If, by the aid of the microscope, we examine a very fine section of muscle taken from a person in good health, we find the muscles firm, elastic and of a bright red color, made up of parallel fibres, with beautiful crossings or striae; but, if we similarly examine the muscle of a man who leads an idle, sedentary life, and indulges in intoxicating drinks, we detect, at once, a pale, flabby, inelastic, oily appearance.
Alcoholic narcotization appears to produce this peculiar conditions of the tissues _more than any other agent with which we are acquainted._ 'Three-quarters of the chronic illness which the medical man has to treat,' says Dr.Chambers, 'are occasioned by this disease.' The eminent French analytical chemist, Lecanu, found as much as one hundred and seventeen parts of fat in one thousand parts of a drunkard's blood, the highest estimate of the quantity in health being eight and one-quarter parts, while the ordinary quantity is not more than two or three parts, so that the blood of the drunkard contains forty times in excess of the ordinary quantity." Dr.Hammond, who has written, in partial defense of alcohol as containing a food power, says: "When I say that it, of all other causes, _is most prolific_ in exciting derangements of the brain, the spinal cord and the nerves, I make a statement which my own experience shows to be correct." Another eminent physician says of alcohol: "It substitutes suppuration for growth.

* * It helps time to produce the effects of age; and, in a word, is the genius of degeneration." Dr.Monroe, from whom we have already quoted, says: "Alcohol, taken in small quantities, or largely diluted, as in the form of beer, causes the stomach gradually to lose its tone, and makes it dependent upon artificial stimulus.

Atony, or want of tone of the stomach, gradually supervenes, and incurable disorder of health results.

* * * Should a dose of alcoholic drink be taken daily, the heart will very often become hypertrophied, or enlarged throughout.

Indeed, it is painful to witness how _many_ persons are actually laboring under disease of the heart, owing chiefly to the use of alcoholic liquors." Dr.T.K.Chambers, physician to the Prince of Wales, says: "Alcohol is really the most ungenerous diet there is.