How Alcohol Affects Cell Life 395 



"An English physician observed that a solution of alcohol, one 

 part to one thousand, two thousand, or even three thousand parts 

 of water, proved fatal to fresh water medusa, a kind of jelly fish. 



"The details of his experiments were as follows : 



"Water from the tank of the botanical gardens, in which this 

 little fresh water jelly fish lived, was collected in a jar and charged 

 with one gram of pure alcohol to a thousand of water. A dupli- 

 cate jar of plain tank water was placed side by side with the first, 

 as a check, or control. In each a medusa was placed. 



"On entering the jar containing the alcohol and water the 

 medusa's swimming movements were seventy-four to the minute, 

 but within two minutes these stopped, and the animal began to 

 shrink and to sink to the bottom of the vessel. 



"At the end of five minutes the little creature lay at the bottom 

 apparently dead and, although it was put into plain water for 

 twenty- four hours, it did not recover. Meanwhile, the medusa 

 in the other jar was active and unaffected. 



"The experiments were repeated again and again, but they all 

 resulted in proving that alcohol, even diluted to as little as one 

 part of alcohol in a thousand parts of water, affected as a deadly 

 poison the living protoplasm of these lower forms of life." 



Physicians claim that certain foreign bodies have a detrimental 

 effect on human protoplasm. Among these are toxins developed 

 in such dangerous diseases as typhoid fever and diphtheria. 

 It is a well-known fact that drugs like strychnine, cocaine, chloro- 

 form, and ether, if they gain entrance to the cells of the vital 

 organs, also have a bad effect, for they too are protoplasmic 

 poisons. It is gradually dawning on the minds of men that alcohol 

 belongs to this class of drugs. Many people do not know that 

 alcohol is placed by authorities on drugs in the list of narcotic 

 poisons. 



Effect of Alcohol on Plant Cells. Dr. Hodge inves- 

 tigated the effect of alcohol on yeast cells. The result of his work 

 was as follows : In the experiment with a yeast plant growing 

 under natural conditions, in eleven hours 2061 cells developed. 

 Adding a .001 per cent solution of alcohol, the number of cells 

 developing under the same conditions was 1191. With a .01 per 



