126.  Effects of Alcoholic Beverages upon the Human System.  One of the most common alcoholic beverages is wine, made from the juice of grapes.  As the juice flows from the crushed fruit the ferments are washed from the skins and stems into the vat.  Here they bud and multiply rapidly, producing alcohol.  In a few hours the juice that was sweet and wholesome while in the grape is changed to a poisonous liquid, capable of injuring whoever drinks it.  One of the gravest dangers of wine-drinking is the power which the alcohol in it has to create a thirst which demands more alcohol.  The spread of alcoholism in wine-making countries is an illustration of this fact.

Another alcoholic beverage, common in apple-growing districts, is cider.  Until the microscope revealed the ferment germ on the “bloom” of the apple-skin, very little was known of the changes produced in cider during the mysterious process of “working.”  Now, when we see the bubbles of gas in the glass of cider we know what has produced them, and we know too that a poison which we do not see is there also in corresponding amounts.  We have learned, too, to trace the wrecked hopes of many a farmer’s family to the alcohol in the cider which he provided so freely, supposing it harmless.

Beer and other malt liquors are made from grain.  By sprouting the grain, which changes its starch to sugar, and then dissolving out the sugar with water, a sweet liquid is obtained which is fermented with yeast, one kind of alcoholic ferment.  Some kinds of beer contain only a small percentage of alcohol, but these are usually drunk in proportionately large amounts.  The life insurance company finds the beer drinker a precarious risk; the surgeon finds him an unpromising subject; the criminal court finds him conspicuous in its proceedings.  The united testimony from all these sources is that beer is demoralizing, mentally, morally, and physically.

127.  Cooking.  The process through which nearly all food used by civilized man has to pass before it is eaten is known as cooking.  Very few articles indeed are consumed in their natural state, the exceptions being eggs, milk, oysters, fruit and a few vegetables.  Man is the only animal that cooks his food.  Although there are savage races that have no knowledge of cooking, civilized man invariably cooks most of his food.  It seems to be true that as nations advance in civilization they make a proportionate advance in the art of cooking.

Cooking answers most important purposes in connection with our food, especially from its influence upon health.  It enables food to be more readily chewed, and more easily digested.  Thus, a piece of meat when raw is tough and tenacious, but if cooked the fibers lose much of their toughness, while the connective tissues are changed into a soft and jelly-like mass.  Besides, the meat is much more readily masticated and acted upon by the digestive fluids.  So cooking makes vegetables and grains softer, loosens their structure, and enables the digestive juices readily to penetrate their substance.