to pick up nutriment in its course through the walls of the
alimentary canal, and oxygen, as it flows through the lungs, and convey
these to all other parts of the body. Second, to act as a sort of sewage
stream that drains off waste matter, and to carry this to the organs of
excretion by which waste is expelled from the body.

"The blood is the great circulating market of the body, in which
all the things that are wanted by all parts, by the muscles, the
brain, the skin, the lungs, liver and kidneys, are bought and
sold. What the muscles want they buy from the blood; what they
have done with, they sell back to the blood; and so with every
other organ and part. As long as life lasts this buying and
selling is forever going on, and this is why the blood is
forever on the move, sweeping restlessly from place to place,
bringing to each part the thing it wants, and carrying away
those with which it has done. When the blood ceases to move, the
market is blocked, the buying and selling cease, and all the
organs die, starved for lack of the things they want, choked by
the abundance of things for which they have no longer any
need."--FOSTER.

This is one way of saying that the processes of repair and waste are
constantly going on in the body. Every action of the body, every impulse
of the mind uses up some cell-matter, which must then be passed from the
body as waste. This is called tissue disintegration. New cells to repair
tissue waste are built up from the nutriment which the blood carries
from the alimentary canal after the process of food digestion is
accomplished. This is called tissue construction, or the process of
assimilation. Technically, these are the metabolic, or destructive and
constructive processes. Both are essential to health and life. Any
substance taken into the body, which will interfere with these processes
of nutrition and waste is inimical to health, and in time of disease,
dangerous to life.

_Alcohol is such a substance._

The cells and tissues of the body which are touched by alcohol are more
or less hardened and injured by it, hence are less perfectly nourished
than they are when alcohol is not present in the blood. Even a
teaspoonful of alcohol to a 1/2 gallon of water hinders natural growth.
If liquor is given to puppies it keeps them small. Young growing-cells
are most affected by it, because they are most tender. There are
growing-cel