The capacity of the alcohols for impairment of
functions and the initiation and promotion of organic lesions in vital
parts, is unsurpassed by any record in the whole range of medicine. _The
facts as to this are so indisputable, and so far granted by the
profession, as to be no longer debatable_. Changes in stomach and liver,
in kidneys and lungs, in the blood-vessels to the minutest capillary,
and in the blood to the smallest red and white blood disc disturbances
of secretion, fibroid and fatty degenerations in almost every organ,
impairment of muscular power, impressions so profound on both nervous
systems as to be often toxic--these, and such as these, are the oft
manifested results. And these are not confined to those called
intemperate."

Professor Youmans says: "It is evident that, so far from being the
conservator of health, alcohol is an active and powerful cause of
disease, interfering, as it does, with the respiration, the circulation
and the nutrition; now, is any other result possible?"

Dr. F.R. Lees says: "That alcohol should contribute to the fattening
process under certain conditions, and produce in drinkers fatty
degeneration of the blood, follows, as a matter of course, since, on the
one hand, we have an agent that _retains waste_ matter by lowering the
nutritive and excretory functions, and on the other, a _direct poisoner_
of the vesicles of the vital stream."

Dr. Henry Monroe says: "There is no kind of tissue, whether healthy or
morbid, that may not undergo fatty degeneration; and there is no organic
disease so troublesome to the medical man, or so difficult of cure. If,
by the aid of the microscope, we examine a very fine section of muscle
taken from a person in good health, we find the muscles firm, elastic
and of a bright red color, made up of parallel fibres, with beautiful
crossings or striae; but, if we similarly examine the muscle of a man
who leads an idle, sedentary life, and indulges in intoxicating drinks,
we detect, at once, a pale, flabby, inelastic, oily appearance.
Alcoholic narcotization appears to produce this peculiar conditions of
the tissues _more than any other agent with which we are acquainted._
'Three-quarters of the chronic illness which the medical man has to
treat,' says Dr. Chambers, 'are occasioned by this disease.' The eminent
French analytical chemist, Lecanu, found as much as one hundred and
seventeen parts of fat in one thousand parts of a drunkard's blood, the
h