, which means more rapid exhaustion of the
life forces. The use of intoxicants involves a repeated dilatation of the
capillaries, which steadily diminishes their defensive power, rendering
the person more liable to yield to the invasion of pulmonary diseases.[38]

230. Effect of Alcoholics upon Disease. A theory has prevailed, to a
limited extent, that the use of intoxicants may act as a preventive of
consumption. The records of medical science fail to show any proof
whatever to support this impression. No error could be more serious or
more misleading, for the truth is in precisely the opposite direction.
Instead of preventing, alcohol tends to develop consumption. Many
physicians of large experience record the existence of a distinctly
recognized alcoholic consumption, attacking those constitutions broken
down by dissipation. This form of consumption is steadily progressive, and
always fatal.

The constitutional debility produced by the habit of using alcoholic
beverages tends to render one a prompt victim to the more severe diseases,
as pneumonia, and especially epidemical diseases, which sweep away vast
numbers of victims every year.

231. Effect of Tobacco upon the Respiratory Passages. The effects of
tobacco upon the throat and lungs are frequently very marked and
persistent. The hot smoke must very naturally be an irritant, as the mouth
and nostrils were not made as a chimney for heated and narcotic vapors.
The smoke is an irritant, both by its temperature and from its destructive
ingredients, the carbon soot and the ammonia which it conveys. It
irritates and dries the mucous membrane of the mouth and throat, producing
an unnatural thirst which becomes an enticement to the use of intoxicating
liquors. The inflammation of the mouth and throat is apt to extend up the
Eustachian tube, thus impairing the sense of hearing.

But even these are not all the bad effects of tobacco. The inhalation of
the poisonous smoke produces unhealthful effects upon the delicate mucous
membrane of the bronchial tubes and of the lungs. Upon the former the
effect is to produce an irritating cough, with short breath and chronic
bronchial catarrh. The pulmonary membrane is congested, taking cold
becomes easy, and recovery from it tedious. Frequently the respiration is
seriously disturbed, thus the blood is imperfectly aerated, and so in turn
the nutrition of the entire system is impaired. The cigarette is the
defiling medium through whi