15. How must we keep the brain strong and well?
16. What does alcohol do to the nerves and brain?
17. Why does not a drunken man know what he is about?
18. What causes most of the accidents we read of?
19. Why could not the man who had been drinking tell the difference between a railroad track and a place of safety?
20. How does the frequent drinking of a little liquor affect the body?
21. How does sickness affect people who often drink these liquors?
22. When a man is taken to the hospital, what questions does the doctor ask?
23. What depends upon his answers?
24. Why do many men use tobacco?
25. How does it make them feel better?
26. Does it really help a person who uses it?
27. Does tobacco help a boy to be a good scholar?
28. How does it affect his manners?
Bones of the human body.Bones of the human body.
R
IPE grapes are full of juice.
This juice is mostly water, sweetened with a sugar of its own. It is flavored with something which makes us know, the moment we taste it, that it is grape-juice, and not cherry-juice or plum-juice.
Apples also contain water, sugar, and apple flavor; and cherries contain water, sugar, and cherry flavor. The same is true of other fruits. They all, when ripe, have the water and the sugar; and each has a flavor of its own.
Ripe grapes are sometimes gathered and put into great tubs called vats. In these the juice is squeezed out.
In some countries, this squeezing is done by bare-footed men who jump into the vats and press the grapes with their feet.
The grape-juice is then drawn off from the skins and seeds and left standing in a warm place.
Bubbles soon begin to rise and cover the top of it with froth. The juice is all in motion.
Picking grapes and making wine.Picking grapes and making wine.
If the cook had wished to use this grape-juice to make jelly, she would say: "Now, I can not make my grape-jelly, for the grape-juice is spoiled."
The sugar in the grape-juice is changing into something else. It is turning into alcohol and a gas[A]that moves about in little bubbles in the liquid, and rising to the top, goes off into the air. The alcohol is a thin liquid which, mixed with the water, remains in the grape-juice.
The sugar is gone; alcohol and the bubbles of gas are left in its place.
This alcohol is a liquid poison. A little of it will harm any one who drinks it; much of it would kill the drinker.
Ripe grapes are good food; but grape-juice, when its sugar has turned to alcohol, is not a safe drink for any one. It is poisoned by the alcohol.
This changed grape-juice is called wine. It is partly water, partly alcohol, and it still has the grape flavor in it.
Wine is also made from currants, elderberries, and other fruits, in very much the same way as from grapes.
People sometimes make it at home from the fruits that grow in their own gardens, and think there is no alcohol in it, because they do not put any in.But you know that the alcohol is made in the fruit-juice itself by the change of the sugar into alcohol and the gas.It is the nature of alcohol to make the person who takes a little of it, in wine, or any other drink, want more and more alcohol. When one goes on, thus taking more and more of the drinks that contain alcohol, he is called a drunkard.In this way wine has made many drunkards.Alcohol hurts both the body and mind. It changes the person who drinks it. It will make a good and kind person cruel and bad; and will make a bad person worse.Every one who takes wine does not become a drunkard, but you are not sure that you will not, if you drink it.You should not drink wine, because there is alcohol in it.
People sometimes make it at home from the fruits that grow in their own gardens, and think there is no alcohol in it, because they do not put any in.
But you know that the alcohol is made in the fruit-juice itself by the change of the sugar into alcohol and the gas.
It is the nature of alcohol to make the person who takes a little of it, in wine, or any other drink, want more and more alcohol. When one goes on, thus taking more and more of the drinks that contain alcohol, he is called a drunkard.
In this way wine has made many drunkards.Alcohol hurts both the body and mind. It changes the person who drinks it. It will make a good and kind person cruel and bad; and will make a bad person worse.
Every one who takes wine does not become a drunkard, but you are not sure that you will not, if you drink it.
You should not drink wine, because there is alcohol in it.
Cider is made from apples. In a few hours after the juice is pressed out of the apples, if it is left open to the air the sugar begins to change.
Like the sugar in the grape, it changes into alcohol and bubbles of gas.
At first, there is but little alcohol in cider, but a little of this poison is dangerous.
More alcohol is all the time forming until in ten cups of cider there may be one cup of alcohol. Cider often makes its drinkers ill-tempered and cross.
Cider and wine will turn into vinegar if left in a warm place long enough.
1. What two things are in all fruit-juices?
2. How can we tell the juice of grapes from that of plums?
3. How can we tell the juice of apples from that of cherries?
4. What is often done with ripe grapes?
5. What happens after the grape-juice has stood a short time?
6. Why would the changed grape-juice not be good to use in making jelly?
7. Into what is the sugar in the juice changed?
8. What becomes of the gas?
9. What becomes of the alcohol?
10. What is gone and what left?
11. What is alcohol?
12. What does alcohol do to those who drink it?
13. When are grapes good food?
14. When is grape-juice not a safe drink?
15. Why?
16. What is this changed grape-juice called?
17. What is wine?
18. From what is wine made?
19. What do people sometimes think of home-made wines?
20. How can alcohol be there when none has been put into it?
21. What does alcohol make the person who takes it want?
22. What is such a one called?
23. What has wine done to many persons?
24. What does alcohol hurt?
25. How does it change a person?
26. Are you sure you will not become a drunkard if you drink wine?
27. Why should you not drink it?
28. What is cider made from?
29. What soon happens to apple-juice?
30. How may vinegar be made?
FOOTNOTE:[A]This gas is called car bon´ic acid gas.
[A]This gas is called car bon´ic acid gas.
[A]This gas is called car bon´ic acid gas.
A
LCOHOL is often made from grains as well as from fruit. The grain has starch instead of sugar.
If the starch in your mother's starch-box at home should be changed into sugar, you would think it a very strange thing.
Every year, in the spring-time, many thousand pounds of starch are changed into sugar in a hidden, quiet way, so that most of us think nothing about it.
All kinds of grain are full of starch.
If you plant them in the ground, where they are kept moist and warm, they begin to sprout and grow, to send little roots down into the earth, and little stems up into the sunshine.
These little roots and stems must be fed with sugar; thus, in a wise way, which is too wonderful for you to understand, as soon as the seed begins to sprout, its starch begins to turn into sugar.
Roots
If you should chew two grains of wheat, one before sprouting and one after, you could tell by the taste that this is true.
Barley is a kind of grain from which the brewer makes beer.
He must first turn its starch into sugar, so he begins by sprouting his grain.
Of course he does not plant it in the ground, because it would need to be quickly dug up again.
He keeps it warm and moist in a place where he can watch it, and stop the sprouting just in time to save the sugar, before itis used to feed the root and stem. This sprouted grain is called malt.
The brewer soaks it in plenty of water, because the grain has not water in itself, as the grape has.
He puts in some yeast to help start the work of changing the sugar into gas[B]and alcohol.
Sometimes hops are also put in, to give it a bitter taste.
The brewer watches to see the bubbles of gas that tell, as plainly as words could, that sugar is going and alcohol is coming.
When the work is finished, the barley has been made into beer.
It might have been ground and made into barley-cakes, or into pearl barley to thicken our soups, and then it would have been good food. Now, it is a drink containing alcohol, and alcohol is a poison.
You should not drink beer, because there is alcohol in it.
Two boys of the same age begin schooltogether. One of them drinks wine, cider, and beer. The other never allows these drinks to pass his lips. These boys soon become very different from each other, because one is poisoning his body and mind with alcohol, and the other is not.
A man wants a good, steady boy to work for him. Which of these two do you think he will select? A few years later, a young man is wanted who can be trusted with the care of an engine or a bank. It is a good chance. Which of these young men will be more likely to get it?
1. Is there sugar in grain?
2. What is in the grain that can be turned into sugar?
3. What can you do to a seed that will make its starch turn into sugar?
4. What does the brewer do to the barley to make its starch turn into sugar?
5. What is malt?
6. What does the brewer put into the malt to start the working?
7. What gives the bitter taste to beer?
8. How does the brewer know when sugar begins to go and alcohol to come?
9. Why does he want the starch turned to sugar?
10. Is barley good for food?
11. Why is beer not good for food?
12. Why should you not drink it?
13. Why did the two boys of the same age, at the same school, become so unlike?
14. Which will have the best chance in life?
FOOTNOTE:[B]Car bon´ic acid gas.
[B]Car bon´ic acid gas.
[B]Car bon´ic acid gas.
D
ISTILLING (dĭs tĭlł´ing) may be a new word to you, but you can easily learn its meaning.
You have all seen distilling going on in the kitchen at home, many a time. When the water in the tea-kettle is boiling, what comes out at the nose? Steam.
What is steam?
You can find out what it is by catching some of it on a cold plate, or tin cover. As soon as it touches any thing cold, it turns into drops of water.
When we boil water and turn it into steam, and then turn the steam back into water, we have distilled the water. We say vapor instead of steam, when we talk about the boiling of alcohol.
It takes less heat to turn alcohol to vaporthan to turn water to steam; so, if we put over the fire some liquid that contains alcohol, and begin to collect the vapor as it rises, we shall get alcohol first, and then water.
But the alcohol will not be pure alcohol; it will be part water, because it is so ready to mix with water that it has to be distilled many times to be pure.
But each time it is distilled, it will become stronger, because there is a little more alcohol and a little less water.
In this way, brandy, rum, whiskey, and gin are distilled, from wine, cider, and the liquors which have been made from corn, rye, or barley.
The cider, wine, and beer had but little alcohol in them. The brandy, rum, whiskey, and gin are nearly one-half alcohol.
A glass of strong liquor which has been made by distilling, will injure any one more, and quicker, than a glass of cider, rum, or beer.
But a cider, wine, or beer-drinker often drinks so much more of the weaker liquor, that he gets a great deal of alcohol. Peopleare often made drunkards by drinking cider or beer. The more poison, the more danger.
1. Where have you ever seen distilling going on?
2. How can you distill water?
3. How can men separate alcohol from wine or from any other liquor that contains it?
4. Why will not this be pure alcohol?
5. How is a liquor made stronger?
6. Name some of the distilled liquors.
7. How are they made?
8. How much of them is alcohol?
9. Which is the most harmful—the distilled liquor, or beer, wine, or cider?
10. Why does the wine, cider, or beer-drinker often get as much alcohol?
A
LCOHOL looks like water, but it is not at all like water.
Alcohol will take fire, and burn if a lighted match is held near it; but you know that water will not burn.
When alcohol burns, the color of the flame is blue. It does not give much light: it makes no smoke or soot; but it does give a great deal of heat.
A little dead tree-toad was once put into a bottle of alcohol. It was years ago, but the tree-toad is there still, looking just as it did the first day it was put in. What has kept it so?
It is the alcohol. The tree-toad would have soon decayed if it had been put into water. So you see that alcohol keeps dead bodies from decaying.
Pure alcohol is not often used as a drink. People who take beer, wine, and cider get a little alcohol with each drink. Those who drink brandy, rum, whiskey, or gin, get more alcohol, because those liquors are nearly one half alcohol.
You may wonder that people wish to use such poisonous drinks at all. But alcohol is a deceiver. It often cheats the man who takes a little, into thinking it will be good for him to take more.
Sometimes the appetite which begs so hard for the poison, is formed in childhood. If you eat wine-jelly, or wine-sauce, you may learn to like the taste of alcohol and thus easily begin to drink some weak liquor.
The more the drinker takes, the more he often wants, and thus he goes on from drinking cider, wine, or beer, to drinking whiskey, brandy, or rum. Thus drunkards are made.
People who are in the habit of taking drinks which contain alcohol, often care more for them than for any thing else, even when they know they are being ruined by them.
1. How does alcohol look?
2. How does alcohol burn?
3. What will alcohol do to a dead body?
4. What drinks contain a little alcohol?
5. What drinks are about one half alcohol?
6. How does alcohol cheat people?
7. When is the appetite sometimes formed?
8. Why should you not eat wine-sauce or wine-jelly?
9. How are drunkards made?
A
FARMER who had been in the habit of planting his fields with corn, wheat, and potatoes, once made up his mind to plant tobacco instead.
Let us see whether he did any good to the world by the change.
The tobacco plants grew up as tall as a little boy or girl, and spread out broad, green leaves.
By and by he pulled the stalks, and dried the leaves. Some of them he pressed into cakes of tobacco; some he rolled into cigars; and some he ground into snuff.
If you ask what tobacco is good for, the best answer will be, to tell you what it will do to a man or boy who uses it, and then let you answer the question for yourselves.
Tobacco contains something called nicotine (nĭk´o tĭn).This is a strong poison. One drop of it is enough to kill a dog. In one cigar there is enough, if taken pure, to kill two men.
Mill
Even to work upon tobacco, makes people pale and sickly. Once I went into a snuff mill, and the man who had the care of it showed me how the work was done.
The mill stood in a pretty place, beside a little stream which turned the mill-wheel. Tall trees bent over it, and a fresh breeze was blowing through the open windows. Yet the smell of the tobacco was so strong that I had to go to the door many times, for a breath of pure air.
I asked the man if it did not make him sick to work there.
He said: "It made me very sick for the first few weeks. Then I began to get used to it, and now I don't mind it."
He was like the boys who try to learn to smoke. It almost always makes them sick at first; but they think it will be manly to keep on. At last, they get used to it.
The sickness is really the way in which the boy's body is trying to say to him: "There is danger here; you are playing with poison. Let me stop you before great harm is done."
Perhaps you will say: "I have seen men smoke cigars, even four or five in a day, and it didn't kill them."
It did not kill them, because they didnot swallow the nicotine. They only drew in a little with the breath. But taking a little poison in this way, day after day, can not be safe, or really helpful to any one.
1. What did the farmer plant instead of corn, wheat, and potatoes?
2. What was done with the tobacco leaves?
3. What is the name of the poison which is in tobacco?
4. How much of it is needed to kill a dog?
5. What harm can the nicotine in one cigar do, if taken pure?
6. Tell the story of the visit to the snuff mill.
7. Why are boys made sick by their first use of tobacco?
8. Why does not smoking a cigar kill a man?
9. What is said about a little poison?
A
LCOHOL and tobacco are called narcotics (nar kŏt´iks). This means that they have the power of putting the nerves to sleep. Opium (ō´pĭ ŭm) is another narcotic.
It is a poison made from the juice of poppies, and is used in medicines.
Opium is put into soothing-syrups (sĭr´ŭps), and these are sometimes given to babies to keep them from crying. They do this by injuring the tender nerves and poisoning the little body.
How can any one give a baby opium to save taking patient care of it?
Surely the mothers would not do it, if they knew that this soothing-syrup that appears like a friend, coming to quiet and comfort the baby, is really an enemy.
Don't give soothing-syrup to children.Don't give soothing-syrup to children.
Sometimes, a child no older than some ofyou are, is left at home with the care of a baby brother or sister; so it is best that you should know about this dangerous enemy, and never be tempted to quiet the baby by giving him a poison, instead of taking your best and kindest care of him.
1. What is a narcotic?
2. Name three narcotics?
3. From what is opium made?
4. For what is it used?
5. Why is soothing-syrup dangerous?
A
N organ is a part of the body which has some special work to do. The eye is the organ of sight. The stomach (stŭm´ăk) is an organ which takes care of the food we eat.
Different kinds of teeth.Different kinds of teeth.
Your teeth do not look alike, since theymust do different kinds of work. The front ones cut, the back ones grind.
They are made of a kind of bone covered with a hard smooth enamel (ĕn ăm´el). If the enamel is broken, the teeth soon decay and ache, for each tooth is furnished with a nerve that very quickly feels pain.
Cracking nuts with the teeth, or even biting thread, is apt to break the enamel; and when once broken, you will wish in vain to have it mended. The dentist can fill a hole in the tooth; but he can not cover the tooth with new enamel.
Bits of food should be carefully picked from between the teeth with a tooth-pick of quill or wood, never with a pin or other hard and sharp thing which might break the enamel.
The teeth must also be well brushed. Nothing but perfect cleanliness will keep them in good order. Always brush them before breakfast. Your breakfast will taste all the better for it. Brush them at nightbefore you go to bed, lest some food should be decaying in your mouth during the night.
Take care of these cutters and grinders, that they may not decay, and so be unable to do their work well.
You have learned about the twenty-four little bones in the spine, and the ribs that curve around from the spine to the front, or breast-bone.
These bones, with the shoulder-blades and the collar-bones, form a bony case or box.
In it are some of the most useful organs of the body.
This box is divided across the middle by a strong muscle, so that we may say it is two stories high.
The upper room is called the chest; the lower one, the abdomen (ăb dō´mĕn).
In the chest, are the heart and the lungs.
In the abdomen, are the stomach, the liver, and some other organs.
The stomach is a strong bag, as wonderful a bag as could be made, you will say, when I tell you what it can do.
The outside is made of muscles; the lining prepares a juice called gastric (găs´trĭk) juice, and keeps it always ready for use.
Now, what would you think if a man could put into a bag, beef, and apples, and potatoes, and bread and milk, and sugar, and salt, tie up the bag and lay it away on a shelf for a few hours, and then show you that the beef had disappeared, so had the apples, so had the potatoes, the bread and milk, sugar, and salt, and the bag was filled only with a thin, grayish fluid? Would you not call it a magical bag?
Now, your stomach and mine are just such magical bags.
We put in our breakfasts, dinners, and suppers; and, after a few hours, they are changed. The gastric juice has been mixed with them. The strong muscles that form the outside of the stomach have been squeezingthe food, rolling it about, and mixing it together, until it has all been changed to a thin, grayish fluid.
A soldier was once shot in the side in such a way that when the wound healed, it left an opening with a piece of loose skin over it, like a little door leading into his stomach.
A doctor who wished to learn about the stomach, hired him for a servant and used to study him every day.
He would push aside the little flap of skin and put into the stomach any kind of food that he pleased, and then watch to see what happened to it.
In this way, he learned a great deal and wrote it down, so that other people might know, too. In other ways, also, which it would take too long to tell you here, doctors have learned how these magical food-bags take care of our food.
Your mamma tells you sometimes at breakfast that you must eat oat-meal andmilk to make you grow into a big man or woman.
Did you ever wonder what part of you is made of oat-meal, or what part of milk?
That stout little arm does not look like oat-meal; those rosy cheeks do not look like milk.
If our food is to make stout arms and rosy cheeks, strong bodies and busy brains, it must first be changed into a form in which it can get to each part and feed it.
When the food in the stomach is mixed and prepared, it is ready to be sent through the body; some is carried to the bones, some to the muscles, some to the nerves and brain, some to the skin, and some even to the finger nails, the hair, and the eyes. Each part needs to be fed in order to grow.
Children need each day to make larger and larger bones, larger muscles, and a larger skin to cover the larger body.
Every day, each part is also wearing outa little, and needing to be mended by some new food. People who have grown up, need their food for this work of mending.
One way to take care of the stomach is to give it only its own work to do. The teeth must first do their work faithfully.
The stomach must have rest, too. I have seen some children who want to make their poor stomachs work all the time. They are always eating apples, or candy, or something, so that their stomachs have no chance to rest. If the stomach does not rest, it will wear out the same as a machine would.
The stomach can not work well, unless it is quite warm. If a person pours ice-water into his stomach as he eats, just as the food is beginning to change into the gray fluid of which you have learned, the work stops until the stomach gets warm again.
You remember about the man who had the little door to his stomach. Sometimes,the doctor put in wine, cider, brandy, or some drink that contained alcohol, to see what it would do. It was carried away very quickly; but during the little time it stayed, it did nothing but harm.
It injured the gastric juice, so that it could not mix with the food.
If the doctor had put in more alcohol, day after day, as one does who drinks liquor, sores would perhaps have come on the delicate lining of the stomach. Sometimes the stomach is so hurt by alcohol, that the drinker dies. If the stomach can not do its work well, the whole body must suffer from want of the good food it needs.[C]
The saliva in the mouth helps to prepare the food, before it goes into the stomach. Tobacco makes the mouth very dry, and more saliva has to flow out to moisten it.
But tobacco juice is mixed with the saliva, and that must not be swallowed. Itmust be spit out, and with it is sent the saliva that was needed to help prepare the food.
Tobacco discolors the teeth, makes bad sores in the mouth, and often causes a disease of the throat.
You can tell where some people have been, by the neatness and comfort they leave after them.
You can tell where the tobacco-user has been, by the dirty floor, and street, and the air made unfit to breathe, because of the smoke and strong, bad smell of old tobacco from his pipe and cigar and from his breath and clothes.
1. What are organs?
2. What work do the front teeth do? the back teeth?
3. What are the teeth made of?
4. What causes the toothache?
5. How is the enamel often broken?
6. Why should a tooth-pick be used?
7. Why should the teeth be well brushed?
8. When should they be brushed?
9. What bones form a case or box?
10. What is the upper room of this box called? the lower room?
11. What organs are in the chest? the abdomen?
12. What is the stomach?
13. What does its lining do?
14. What do the stomach and the gastric juice do to the food we have eaten?
15. How did anybody find out what the stomach could do?
16. Why must all the food we eat be changed?
17. Why do you need food?
18. Why do people who are not growing need food?
19. What does alcohol do to the gastric juice? to the stomach?
20. What is the use of the saliva?
21. How does the habit of spitting injure a person?
22. How does tobacco affect the teeth? the mouth?
23. How does the tobacco-user annoy other people?
FOOTNOTE:[C]The food is partly prepared by the liver and some other organs.
[C]The food is partly prepared by the liver and some other organs.
[C]The food is partly prepared by the liver and some other organs.
N
OW that you know how the body is fed, you must next learn what to feed it with; and what each part needs to make it grow and to keep it strong and well.
A large part of your body is made of water. So you need, of course, to drink water, and to have it used in preparing your food.
Water comes from the clouds, and is stored up in cisterns or in springs in the ground. From these pipes are laid to lead the water to our houses.
Sometimes, men dig down until they reach a spring, and so make a well from which they can pump the water, or dip it out with a bucket.
Water that has been standing in lead pipes, may have some of the lead mixed with it. Such water would be very likely to poison you, if you drank it.
Impurities are almost sure to soak into a well if it is near a drain or a stable.
If you drink the water from such a well, you may be made very sick by it. It is better to go thirsty, until you can get good water.
A sufficient quantity of pure water to drink is just as important for us, as good food to eat.
We could not drink all the water that our bodies need. We take a large part of it in our food, in fruits and vegetables, and even in beefsteak and bread.
Bones need lime. You remember the bone that was nothing but crumbling lime after it had been in the fire.
Where shall we get lime for our bones?
We can not eat lime; but the grass and the grains take it out of the earth. Thenthe cows eat the grass and turn it into milk, and in the milk we drink, we get some of the lime to feed our bones.