children who are given soothing sirups often become stupefied. If these compounds are given frequently, they injure the child permanently, and in larger doses have caused death. If cough sirups and like compounds are taken often, an opium

BEWARE OF ACETANILID

A large proportion of the most common headache medicines sold at drug stores depend for their effectiveness on the heart-depressing action of acetanilid. In some cases three or more grains of this drug are present in each dose.

The Pure Food and Drug Law requires all makers of patent medicines to indicate clearly on the labels of such preparations the presence of acetanilid and other dangerous compounds. Hence one has but to read the labels and avoid these nostrums in order to protect himself.

Take no headache remedy without consulting a doctor, unless you are sure it contains no acetanilid. Make the druggist tell you. He is responsible. A suit for damages has recently been won against a New York drug store for illness consequent upon the sale of a "guaranteed harmless" headache tablet containing three grains of acetanilid.

FIG. 24. Acetanilid and other drugs in patent medicines.

habit may be developed, which is even more difficult to overcome than is the alcohol habit.

Figure 25 repre

107. Patent medicines as "bracers." sents the percentage of alcohol contained in three "patent medicines" as given by the Massachusetts State Board of

Health in published document No. 34, as compared with the percentages of alcohol found in whisky, champagne, claret, and beer. The stomach bitters (Fig. 25), for example, contained over eight times as much alcohol as that found in beer. Hence, the average drug store where these patent medicines are freely sold must share with the liquor saloon the heavy responsibility for the prevalence of the drink habit.

108. Pure food and drug law. One of the most important laws passed by the 59th Congress of the United States was that which compels every manufacturer of foods or medicines to state on the label the composition of each. Analyses of foods and drugs have proved that hitherto many of them were largely adulterated by cheap and often injurious compounds, put in to increase the manufacturers' profits. Then, too, as already stated, many patent medicines contain high percentages of alcohol and other dangerous drugs. Under the new law the purchaser, if he takes the trouble. to read the printed label, should be able to determine exactly what he is paying for and putting into his body.

109. Optional home work. Examine the labels on any patent medicine bottles or boxes you can find. Make a list of such compounds as contain alcohol, opium, morphine, chloral, acetanilid, or phenacetin, and state after each compound the percentage of each of the drugs named.

CHAPTER V

DIGESTION AND ABSORPTION OF THE NUTRIENTS

I. GENERAL SURVEY OF THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM

110. Necessity of digestion. In Chapter III we discussed the composition, uses, and the preparation of foods. We learned in our study of plant biology (P. B., Ch. IV) that certain of the food substances will readily pass through the walls of plant cells, while others will not. Hence, the latter, to become available for use in other cells, must be changed to soluble form, and this change we called digestion. We shall now discuss similar changes that take place in foods within our bodies; for before the different food substances can reach the cells of the brain, the muscles, or the bones where they are needed, they must be changed from a solid or semifluid condition into liquids that can pass through the walls of the cells that lie between the interior of the food canal and the blood. These necessary changes are accomplished within our bodies in the alimentary canal, a complicated tube nearly thirty feet in length.

111. Parts of the alimentary canal. The alimentary canal (Fig. 26), as in the other vertebrates studied, begins with the mouth opening; it enlarges to form the mouth cavity, and this in turn communicates behind with a somewhat smaller throat cavity. Below the throat is the gullet, which conducts the food into an enlarged pouch, the stomach. Most of the lower half of the trunk is filled with the much coiled

intestines which begin at the stomach and open to the outside of the body at the lower part of the trunk.

FIG. 26.

Parts of the alimentary canal. (The liver has been tilted upward to show the gall bladder on its lower surface; a piece of the large intestine has been removed to show the pancreas behind it.) Compare this figure with Fig. 2 which shows all the organs in position.

112. Digestive glands. Several organs that are necessary in the process of digestion, as already discussed in the