gone on. When
the fibres of which a muscle is composed have become thus
altered by fatty degeneration they become softer according to
the amount of it; they are more easily torn and may even tear
across when the muscle is being used during life. The more a
muscle is thus degenerated the weaker it is, because it contains
less muscular substance and more fat. Not only do the heart and
other voluntary muscles thus degenerate, but those of the
arteries also.

"Fatty degeneration is promoted by alcohol because alcohol
prevents the proper removal of fat, which has been seen to
accumulate in the blood; alcohol prevents the proper oxidation
or burning up of waste matters; growing cells which are affected
by the chemical influence of alcohol are not quite natural or
healthy, so are more liable to degeneration; alcohol hinders the
proper removal of waste matter from individual cells and
tissues."--DR. J. J. RIDGE, London.

Dr. Newell Martin says in _The Human Body_:--

"Although fatty degeneration of the heart may occur from other
causes, alcoholic indulgence is the most frequent one. Fatty
liver or fatty heart is rarely if ever curable; either will
ultimately cause death."

Dr. Ridge says these degenerations occur in the tissues of thin people
as well as in those of stout persons. In thin people they are usually in
the fibres only, not between them.

It is because of this degeneration of the heart and other muscles caused
by alcohol that athletes in training need to be so very careful to
avoid the use of beer and other intoxicating drinks.

Diseases such as fevers, diphtheria, and pneumonia which interfere with
the reception, and internal distribution of oxygen, favor granular and
fatty degeneration of the heart and other structures of the body. Hence
non-alcoholic physicians urge that alcohol and such other drugs, as have
like action in hindering full oxidation of the blood, and causing fatty
degenerations should be studiously avoided. These physicians attribute
many of the deaths from heart-failure in such diseases to the combined
action of the disease and the alcohol in exhausting the heart, and
weakening its structure.

_Comparative death-rates with and without alcohol show conclusively the
superiority of the latter treatment._

EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON THE LIVER.

The liver is a very large organ, the largest and heaviest in the body