CHAPTER XXX 

 HOW ALCOHOL AFFECTS CELL LIFE 



Few of us deliberately welcome a trouble-maker into 

 our homes. Few care to work or play with a trouble- 

 maker. Yet for ages man has permitted alcohol, one of 

 the greatest of trouble-makers, to affect his life seriously. 



Alcohol puts stumbling blocks in the way of our mental, 

 physical, and moral health. Where foods strengthen, 

 alcohol weakens. Where foods warm us, alcohol makes 

 us more susceptible to cold. It dulls our brain when 

 quick and clear thinking is necessary and takes skill and 

 steadiness from our hands. It lessens endurance and 

 shortens life. Just why this is true the study of the effects 

 of alcohol on the body cells will make clear. 



You have learned that all organs of the body are composed of 

 tissues, that tissues are made up of cells, that cells are extremely 

 small and delicate, and that they are the units of both struc- 

 ture and function. You know that cells are composed of proto- 

 plasm, and that this substance is the basis of life. Anything 

 that causes cells to deteriorate or to perform their functions, 

 or life processes, less perfectly, is necessarily detrimental to the 

 tissues and organs of which they form a part. Do small amounts 

 of alcohol affect these minute delicate cells? Does alcohol act as 

 a poison? 



Effect of Alcohol on Body Cells. Since the organs of the 

 body are composed of cells, the effect of alcohol on an organ would 

 be the same as the effect of alcohol on a single cell. As the 

 protoplasm of which all cells are composed is of the same com- 

 position and nature, it seems reasonable to expect that the effect 

 of a poison on cells in a mass, that is, in tissues and organs, would 

 be similar to that on a single cell. In many forms of life, cells are 

 fewer in number than in the human body. In the simplest 

 forms of life, one-celled organisms, all the vital functions or proc- 

 esses of life are performed by a single cell. One of these simple 



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