THE EFFECT ON DIGESTION: It has been recommended by some people that alcohol increases the appetite and the flow of the gastric juice. When the experiments were carried a little further, however, it was clearly shown that its presence in the stomach and intestines.

In such amounts as would result from a glass of beer, or one or two glasses of wine with a meal, interfered with the later stages of digestion, so that the later harmful effects overbalanced any earlier good effects.

ITS EFFECT ON THE TEMPERATURE OF THE BODY: Another claim urged in its favor was that it warmed the body and protects it against cold. It ought to have been easy for anyone with a sense of humor to judge the value of this claim by the fact that it was equally highly commended by its users as a means of keeping them cool in hot weather. Its supposed effects in the case of both heat and cold were due to the same fact. It deadened the nerves for a time to whatever sense of discomfort one might then be suffering from, but made no change whatever in the condition of the body that caused the discomfort. Any drug which has this deadening effect on the nerves is called narcotics, opium, chloroform, ether, and chloral.

It was found in the bitter school of experience that alcohol, though producing an apparent glow of warmth for the time, instead of increasing the power to resist cold, rapidly and markedly lessens it, so that those who drink heavily are much more likely to die from cold and exposure than those who let alcohol alone.

ITS EFFECT ON WORKING POWER: Then, it was claimed that alcohol increased the working power of the body, that more work and better work would be done by men at hard labor, if a little beer, or wine, was taken with their meals. Indeed, most of those who take alcohol believe that they work faster and better, and with less effort with it than without it. But the moment that this feeling of increased power and strength was submitted to careful tests in the laboratory and in the workshop, it was found that instead of more being accomplished when alcohol was taken, even in very moderate amounts, less was accomplished. The false sense of increased vigor and power was due to the narcotic power of alcohol to deaden the sensations of fatigue and discomfort.

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