air in the natural degree. * * * * *

"If anything whatever interferes with the proper reception of
oxygen by the blood, the blood is not properly oxidized, the
animal warmth is not sufficiently maintained, and life is
reduced in activity. If for a brief interval of time the process
of breathing is stopped in a living person, we see quickly
developed the signs of difficulty, and we say the person is
being suffocated. We observe that the face becomes dark, the
lips blue, the surface cold. Should the process of arrest or
stoppage of the breathing be long continued the person will
become unconscious, will stagger and fall, and should relief not
be at hand, he will in a very few minutes die.

"I found by experiment that in presence of alcohol in blood the
process of absorption of oxygen was directly checked, and that
even so minute a quantity as one part of alcohol in five hundred
of blood proved an obstacle to the perfect reception of oxygen
by the blood. The corpuscles are reduced in size, when large
quantities of alcohol are taken, and become irregular in shape."

Dr. J. J. Ridge says in _Addresses on the Physiological Action of
Alcohol_:--

"It has been found by experiment that, when alcohol is taken,
less carbonic acid comes away in the breath than when it is not.
This is partly because the blood-corpuscles cannot carry so
much, and partly because so much is not produced, because there
is less oxygen to join with the food and produce it. Just as
burning paper smokes when it does not get enough oxygen, so
other things are formed and get into the blood when there is not
enough oxygen to make carbonic acid. These things make the blood
impure, and cause extra work and trouble to get rid of them.
This is why persons who drink alcohol are more liable to have
gout and other diseases, than total abstainers."

Dr. Alfred Carpenter, formerly president of the Council of the British
Medical Association, says in _Alcoholic Drinks_:--

"A blood corpuscle cannot come into direct contact with an atom
of alcohol, without the function of the former being spoiled,
and not only is it spoiled, but the effete matter which it has
within its capsule cannot be exchanged for the necessary oxygen.
The breath of the drunken man does not give out the quantity of
carbonic acid which that of the healthy man d