CHAPTER VI

OUR DRINKS

1. Water is really the only drink. It is the only substance which will satisfy thirst. All other fluids which we drink consist mostly of water. Thus, lemonade is lemon-juice and water. Milk is chiefly water. Wine, beer, cider, and such liquids contain alcohol and many other things, mixed with water.

2. Why we Need Water.—If we should wet a sponge and lay it away, it would become dry in a few hours, as the water would pass off into the air. Our bodies are losing water all the time, and we need to drink to keep ourselves from drying up.

3. Water is also very necessary for other purposes. It softens our food so that we can chew and swallow it, and helps to carry it around in the body after it has been digested, in a way about which we shall learn in future lessons.

4. Still another use for water is to dissolve and wash out of our bodies, through the sweat of the skin, and in other ways, the waste and worn-out particles which are no longer of any use.

5. Impure Water.—Most waters have more or less substances dissolved in them. Water which has much lime in it is called hard water. Such water is not so good to drink, or for use in cooking, as soft water. That water is best which holds no substances in solution. Well-water sometimes contains substances which soak into wells from vaults or cesspools. Slops which are poured upon the ground soak down out of sight; but the foul substances which they contain are not destroyed. They remain in the soil, and when the rains come, they are washed down into the well if it is near by. You can see some of the things found in bad water in the illustration given on opposite page.

6. It is best not to drink iced water when the body is heated, or during meals. If it is necessary to drink very cold water, the bad effects may be avoided by sipping it very slowly.

7. Tea and Coffee.—Many people drink tea or coffee at their meals, and some persons think that these drinks are useful foods; but they really have little or no value as foods. Both tea and coffee contain a poison which, when separated in a pure form, is so deadly that a very small quantity is enough to kill a cat or a dog. This poison often does much harm to those who drink tea or coffee very strong for any great length of time.

8. Alcohol (al´-co-hol).—All of you know something about alcohol. Perhaps you have seen it burn in a lamp. It will burn without a lamp, if we light it. It is so clear and colorless that it looks like water. The Indians call it "fire-water." Alcohol differs very much from foods. It is not produced from plants, as fruits and grains are; neither is it supplied by Nature ready for our use, as are air and water.

9. Fermentation.—When a baker makes bread he puts some yeast in the dough to make it "rise," so the bread will be light. The yeast destroys some of the sugar and starch in the flour and changes it into alcohol and a gas. The gas bubbles up through the dough, and this is what makes the bread light. This is called fermentation (fer-men-ta´-tion). The little alcohol which is formed in the bread does no harm, because it is all driven off by the heat when the bread is baked.

10. Any moist substance or liquid which contains sugar will ferment if yeast is added to it, or if it is kept in a warm place. You know that canned fruit sometimes spoils. This is because it ferments. Fermentation is a sort of decay. When the juice of grapes, apples, or other fruit is allowed to stand in a warm place it "works," or ferments, and thus produces alcohol. Wine is fermented grape-juice; hard cider is fermented apple-juice.

11. Beer, ale, and similar drinks are made from grains. The grain is first moistened and allowed to sprout. In sprouting, the starch of the grain is changed to sugar. The grain is next dried and ground, and is then boiled with water. The water dissolves the sugar. The sweet liquid thus obtained is separated from the grain, and yeast is added to it. This causes it to ferment, which changes the sugar to alcohol. Thus we see that the grain does not contain alcohol in the first place, but that it is produced by fermentation.

12. All fermented liquids contain more or less alcohol, mixed with water and a good many other things. Rum, brandy, gin, whiskey, and pure alcohol are made by separating the alcohol from the other substances. This is done by means of a still, and is called distillation.

13. You can learn how a still separates the alcohol by a little experiment. When a tea-pot is boiling on the stove and the steam is coming out at the nozzle, hold up to the nozzle a common drinking-glass filled with iced water, first taking care to wipe the outside of the glass perfectly dry. Little drops of water will soon gather upon the side of the glass. If you touch these to the tongue you will observe that they taste of the tea. It is because a little of the tea has escaped with the steam and condensed upon the glass. This is distillation.

14. If the tea-pot had contained wine, or beer, or hard cider, the distilled water would have contained alcohol instead of tea. By distilling the liquid several times the alcohol may be obtained almost pure.

15. Alcohol kills Animals and Plants.—Strong alcohol has a deadly effect upon all living things. Once a man gave a dog a few tablespoonfuls of alcohol, and in a little while the dog was dead. If you should pour alcohol upon a plant it would die very soon.

16. A man once made a cruel experiment. He put some minnows into a jar of water and then poured in a few teaspoonfuls of alcohol. The minnows tried very hard to get out, but they could not, and in a little while they were all dead, poisoned by the alcohol. A Frenchman once gave alcohol to some pigs with their food. They soon became sick and died.

17. Alcohol not a Food.—There are some people who imagine that alcohol is good for food because it is made from fruits and grains which are good for food. This is a serious mistake. A person can live on the fruits or grains from which alcohol is made, but no one would attempt to live upon alcohol. If he did, he would soon starve to death. In fact, men have often died in consequence of trying to use whiskey in place of food.

18. We should remember, also, that people do not take alcohol as a food, but for certain effects which it produces, which are not those of a food, but of a poison.

19. Many people who would not drink strong or distilled liquors, think that they will suffer no harm if they use only wine, beer, or cider. This is a great mistake. These liquids contain alcohol, as do all fermented drinks. A person will become drunk or intoxicated by drinking wine, beer, or cider—only a larger quantity is required to produce the same effect as rum or whiskey.

20. Another very serious thing to be thought of is that if a person forms the habit of drinking wine, cider, or other fermented drinks, he becomes so fond of the effect they produce that he soon wants some stronger drink, and thus he is led to use whiskey or other strong liquors. On this account it is not safe to use any kind of alcoholic drinks, either fermented or distilled. The only safe plan is to avoid the use of every sort of stimulating or intoxicating drinks.

21. It has been found by observation that those persons who use intoxicating drinks are not so healthy as those who do not use them, and, as a rule, they do not live so long.

22. This is found to be true not only of those who use whiskey and other strong liquors, but also of those who use fermented drinks, as wine and beer. Beer drinkers are much more likely to suffer from disease than those who are strictly temperate. It is often noticed by physicians that when a beer-drinker becomes sick or meets with an accident, he does not recover so readily as one who uses no kind of alcoholic drinks.

23. Alcoholic drinks not only make people unhealthy and shorten their lives, but they are also the cause of much poverty and crime and an untold amount of misery.

SUMMARY

1. Water is the only thing that will satisfy thirst.

2. In going through our bodies, water washes out many impurities. We also need water to soften our food.

3. The purest water is the best. Impure water causes sickness.

4. Good water has no color, taste, or odor.

5. Tea and coffee are not good drinks. They are very injurious to children, and often do older persons much harm.

6. Alcohol is made by fermentation.

7. Pure alcohol and strong liquors are made by distillation.

8. Alcohol is not a food, it is a poison. It kills plants and animals, and is very injurious to human beings.

9. Even the moderate use of alcoholic drinks produces disease and shortens life.

CHAPTER VII

HOW WE DIGEST

1. Did you ever see a Venus's fly-trap? This curious plant grows in North Carolina. It is called a fly-trap because it has on each of its leaves something like a steel-trap, by means of which it catches flies. You can see one of these traps in the picture. When a fly touches the leaf, the trap shuts up at once, and the poor fly is caught and cannot get away. The harder it tries to escape, the more tightly the trap closes upon it, until after a time it is crushed to death.

2. But we have yet to learn the most curious thing about this strange plant, which seems to act so much like an animal. If we open the leaf after a few days, it will be found that the fly has almost entirely disappeared. The fly has not escaped, but it has been dissolved by a fluid formed inside of the trap, and the plant has absorbed a portion of the fly. In fact, it has really eaten it. The process by which food is dissolved and changed so that it can be absorbed and may nourish the body, is called digestion (di-ges´-tion).

3. The Venus's fly-trap has a very simple way of digesting its food. Its remarkable little trap serves it as a mouth to catch and hold its food, and as a stomach to digest it. The arrangement by which our food is digested is much less simple than this. Let us study the different parts by which this wonderful work is done.

4. The Digestive Tube.—The most important part of the work of digesting our food is done in a long tube within the body, called the digestive tube or canal.

5. This tube is twenty-five or thirty feet long in a full-grown man; but it is so coiled up and folded away that it occupies but little space. It begins at the mouth, and ends at the lower part of the trunk. The greater part of it is coiled up in the abdomen.

6. The Mouth.—The space between the upper and the lower jaw is called the mouth. The lips form the front part and the cheeks the sides. At the back part are three openings. One, the upper, leads into the nose. There are two lower openings. One of these leads into the stomach, and the other leads to the lungs. The back part of the mouth joins the two tubes which lead from the mouth to the lungs and the stomach, and is called the throat. The mouth contains the tongue and the teeth.

7. The Teeth.—The first teeth, those which come when we are small children, are called temporary or milk teeth. We lose these teeth as the jaws get larger and the second or permanent teeth take their place. There are twenty teeth in the first set, and thirty-two in the second. Very old persons sometimes have a third set of teeth.

8. The Salivary (sal´-i-vary) Glands.—There are three pairs of salivary glands. They form a fluid called the saliva (sa-li´-va). It is this fluid which moistens the mouth at all times. When we eat or taste something which we like, the salivary glands make so much saliva that we sometimes say the mouth waters. One pair of the salivary glands is at the back part of the lower jaw, in front of the ears. The other two pairs of glands are placed at the under side of the mouth. The saliva produced by the salivary glands is sent into the mouth through little tubes called ducts.

9. The Gullet.—At the back part of the throat begins a narrow tube, which passes down to the stomach. This tube is about nine inches long. It is called the gullet, food-pipe, or œsophagus (e-soph´-a-gus).

10. The Stomach.—At the lower end of the œsophagus the digestive tube becomes enlarged, and has a shape somewhat like a pear. This is the stomach. In a full-grown person the stomach is sufficiently large to hold about three pints. At each end of the stomach is a narrow opening so arranged that it can be opened or tightly closed, as may be necessary. The upper opening allows the food to pass into the stomach, the lower one allows it to pass out into the intestines. This opening is called the pylorus (py-lo´-rus), or gate-keeper, because it closes so as to keep the food in the stomach until it is ready to pass out.

11. In the membrane which lines the stomach there are many little pocket-like glands, in which a fluid called the gastric juice is formed. This fluid is one of the most important of all the fluids formed in the digestive canal.

12. The Intestine(in-tes´-tine).—At the lower end of the stomach the digestive canal becomes narrow again. This narrow portion, called the intestine, is about twenty-five feet long in a grown person. The last few feet of the intestine is larger than the rest, and is called the colon. This long tube is coiled up and snugly packed away in the cavity of the abdomen. In the membrane lining the intestines are to be found little glands, which make a fluid called intestinal juice.

13. The Liver.—Close up under the ribs, on the right side of the body, is a large chocolate-colored organ, called the liver. The liver is about half as large as the head, and is shaped so as to fit snugly into its corner of the abdomen. The chief business of the liver is to make a fluid called bile, which is very necessary for the digestion of our food.

14. The bile is a bitter fluid of a golden-brown color. It is carried to the intestine by means of a little tube or duct, which enters the small intestine a few inches below the stomach. When the bile is made faster than it is needed for immediate use, it is stored up in a little pear-shaped sac called the gall-bladder, which hangs from the under side of the liver.

15. The liver is a very wonderful organ, and does many useful things besides making bile. It aids in various ways in digesting the food, and helps to keep the blood pure by removing from it harmful substances which are formed within the body.

16. The Pancreas(pan´-cre-as).—The pancreas is another large and very important gland which is found close to the stomach, lying just behind it in the abdominal cavity. The pancreas forms a fluid called the pancreatic juice, which enters the small intestine at nearly the same place as the bile.

17. The Spleen.—Close to the pancreas, at the left side of the body, is a dark, roundish organ about the size of the fist, called the spleen. It is not known that the spleen has much to do in the work of digestion, but it is so closely connected with the digestive organs that we need to know about it.

18. Please note that there are five important organs of digestion. The mouth, the stomach, the intestines, the pancreas, and the liver.

19. Also observe that there are five digestive fluids, saliva, gastric juice, bile, pancreatic juice, and intestinal juice.

SUMMARY

1. The process of dissolving and changing the food so that it may be absorbed and may nourish the body is digestion.

2. The work of digestion is chiefly done in the digestive tube or canal, which is about thirty feet in length.

3. The mouth contains the teeth, and has three pairs of salivary glands connected with it, which make saliva.

4. The gullet leads from the mouth to the stomach.

5. The stomach is pear-shaped, and holds about three pints.

6. It has an upper and a lower opening, each of which is guarded by a muscle, which keeps its contents from escaping.

7. The lower opening of the stomach is called the pylorus.

8. The stomach forms the gastric juice.

9. The intestines are about twenty-five feet long. They form the intestinal juice.

10. The liver lies under the ribs of the right side. It is about half as large as the head. It makes bile.

11. When not needed for immediate use, the bile is stored up in a sac called the gall-bladder.

12. The pancreas is a gland which lies just back of the stomach. It makes pancreatic juice.

13. The spleen is found near the pancreas.

14. There are five important digestive organs—the mouth, the stomach, the intestines, the liver, and the pancreas.

15. There are five digestive fluids—saliva, gastric juice, intestinal juice, bile, and pancreatic juice.