CHAPTER XXV

GLAND LABORATORIES INFLUENCED BY ALCOHOL

In case you are thin enough to do it, you might slip your fingers up under the edge of the lowest ribs on your right side. There you will feel the smooth outline of the largest gland in your body. It weighs between three and four pounds, and it is to this place that the villi send much of that which they gather from the chyle. Indeed, it is only after this gathered liquid food has gone into the liver, and after a valuable substance called glycogen has been made out of it, that it is ready to be used by the tissues of the body. The liver, then, is a chemical laboratory where food gets its final preparation for the blood.

More than this, a large part of the impure or venous blood on its way back to the heart from the capillaries passes through the same great gland. There it is relieved of broken-down tissue and other waste which it has gathered from the body. the liver manufactures bile.

From part of this waste Here, then, we have the

circle of the occupations of the liver.

1. It changes liquid food which it receives from the villi into glycogen, which the body needs for nourishment.

2. It takes certain wastes from the blood, makes them over, and forwards them in the blood to the kidneys, to be separated there and sent from the body.

3. It manufactures bile as needed. This is sent to the small intestine, where it helps digestion and afterwards escapes with the other wastes of the food tube.

Clearly enough no man who knows these facts and who wishes to make sure of his health will care to ignore the welfare of his liver or to act as if he were ignorant of the laws which control it. Nevertheless many of the discoveries about these laws are so recent that even well-informed people have sometimes failed to hear about them.

This is true of my neighbor who complained about his liver the other day. He said the doctor advised him to eat less, to exercise more, and to give up his beer until he was in good shape again. But against this he protested. He said: "What I really need is strength, you know, and how can I get strong by eating less? As for beer, so far as I can see it is the one thing that really helps me. Can't I judge by my own feelings?" The doctor said he could n't, and the doctor was right. Follow the argument closely.

Those of us who have ever seen a piece of raw liver know how extraordinarily bloody it is. We also know that it is not bloody by accident on a particular day, but

that any piece of liver, on any day of the year, is deluged with its own blood. This is inevitable because the liver is always provided with an enormous number of small blood vessels, each one of which is in active service.

When, therefore, the doctor gave my neighbor that advice about beer, he was acting in line with his knowledge of the effect of alcohol on blood vessels in general. He knew, what we also know, that wherever there is an unusual supply of capillaries and blood-carrying tubes of all sizes, there will alcohol do its paralyzing work. He knew that when blood vessels in the liver are somewhat

paralyzed and enlarged beyond their usual size, the liver itself is sure to suffer in a serious way.

When a doctor examines liver after liver as he finds them in the hospital and in the dissecting room, he

counts the ignorance of the unfortunate men no laughing matter. "A drunkard's liver again," he will say as he opens up the telltale gland. "No wonder the man died. It's a wonder he lived as long as he did with a liver of this sort to purify his blood supply for him."

That which the doctor finds is indeed a grievous sight, for a liver in the grip of alcohol is often swollen to double its natural size. It has been changed from a healthy, compact mass of energetic cells and tubes to an inactive mass of distended tubes and of cells heavily loaded with fat. In other cases the substance of the gland shrivels through the effect of alcohol.

After a man's liver reaches the point where it can do no more work for him, the man dies and we pity him. But there are multitudes of other people who drink less and suffer quite as truly. By their ignorance of the laws of health and by their free choice they are setting a limit to the work which the liver may do for them. In all probability, by their regular use of alcohol they are slowly but steadily securing for themselves a gland which grows gradually more inactive and inefficient, a gland which by its inactivity is quietly preparing them more easily to fall a prey to diseases or to die earlier than they might have died. Life insurance societies know this so well that some of them charge the drinker more for his life insurance than they charge the non-drinker for the same amount of insurance.

Two other glands are also greatly affected by alcohol. These are the kidneys. They lie on each side of the lower part of the back, and their structure is a marvelous arrangement of closely packed microscopic tubes which are netted about by vast numbers of capillaries.