FOOD AND DIGESTION 



113 



tint or dark spots due to soda be eaten or thrown away? 5. Why, 

 during an epidemic, are those who have used alcohol as a beverage 

 usually the first to be attacked? 6. Do you buy more wood (cellulose) 

 when you buy beans or when you buy nuts? (p-95-) 7. Do you buy 

 more water when you buy bread or when you buy meat? 8. Why do 

 people who live in overheated rooms often have poor appetites? (p. 90.) 

 9. Explain how the stomach may be weakened by the eating of predi- 

 gested foods. 10. Whyare deep breathing and exercises that strengthen 

 weak abdominal walls better for the liver than are drugs? (See p. 58.) 

 11. Sixty students at the University of Missouri found by doing with- 

 out supper that their power to work was greater, their health better, 

 and many of them gained in weight. So they ate only two meals 

 thereafter. If sixty plowboys tried the experiment, would the result 

 probably have been the same? 12. If a person began to eat less at 

 each meal, or only ate one meal a day, yet gained in weight, should he 

 agree with a friend who told him he was starving himself ? Should he 

 agree if, instead of gaining, he lost weight? 13. Why is half-raw or 

 soggy bread harder to digest than the raw grain itself ? Which would be 

 thoroughly chewed and cause a great flow of saliva ? 14. Ask a fat person 

 whether he drinks much water. A lean person. 15. Why is one whose 

 waist measures more than his chest a bad life insurance risk ? 16. What 

 changes in habits tend to make a rheumatic middle-aged person more 

 youthful? 17. How is the ingenious " tireless cooker " constructed? 



Atwater's Experiments with Alcohol. — A few years ago 



Professor Atwater proved that if alcohol is taken in small 



quantities, it is so completely burned in the body that not 



over two per cent is excreted. He inferred that it is a 



food, since it gives heat to the body and possibly gives 



energy also. His experiments did not show whether any 



organ was weakened or injured by its use. As alcohol is 



chiefly burned in the liver, it probably cannot supply 



energy as is the case with food burned in nerve cell and 



muscle cell. The heat supplied by its burning is largely 



lost by the rush of blood to the skin usually caused by 



drinking the alcohol. Dr. Beebe, unlike Professor Atwater, 



experimented upon persons who had never taken alcohol, 



and whose bodies had not had time to become trained to 



resist its evil effects. He found that it caused an increased 



