until they were all keeled up, and we three boys had all we could do to keep the s.h.i.+p from going ash.o.r.e. If we had drank with the rest, all would have been lost, for the men were too drunk to save themselves. Providentially, the storm abated before morning, and we were saved. Now, for many years I have been captain of my own s.h.i.+p, and I never give out one drop of liquor."--_Captain Brown._

ON THE PLAINS.--Twenty-six men, travelling on one of the great Western plains in the United States, were overtaken by cold and night. They had food, clothing, and whiskey, but no fire. They were warned not to drink whiskey or they would freeze. Three did not drink a drop, and though they felt cold they did not suffer nor freeze. Three more drank a little, and though they suffered much they did not freeze. Seven others that drank a good deal had their toes and fingers frozen. Six that drank pretty strong were badly frozen and never got over it. Four that got very boozy were frozen so badly that they died three or four weeks afterward. Three that got dead drunk were stiff dead by daylight. They all suffered just in proportion to the amount of whiskey they took. They were all strong men, and had about the same amount of clothing and blankets; the whiskey was all that made the difference.

THE RED RIVER EXPEDITION in Canada, in 1870, is often quoted as one of the most laborious on record, 1200 troops travelling 1200 miles through a very dense wilderness, and having all their supplies to carry. They were ninety-four days out, and none of them had liquor. They were constantly wet through, sometimes for days together, and all the while at the severe labor of rowing, poling, tracking, and portaging, yet they were always well and cheery, and there was a total absence of crime.

IN AFRICA it is far safer to do without intoxicating drink. Livingstone says that he lived without it for twenty years. Stanley performed his wonderful journey without it. Bruce said more than one hundred, years ago: "I laid down as a positive rule of health that spirits and all fermented liquors should be regarded as poisonous. Spring, or running water, if you can find it, is to be your only drink."

WATERTON, the great naturalist, who travelled so much in South America, says: "I eat moderately, and never drink wine, spirits, or any fermented liquors in any climate. This abstemiousness has proved a faithful friend."

He died by accident at the age of eighty-three.

MR. HUBER, who saw 2160 perish of cholera in twenty-five days in one town in Russia, says that "Persons given to drinking are swept away like flies.

In Tiflis, containing 20,000 inhabitants, every drunkard has fallen." Of 204 cases of cholera in the Park Hospital, New York, there were but six temperate persons, and these recovered. In Albany, where cholera prevailed with severe mortality for several weeks, only two of the 5000 members of temperance societies became its victims. In Montreal, where the victims of the disease were intemperate, it usually cut them off. In Great Britain, those who have been addicted to spirituous liquors and irregular habits have been the greatest sufferers from cholera. In some towns the drunkards are all dead.--_Bacchus._

MALT LIQUORS, under which t.i.tle are included all kinds of porters and ales, produce the worst species of drunkenness. The effects of malt liquors are more stupefying than those of ardent spirits, and less easily removed. In a short time they render dull and sluggish the gayest disposition.--_Anatomy of Drunkenness._

GINGER-BEER.--A man who has been a temperance-worker for forty-five years, says that there is often alcohol in ginger-beer. He told of a case known to him of a reformed man who, after drinking some, felt strongly drawn to the bar-room, where he drank until he brought on delirium tremens. The beer will sometimes ferment enough in a few hours to produce alcohol--if it answers the conditions--a sweet liquid and a ferment.

DANGER TO THE REFORMED.--A lady who had become a drunkard through taking alcoholic drinks as medicines, at length, after many efforts, succeeded in breaking away from the power of the appet.i.te, and for a long time she seemed to be saved. At length she went to visit her mother, and that mother put brandy peaches on the table for tea. They aroused the slumbering appet.i.te, the victim fell again, became worse than ever, and died a miserable drunkard.

[6] From _Juvenile Temperance Manual_, by Julia Colman.