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      “Whenever the heart is compelled to more rapid contraction than is natural, it has less time to rest. Although it seems to be constantly at work, it really rests more than half the time, so that, although the periods of relaxation are very short, they are so numerous that the aggregate amount of rest in a day is very great. Now, if the rapidity of the contractions is increased materially and continuously, although the aggregate amount of time for rest may be the same as before, yet the waste caused by the contractions is greater, while the time for rest after each one is shorter. This lack of rest produces exhaustion of the heart-muscle, ending in partial change of the muscular tissue into fat. The heart then becomes flabby and weak and its walls become thinner, a condition known to physicians as a ‘fatty heart,’ often resulting in sudden death.” —Tracy’s Physiology, page 158.

      “On general principles, and clinically, the increased activity and subsequent diminution of the heart’s action brings no medicinal aid or strength to combat disease. This is simply a reckless waste of force for which there is no compensation. Without any question or doubt the increased heart’s action, extending over a long period, is dangerous.

      “The medicinal damage done by alcohol does not fall exclusively upon the heart, although this organ may show it more permanently than others.” —Transactions of Second Annual Meeting of A. M. T. A.

      “There was nothing so strange about the death of these two patients, although they both died unexpectedly to the physician and their friends, but the declaration I am about to make may be somewhat new and startling, namely: That neither of these patients, in my candid judgment, died from the effect of disease, but rather from vasomotor paralysis of the heart, superinduced by the administration of the alcohol, which brought on a sudden and unexpected collapse and death.”

      “In fatty degeneration the cells and fibres of the body become more or less changed into fat. If a muscular fibre undergoes fatty degeneration, the particles of which it is made disappear one by one, and particles of oil or fatty matter take their place, so that the degree or amount of degeneration varies according to the extent to which this change has gone on. When the fibres of which a muscle is composed have become thus altered by fatty degeneration they become softer according to the amount of it; they are more easily torn and may even tear across when the muscle is being used during life. The more a muscle is thus degenerated the weaker it is, because it contains less muscular substance and more fat. Not only do the heart and other voluntary muscles thus degenerate, but those of the arteries also.

      “Fatty degeneration is promoted by alcohol because alcohol prevents the proper removal of fat, which has been seen to accumulate in the blood; alcohol prevents the proper oxidation or burning up of waste matters; growing cells which are affected by the chemical influence of alcohol are not quite natural or healthy, so are more liable to degeneration; alcohol hinders the proper removal of waste matter from individual cells and tissues.” – Dr. J. J. Ridge, London.

      “Although fatty degeneration of the heart may occur from other causes, alcoholic indulgence is the most frequent one. Fatty liver or fatty heart is rarely if ever curable; either will ultimately cause death.”

      “The office of the liver is to take up new substances having not yet become blood, as well as the portions of integrated matter that can be worked over, and brought again into use. It is in fact the economist of the system. It excretes bile, and liver-sugar, and renews the blood. When the liver is disordered the whole body is more or less deranged and the proper nutrition of its parts arrested.”

      “The liver has to do several things; a considerable part of its duty is to purify the blood from débris (waste matter), to filter out some things, to break up and alter others, and to expel them from the body in the form of bile. There are certain diseases in which the liver suddenly declines to do any more work. Acute atrophy of the liver is the name of this condition, and when it arises death rapidly results from suppression of the secretion of bile. It brings about a state of things called acholia; the patient is actually poisoned by the non-removal of those ingredients from the blood which it is the duty of the liver to remove. This corresponds in effect to the condition which alcohol can bring about by slow degrees.”

      “If alcohol is used habitually, though only in small quantities at a time, the liver may become the seat of serious changes. There may be a great increase of fat deposited in the cells, producing what is called ‘fatty liver,’ or it may lead to a great increase of connective tissue (membrane) between the cells, and surrounding the blood-vessels. This newly-developed connective tissue gradually contracts, and in so doing crushes the cells and obstructs the blood-vessels, making the organ much smaller than natural, and causing the surface to be covered with little projecting knobs, consisting of portions of liver-tissue that have been less compressed than the part that separates them. The pressure upon the liver-cells and the destruction of many of them, prevents the proper formation of bile and liver-sugar. The contraction of the newly-developed tissue, by obstructing the blood-vessels, interferes with the circulation. Malt liquors seem to produce fatty degeneration, while the stronger liquors cause the development of connective tissue.” —Tracy’s Physiology.

      “The chronic species is not a painful disease; it is slow

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