food is to make stout arms and rosy cheeks, strong bodies and
busy brains, it must first be changed into a form in which it can get to
each part and feed it.

When the food in the stomach is mixed and prepared, it is ready to be
sent through the body; some is carried to the bones, some to the
muscles, some to the nerves and brain, some to the skin, and some even
to the finger nails, the hair, and the eyes. Each part needs to be fed
in order to grow.

WHY DO PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT GROWING NEED FOOD?

Children need each day to make larger and larger bones, larger muscles,
and a larger skin to cover the larger body.

Every day, each part is also wearing out a little, and needing to be
mended by some new food. People who have grown up, need their food for
this work of mending.

CARE OF THE STOMACH.

One way to take care of the stomach is to give it only its own work to
do. The teeth must first do their work faithfully.

The stomach must have rest, too. I have seen some children who want to
make their poor stomachs work all the time. They are always eating
apples, or candy, or something, so that their stomachs have no chance to
rest. If the stomach does not rest, it will wear out the same as a
machine would.

The stomach can not work well, unless it is quite warm. If a person
pours ice-water into his stomach as he eats, just as the food is
beginning to change into the gray fluid of which you have learned, the
work stops until the stomach gets warm again.

ALCOHOL AND THE STOMACH.

You remember about the man who had the little door to his stomach.
Sometimes, the doctor put in wine, cider, brandy, or some drink that
contained alcohol, to see what it would do. It was carried away very
quickly; but during the little time it stayed, it did nothing but harm.

It injured the gastric juice, so that it could not mix with the food.

If the doctor had put in more alcohol, day after day, as one does who
drinks liquor, sores would perhaps have come on the delicate lining of
the stomach. Sometimes the stomach is so hurt by alcohol, that the
drinker dies. If the stomach can not do its work well, the whole body
must suffer from want of the good food it needs.[C]

TOBACCO AND THE MOUTH.

The saliva in the mouth helps to prepare the food, before it goes into
the stomach. Tobacco makes the mouth very dry, and more saliva has to
flow out to moisten it.

But tobacco juice is mixed with the saliva, and that must not be
sw