BREATHING l8l 



capacity of the lungs, often detects the dram drinker by his 

 failure to reach the natural breathing capacity. 



The repeated dilatation of the lung capillaries also tends 

 to make the habitual user of alcohol less able to resist 

 attacks of severe cold, pleurisy, and pneumonia, after mak- 

 ing due allowance for the exposure to cold and damp, so 

 common with the intemperate. 1 



246. Alcoholics and Pulmonary Consumption. A notion 

 has prevailed that the use of alcoholic liquors may act as 

 a preventive of pulmonary consumption. The records of 

 medical science fail to show any proof whatever to support 

 this idea. No error could be more serious or more mis- 

 leading. Alcohol, if it does not predispose to pulmonary 

 consumption, as many believe, certainly furnishes no pro- 

 tection against it. 



247. Alcohol and Bodily Heat. Soon after taking even 

 a small quantity of alcohol there is a general feeling of 

 warmth over the surface of the body. The body is not 

 really warmer, but the skin feels warmer. On the con- 

 trary, we are really colder, because heat is more rapidly 

 lost by radiation and evaporation from the surface. 



1 Most familiar and most dangerous is the drinking man's inability to 

 resist lung diseases. ADOLPH FRICK, M.D. 



There is good reason to believe that the use of spirituous liquors among 

 the working classes of the country is productive of consumption and tuber- 

 culous diseases to an extent far beyond what is usually imagined. The 

 blanched, cadaverous aspect of the spirit drinker bespeaks the condition 

 of his internal organs. The tale of his moral and physical degradation is 

 indelibly written on his countenance. The evil, however, does not rest here ; 

 for by destroying his own health he entails on his unhappy offspring the 

 predisposition to tuberculous diseases. SIR JAMES CLARK, M.D. 



Alcohol is a frequent cause of consumption by its power of weaken- 

 ing the lunfts. Every year we see patients who attend the hospital for 

 alcoholism come back after a period to be treated for consumption. 

 DR. LEGENDRE, a famous Paris physician, 



