“Alcohol, instead of preventing consumption, as was once believed, reduces the vitality so much as to render the system unusually susceptible to that fatal disease.”—­R.  S. Tracy, M.D., Sanitary Inspector of the N. Y. City Health Dept.

“In thirty cases in which alcoholic phthisis was present a dense, fibroid, pigmented change was almost invariably present in some portion of the lung far more frequently than in other cases of phthisis.”—­Annual of Medical Sciences.

“There is no form of consumption so fatal as that from alcohol.  Medicines affect the disease but little, the most judicious diet fails, and change of air accomplishes but slight real good....  In plain terms, there is no remedy whatever for alcoholic phthisis.  It may be delayed in its course, but it is never stopped; and not infrequently, instead of being delayed, it runs on to a fatal termination more rapidly than is common in any other type of the disorder.”—­Dr. B. W. Richardson in Diseases of Modern Life.

229.  Other Results of Intoxicants upon the Lungs.  But a more potent injury to the lungs comes from another cause.  The lungs are the arena where is carried on the ceaseless interchange of elements that is necessary to the processes of life.  Here the dark venous blood, loaded with effete material, lays down its carbon burden and, with the brightening company of oxygen, begins again its circuit.  But the enemy intrudes, and the use of alcohol tends to prevent this benign interchange.

The continued congestion of the lung tissue results in its becoming thickened and hardened, thus obstructing the absorption of oxygen, and the escape of carbon dioxid.  Besides this, alcohol destroys the integrity of the red globules, causing them to shrink and harden, and impairing their power to receive oxygen.  Thus the blood that leaves the lungs conveys an excess of the poisonous carbon dioxid, and a deficiency of the needful oxygen.  This is plainly shown in the purplish countenance of the inebriate, crowded with enlarged veins.  This discoloration of the face is in a measure reproduced upon the congested mucous membrane of the lungs.  It is also proved beyond question by the decreased amount of carbon dioxid thrown off in the expired breath of any person who has used alcoholics.

The enfeebled respiration explains (though it is only one of the reasons) why inebriates cannot endure vigorous and prolonged exertion as can a healthy person.  The hurried circulation produced by intoxicants involves in turn quickened respiration, 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]