Children who have learned the Lesson on Digestion, and know about the coats
of the stomach, about mastication and chyme-making, are easily made to
understand why anything which has alcohol in it is unfit to go into the
stomach.
If we touch a drop of alcohol to the eye, it will make it sore; so alcohol
in the stomach irritates its coats and makes them sore.
Alcohol poisons the gastric juice. If we get some of this juice from the
stomach of a calf which has just been killed, and mix alcohol with it, the
alcohol will separate the watery part from the _pepsin_ or white part. This
is what alcohol does in the stomach. It takes up water from the gastric
juice, which prevents the pepsin from mixing well with the food, and
hinders the change of the food into chyme, which cannot take place without
pepsin.
The children have already learned that alcohol keeps meat from decaying, or
going to pieces. We explain that food in the stomach must go to pieces to
prepare it to make blood; when mixed with alcohol, it is preserved, and the
gastric juice cannot melt or dissolve it. Thus the stomach is hindered from
doing its work until it gets rid of the alcohol.
A true story we have read will help you to remember how troublesome alcohol
is to the stomach.
Pages:
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91