itious. It is not
capable of being converted into food, and becoming a part of the
living organs. We all know that proper food is wrought into our
bodies; the action of animal life occasions a constant waste,
and new matter has to be taken in, which, after digestion, is
carried into the blood, and then changed; but poison is
incapable of this. It may indeed be mixed with nutritious
substances, but if it goes into the blood, it is thrown off as
soon as the system can accomplish its deliverance, if it has not
been too far enfeebled by the influence of the poison. Such a
poison is alcohol--such in all its forms mix it with what you
may."

Dr. Nathan S. Davis said in an address given in 1891:--

"When largely diluted with water, as it is in all the varieties
of fermented and distilled liquids, and taken into the stomach,
it is rapidly imbibed, or taken up by the capillary vessels and
carried into the venous blood, without having undergone any
digestion or change in the stomach. With the blood it is carried
to every part, and made to penetrate every tissue of the living
body, where it has been detected by proper chemical tests as
unchanged alcohol, until it has been removed through the natural
process of elimination, or lost its identity by molecular
combination with the albuminous elements of the blood and
tissues, for which it has a strong affinity.

"The most varied and painstaking experiments of chemists and
physiologists, both in this country and Europe, have shown
conclusively that the presence of alcohol in the blood
diminishes the amount of oxygen taken up through the air-cells
of the lungs; retards the molecular and metabolic changes of
both nutrition and waste throughout the system and diminishes
the sensibility and action of the nervous structures in direct
proportion to the quantity of alcohol present. By its stronger
affinity for water and albumen, with which it readily unites in
all proportions, it so alters the hemaglobin of the blood as to
lessen its power to take the oxygen from the air-cells of the
lungs and carry it as oxyhemaglobia to all the tissues of the
body; and by the same affinity it retards all atomic or
molecular changes in the muscular, secretory and nervous
structures; and in the same ratio it diminishes the elimination
of carbon-dioxide, p