Blood, when poisoned with alcohol, goes through the body, giving
disease and death instead of health and life. So, if you want good, red
blood, do not let alcohol get into it.
_TO THE HEART._--When alcohol comes with the blood from the liver, the
heart begins to beat fast to get rid of the firewater; this makes it very
tired, for it always has enough to do in carrying bad blood to the lungs,
and pumping good blood into the arteries, without having the extra trouble
of driving out alcohol. Wise people will not give it this extra work to do.
Besides, we told you, in the talk about the harm done by alcohol to the
muscles, that the heart,--which is only a large muscle, or rather many
muscles fastened together so as to make a pear-shaped organ about the size
of your fist,--is hurt in another way by alcohol. It gets too much of the
poor kind of fat from the blood, which fills between the muscles, and after
awhile makes the walls of the heart so soft and weak, that we could almost
push through them with a finger, if we could get at them.
Very often the tired, overworked, weakened heart suddenly stops beating,
and the person who would keep on drinking beer, wine, brandy, or rum falls
down dead. "Died from heart disease," people say, when the truth is, _died
from drinking alcoholic liquors_.
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