Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/121

"A careful study of the conditions and processes necessary for both tissue building or nutrition, and tissue waste or disintegration, in all the higher order of animals, will show that neither process can be materially retarded without retarding or preventing the other. Both processes take place only in bioplasm or vitalized matter, supplied with oxygen, water and heat. Neither the assimilation of new material food, nor its use in tissue building can be effected without the presence of free oxygen and nuclein, or corpuscular elements of the blood. And without the presence of the same elements we can have no natural tissue disintegration and removal of the waste. The processes of tissue building and tissue disintegration, are therefore, so intimately related, and dependent upon the same materials and forces, that neither can be hastened or retarded from day to day without influencing the other. When alcohol or any other substance, introduced into the blood, retards the tissue waste, as shown by the diminished amount of excretory products, it must do so by either diminishing the amount of free oxygen in the blood, by impairing the vasomotor and trophic nerve functions or by direct impairment of the properties of the nuclein or protogen elements of the blood and tissues. The popular idea, both in and out of the profession is, that the alcohol, by further oxidation in the blood, lessens the amount of oxygen to act on the tissues, and generates heat or 'some kind of force.' Those who advocate this theory of saving the tissues by combining the oxygen with alcohol seem to forget that in doing so they are diverting and using up the only agent, oxygen, capable of combining with, and promoting the elimination of, all natural waste products as well as the various toxic elements causing disease.

"But the theory that alcohol directly combines with the oxygen of the blood by which it would be converted into carbonic acid and water with evolution of heat is completely refuted by the well-known fact that its presence in the blood diminishes both temperature and elimination of carbonic acid