175.  Fatty Degeneration Due to Alcohol.  Another form of destructive disease often occurs.  There is an increase of fat globules deposited in the liver, causing notable enlargement and destroying its function.  This is called fatty degeneration, and is not limited to the liver, but other organs are likely to be similarly affected.  In truth, this deposition of fat is a most significant occurrence, as it means actual destruction of the liver tissues,—­nothing less than progressive death of the organ.  This condition always leads to a fatal issue.  Still other forms of alcoholic disease of the liver are produced, one being the excessive formation of sugar, constituting what is known as a form of diabetes.

176.  Effect of Tobacco on Digestion.  The noxious influence of tobacco upon the process of digestion is nearly parallel to the effects of alcohol, which it resembles in its irritant and narcotic character.  Locally, it stimulates the secretion of saliva to an unnatural extent, and this excess of secretion diminishes the amount available for normal digestion.

Tobacco also poisons the saliva furnished for the digestion of food, and thus at the very outset impairs, in both of these particulars, the general digestion, and especially the digestion of the starchy portions of the food.  For this reason the amount of food taken, fails to nourish as it should, and either more food must be taken, or the body becomes gradually impoverished.

The poisonous nicotine, the active element of tobacco, exerts a destructive influence upon the stomach digestion, enfeebling the vigor of the muscular walls of that organ.  These effects combined produce dyspepsia, with its weary train of baneful results.

The tobacco tongue never presents the natural, clear, pink color, but rather a dirty yellow, and is usually heavily coated, showing a disordered stomach and impaired digestion.  Then, too, there is dryness of the mouth, an unnatural thirst that demands drink.  But pure water is stale and flat to such a mouth:  something more emphatic is needed.  Thus comes the unnatural craving for alcoholic liquors, and thus are taken the first steps on the downward grade.

“There is no doubt that tobacco predisposes to neuralgia, vertigo, indigestion, and other affections of the nervous, circulatory and digestive organs.”—­W.  H. Hammond, the eminent surgeon of New York city and formerly Surgeon General, U.S.A.

Drs. Seaver of Yale University and Hitchcock of Amherst College, instructors of physical education in these two colleges, have clearly demonstrated by personal examination and recorded statistics that the use of tobacco among college students checks growth in weight, height, chest-girth, and, most of all, in lung capacity.

Additional Experiments.

  Experiment 66.  Test a portion of C (Experiment 57) with solution
  of iodine; no blue color is obtained, as all the starch has disappeared,
  having been converted into a reducing sugar, or maltose.