The temperance primer : an elementary lesson book designed to teach the nature and properties of alcoholic liquors, and the action of alcohol on the body

Preface

It is not without careful consideration that it has been determined to publish this Primer. There are now to be found in many schoolbooks reading lessons which give information on the manufacture, composition, and effects of Alcoholic liquors ; there are also primers or elementary books of anatomy and physiology : there is, moreover, the excellent Temperance Lesson Book of Dr. Richardson.’ It would therefore seem at first sight that the field was sufficiently covered. A' brief outline of the aim and scope of this Temperance Primer will, however, best indicate the gap which it is intended to fill. It is hoped that the book will be self-explanatory on the subjects treated of.'

VI

PREFACE.

As Alcohol is a complex chemical substance, containing the elements Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen, an attempt has been made first of all to give the learner an idea of the nature and uses of these elements in relation to the subject under consideration. In this way it is hoped that he will obtain an intelligent idea of the origin of Alcohol by means of fermentation. Again, in order that it may be understood in what way Alcohol affects the digestion, the circulation of the blood, and the mental processes, chapters on these subjects are inserted — as far as is necessary to explain the changes produced. Thus it has been supposed that the reader knows little or nothing of the subject, but may by attentive reading, both alone and in the family without a guide, and especially with the assistance of a qualified school-teacher, gain such an insight into the action of Alcohol on the system as to enable him to understand and appreciate more advanced works.

A word or two on the special features of the

PREFACE.

Vll plan may be desirable. It is so arranged as to form a series of reading lessons, and questions for examination are appended to eacli chapter. When it is read for the first time some portions may, if desired, be omitted without interference with the continuity of the plan, and these portions (sometimes only words) are enclosed in square brackets. On this first perusal, too, it may be found well to omit the more difficult examination questions, reserving these for another time.

The value of an early acquaintance with the action and tendency of that which has so great an influence on human life and happiness is now all but universally granted. I trust that this little book will be a means of removing some of the difficulties which at first seem so formidable to a young beginner in endeavouring to understand terms and facts about it which more advanced students and educated people are apt to forget that they do not know. By thus learning the non-necessity and injurious

Vlll

PREFACE.

actions of Alcoholic Liquors they will no longer be able to plead the excuse of ignorance, should they he drawn away and enticed thereby, and the blame of their failure will no longer be justly attributed to the silence of those whose knowledge and experience has taught them the nature and the influence of Intoxicating Drinks.

J. JAMES RIDGE.

Carlton House, Enfield,

February, 1879.

THE

TEMPERANCE PRIMER.

CHAPTER I. What the Air is made of

If you were told that the air is made of gas, or, rather, of two or three gases mixed together, you might perhaps think it strange. You know that gas gives us light at night time, and so you may think that gas is a kind of fire. You know that the air is not fire, how then can it he gas ? But think a moment ! If the tap of the lamp is turned on you hear a rushing sound. That is the gas escaping, and soon you can smell it, because it has mixed with the air in the room. Do not let much

D

THE TEMPERANCE PRIMER.

escape. Now, if you put a lighted match to it, it will burn. You can understand that gas was there before, though you could not see it, .and that gas of that kind will burn.

There are many kinds of gas. Most of them 'Cannot be seen, just like the gas we get from coal : some will burn and some will not. The air which we breathe is chiefly made up of two gases mixed together, just as we can mix milk and water ; there is also a very little of a third kind of gas in the air. The names of these gases are Oxygen,* Nitrogen,* and Carbonic Acid.* The most important of these is the Oxygen, without which we should die, and no candle or fire would be able to burn.

The Oxygen can be taken away from air, and then only Nitrogen and Carbonic Acid are left. This is how it can be done.

Experiment I. — Take a piece of card large

* For pronunciation of this and other words followed by an asterisk, see Appendix, at the end of the hook.

WI1AT TIIE AIR IS MADE OF.

enough to cover the mouth of a tumbler. Stick a little pin or tin tack through the middle of the card, and put it on the table with the point sticking up. Now put on the tin-tack a very small piece of a candle. Light the candle and place the tumbler over it. The flame soon grows dim and then goes out, and the tumbler is filled with smoke mixed with two of the gases of the air. Only two now ; because the Oxygen under the glass has been used up while the candle burned, Carbonic Acid has been formed, and the Nitrogen, which was there before, is there still.

You cannot light the candle again unless you admit some fresh air, or Oxygen, because a candle will not burn without Oxygen. Try.

Experiment II. — First turn the tumbler the other way up, keeping the card closely over it. Now light a match. Then slide the card a

TIIE TEMPERANCE PRIMER.

little to one side, and put the lighted end of the match into the tumbler through the opening. It goes out because there is no Oxygen there.

I said you could not live if there were no Oxygen in the air. When animals breathe they use up the Oxygen, and take it away from the air. If a boy were put under a large glass, so that no fresh air could get in, most of the Oxygen would after a time disappear, and a great deal more Carbonic Acid would be found there instead, having come from the boy’s breath. He would soon fall down and die for want of Oxygen to breathe.

You cannot see the Carbonic Acid in the tumbler, but you can prove that it is there very easily. You want some lime-water. This you can buy or make. If you wish to make it you must get a small piece of burnt lime from a builder. Take a piece the size of a walnut, break it up to powder, and put it into a large bottle : fill the bottle with cold water.

WHAT TIIE AIR IS MADE OF.

Shake the bottle several times in one day. During the night the lime will settle at the bottom, and then you can pour off the clear lime-water into another bottle. It is called lime-water because there is some lime dissolved* in the water, just as a lump of sugar will dissolve, or disappear in a glass of water. Sugar is said to be soluble* in water, but it is much more so than lime is ; that is to say the same quantity of water will dissolve a great deal of sugar and only a little lime. Marbles do not disappear if they are put into water; they are insoluble.

Experiment III. — Now slide the card a little to one side as before, and pour in about a tablespoonful of the lime-water. Slide the card back and hold it while you move the tumbler round and round so as to rinse the glass. You see that the lime-water has become milky. This milky look is produced by a white powder floating in the water. The white powder is

TIIE TEMPERANCE PRIMER.

called carbonate* of lime, or chalk, which is insoluble in water. The chalk is formed by the Carbonic Acid which was in the glass first dissolving in the water and then combining,* that is, joining with the lime in the lime-water.

The Carbonic Acid is very easily dissolved in the water, but the Nitrogen of the air is not, so this is left behind. Eemember, then, that ichen anything is burned, and also uhen wc breathe, the Oxygen of the air is used up, and. I Carbonic Acid is formed.

Fig. 2.

Experiment IV.

Take a tumbler and fill it halffull of lime-water.

Now take in breath and then blow gently through a glass tube or a straw for a short time.

WHAT THE AIR IS MADE OF. 15

Soon the lime-water will turn milky, because carbonate of lime is made, just as when you added the lime-water to the air in the tumbler in which the candle had been burned.

Exercise I.

1. What is air made of?

2. What change does a burning candle make in the air ?

3. What is formed when we breathe ?

-f-4. How can you get rid of two kinds of gas which are in the air ?

-f*5. How can you prove that Carbonic Acid is present in the breath of animals ?

t Rather more difficult questions, suitable for older children or when going through it a second time.

CHAPTEE II.

On Oxidation and the Composition of Food.

You have been told that when a candle burns, the Oxygen in the air is used up and Carbonic Acid is formed.. The atoms or little bits of Oxygen unite with little bits of Carbon in the tallow or wax of the candle. Xow Carbon is black ; soot, charcoal, and blacklead are different kinds of Carbon. But the candle is not black, and yet there is Carbon in it. The Carbon in tallow is combined, or joined with two gases, namely, Hydrogen* and Oxygen. These three things are called dements ; so tallow is said to be made of three elements : Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen. There is not enough Oxygen in tallow to make Carbonic Acid with

OXIDATION AND COMPOSITION OF FOOD. 17

tlie Carbon, hut when the tallow burns, more Oxygen from the air joins the Carbon and makes Carbonic Acid. If there were less Oxygen in the air then there would not be enough to combine with all the Carbon. But I can show you that there is real black Carbon in the white tallow, thus : —

Experiment V. — Light a candle and hold a plate over the flame for a few seconds just touching it: now you see some Carbon on the plate : the cold plate cooled the flame, and so some of the Carbon was not changed into Carbonic Acid.

f [Chemists represent Carbon by the letter C, and Oxygen by the letter 0. C is called the symbol* of Carbon, and 0 the symbol of Oxygen. When the candle burns two atoms, or bits, of Oxygen combine with one atom or t This o.nd similarly bracketed paragraphs may be omitted at discretion, and reserved for a second perusal.

THE TEMPERANCE I’BIMEB.

bit of Carbon, and this combination is written thus : —

Carbon. Oxygen. Carbonic Acid.

CO., {read thus, C 0 two) is called the formula* of Carbonic Acid.]

The three elements, Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen, make up a great number of very different substances ; they differ because some contain more Carbon, some more Hydrogen, and some more Oxygen. I will mention a few : — Fat, oil, cotton, paper, starch, sugar, honey, treacle, and alcohol or spirit of wine. All these substances will burn because they all contain Carbon for the Oxygen of the air to combine with.

But while the Oxygen is combining with the Carbon to form Carbonic Acid, you may wonder what becomes of the Hydrogen. Other atoms of Oxygen in the air join with the Hydrogen, and when these two elements combine together they form water.

OXIDATION AND COMPOSITION OF FOOD. 19

[The symbol of Hydrogen is H, and in order to form water one atom of Oxygen combines with two atoms of Hydrogen, thus : —

Hydrogen. Oxygen. Water.

{read thus, two H plus 0 equal H two 0)].

It is easy to show that water is formed as well as Carbonic Acid, when these things are burned.

Experiment VI. — Light a candle and hold a cold tumbler over the flame with the mouth downwards so that the edge is just level with the flame (Fig. 3). In a few seconds you will see that the inside of the glass has become steamy Fig. 3.

from the water which has risen from the burning candle, and settled on it like dew. It will wet your finger if you rub the inside of the glass.

When Oxygen combines with another ele-

THE TEMPERANCE PRIMER.

ment we say that that element is oxidized * So when Carbon is oxidized it forms Carbonic Acid ; when Hydrogen is oxidized it forms Water. [A substance which contains two or more elements combined together is called a compound, as water, tallow, &c.] When tallow is oxidized both Carbonic Acid and Water are formed, because the tallow contains both Carbon and Hydrogen. When a candle is burning and the Oxygen is rapidly combining with the Carbon and Hydrogen, as we have seen, we say that oxidation is going on rapidly.

Whenever two elements, such as Oxygen and Carbon, or Oxygen and Hydrogen, combine or join together to form something else, heat is always produced. That is why the flame of the candle is hot. So remember that oxidation alivays produces licat.

But though oxidation always produces heat it does not always produce light, that is, a flame, or fire. The amount of heat produced depends upon the rate at which the oxidation is going

OXIDATION' AND COMPOSITION OF FOOD. 21 on. It is very rapid when fire is produced ; that is to say, a great deal of Oxygen combines with some other elements in a very short time. Bemember, then, that the quicker the oxidation, the greater the heat.

Although the three elements, Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen, combined together in different quantities, form a great many things, there are more than sixty other elements, or kinds of matter, which unite to make many more substances. But these three, Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen, with one other, called Nitrogen* are the most common. If to these four you add Phosphorus * and Sulphur * you may say that all the things which we eat or drink are chiefly made of two, three, four, five, or all of these six elements combined together in different quantities and different ways.

[The symbol of Nitrogen is N; of Phosphorus, P ; and of Sulphur, or brimstone, S.]

You -were told that fat and sugar only contain Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen ; the lean part

TIIE TEMPERANCE PRIMER.

of meat contains Nitrogen and Sulphur besides. The following substances also contain Nitrogen in addition to Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen, and are therefore called nitrogenous* substances : — the white of an egg, which is made of albumen; * and peas and beans, which contain a great deal of vegetable albumen : jelly and glue, which are chiefly gelatin : * cheese, which is mostly casein:* and gluten* which is found in wheat and other seeds. Our brains and nerves contain a great deal of Nitrogen, and, in fact, so do almost all animal substances except fat. Fat and the vegetable substances which do not contain Nitrogen, such as paper, sugar, &c., are called non-nitrogenous substances, which means not nitrogenous, that is, without Nitrogen.

Exercise IT.

1. What is Carbon- like ? Mention some things which are made of it altogether, and some which are partially made of it.

OXIDATION AND COMPOSITION OF FOOD. 23

2. What happens when Carbon is burned ?

3. What is water made of ?

4. Write down all the elements mentioned in the lesson.

-f- 5. How can you prove that there is Carbon and Hydrogen in a piece of wood ?

-f* 6. What is oxidation ? Give instances.

7. Mention four things containing Nitrogen and four which do not. By what name is each of these classes called ?

■f 8. Give the formula of Carbonic Acid and of Water.

-f- 9. "What is the most common way in which heat and flame are produced ; and why do we sometimes get heat without flame, and sometimes both ?

CHAPTER III. On Heat-giving- and Flesh-forming Foods

It is possible to show you that there is Carbon in white sugar without burning it.

Experiment VII. — Take five or six lumps of loaf sugar. Break them up into small pieces, put them into a tall glass, and place that on a plate. Then pour on them a teaspoonful of water, and a little while afterwards three or four times as much oil of vitriol,* which is strong sulphuric acid * [The formula for this acid is H2S04, which is read thus: H two, SO four.] You must be very careful not to spill or touch any, even with a spoon, because it will burn your clothes or hands. Very soon

HEAT-GIVING AND FLESH-FORMING FOODS. 25 the sugar turns black and swells up ; it becomes hot ancl gives off some steam. This black stuff is the Carbon which was in the sugar [The formula for this kind of sugar is C^HooOn {read thus, C twelve, H twenty-two, 0 eleven). You may say that there are of Carbon 12 atoms, and of Water (H2O) 11 atoms, since bLO multiplied by ll = H220n. The strong sulphuric acid has a very great affinity or attraction for water ; so the water and the acid combine together, causing heat, and the Carbon is left alone.]

You have now learned two ways in which sugar may be destroyed, namely, by burning it and by the action of strong sulphuric acid upon it. In the first case, the elements of the sugar are oxidized, producing Carbonic Acid and Water; in the second, they are simply torn asunder, forming Carbon and Water. There is a third method of destroying sugar more commonly followed than the other methods, namely, by eating it.

c

THE TEMPERANCE PRIMER.

When sugar is eaten it is destroyed in the body in just the same way as when it is burned, that is, it is oxidized , and produces heat. The oxygen of the air gees into the body through your lungs when you draw in your breath ; and, when you breathe out, Carbonic Acid and Water come away. You have been shown that Carbonic Acid is present in your breath by Experiment IV., in Chapter I., page 14 ; the water you can see come away as a cloud on any cold, frosty morning, or by breathing on your slate. This Carbonic Acid and Water come from the slow combustion * or oxidation of sugar, and other kinds of food containing Carbon and Hydrogen. It is this slow combustion which keeps you warm.

Even when you are at rest and asleep some food is being burned up, but when you walk and run much you become hotter and more food is consumed. If you had nothing to eat, your body would become cooler every day, and at last you would die of cold. But if you were

HEAT-GIVING AND FLESH-FOEMING FOODS. 27

starved in a hot room, you would uot get cool so quickly and would live longer.

One of the chief uses of food, then, is to furnish heat or warmth to the body by being oxidized. Some kinds of food will produce more heat than other kinds. Fat, or any sort, of oil, gives most heat. This is the reason that people who live in very cold countries are very fond of oil and grease, and take a great deal. They like a good feast of blubber, as the fat of the whale is termed, and will eat tallow candles with glee. People in this country prefer to eat more fat in winter than in summer.

Sugar will produce almost as much heat as fat, though not quite. Next to sugar con.es starch, and food which contains it. Starch forms the greater part of many things we eat : it is found in all vegetables, but especially in potatoes, rice, wheat, oatmeal and barleymeal, arrowroot, sago, and tapioca. It is easily shown that there is starch in wheaten flour.

THE TEMPERANCE PRIMER.

Experiment VIII. — Take a little flour of wheat, put it into a small piece of muslin, and twist it up : now squeeze it about with, your fingers in a small basin of water : by doing this the starch is washed away and a sticky mass is left in the muslin : this mass is gluten. If you let the milky water stand a short time the starch will settle at the bottom.

Starch consists of little bodies more or less round or oval. The starch-grains of wheat are round, and about 1,000 would lie side by side

Fig. 4.

in an inch. Those of rice and potatoes are larger and of an oval shape. Starch does not contain any Nitrogen. [Its formula is C12Hj0Oio.] Remember, then, that fat, sugar, and starch, which arc non-nitrogenous substances — that is, do

HEAT-GIVING AND FLESH-FORMING FOODS. 29 not contain any Nitrogen — are burnt up in the body; they keep ns warm, and enable us to move about and do all kinds of work.

These non-nitrogenous kinds of food -which are burned up in the body to create heat and keep us warm are sometimes called “ heatgivers” Our bodies have always to be kept at very nearly the same heat. When you are quite well there is very little change indeed in the warmth or heat of your body. You may feel hot at one time and cold at another, but if you had a small thermometer/5 by which we can measure the heat exactly, and put it in your armpit next to the skin, it would always rise to about the same point, marking 98 degrees on the scale. If you put the end of the thermometer into your mouth for a short time, you would find the difference in the heat of the inside of your body, in very hot weather and in very cold weather, even less than the slight change that there is in the warmth of the skin, or outside of your body.

THE TEMPERANCE PRIMER.

If you have to keep a room warm, you know that when the weather gets colder you must put more coals on the fire to burn. So you will use up the coals in the coal-cellar faster, and the cellar will have need to be filled more often. So when it is cold, and your bodies begin to get colder, the millions of tiny fireplaces inside you bum up the store of food more quickly, so as to create more heat, and therefore you have to take more heat-giving food. It is chiefly in the muscles, or flesh, by which you move your body and limbs, that this food is burnt up or oxidized. Therefore, when you want to get warm, you have to run and jump about, and thus more heat is produced. If you sit still you become cold because the cold air is cooling you, and the heat is not being made quickly enough inside. You must put on more clothes to keep the heat in, and work the muscles to make more, and will need more food, or fuel to burn. Plougliboys are very fond of fat bacon, because they are

HEAT-GIVING AND FLESH-FORMING FOODS. 31 walking about all day long ; the fat is quickly burned in the muscles, as they use them so much.

You could not live if you had only sugar to eat, nor only fat, nor starch. If you had a railway-engine and fed it with water and coals, you could get up steam and travel many miles, but every now and then it would want more ■water and more coals. The coals are like the fuel-food, the heat-giving food. They furnish the heat required to work the engine. But you know that the engine will not work for ever ; it wears out. The coals will not mend the engine, you need iron to do that. So your body wears out by degrees when you do work or move about, and you cannot mend your body with sugar, or fat, or starch. It is the muscles which wear out most quickly, the red flesh which you can see in any butcher’s shop. This flesh contains Nitrogen, and, therefore, to mend or make it you need food which contains Nitrogen — nitrogenous or flesh-forming food.

THE TEMPERANCE PRIMER.

Meat, cheese, milk, peas, beans, oatmeal, wheat-flour (and therefore bread), all contain Nitrogen, some more, some less. So it would be possible to live on meat (as many South American Indians do), or milk (as babies do), or oatmeal (as some Scotchmen do), or even on bread. All these things contain some heat-giving as well as flesh-forming food, but most of them contain too much either of one sort or the other. Therefore, in order to have just enough fuel to give heat to the body and do work with, and just enough stuff to mend the body with as it wears out, without having too much of either, you want to take some food which is chiefly or altogether heat-giving and some food which is chiefly flesh-forming, that is to say, you require a mixed diet. So we take together bread (chiefly heat-giving), and cheese (chiefly flesh-forming) ; meat (chiefly flesh-forming), with potatoes and bread (chiefly heat-giving) ; broad beans (chiefly flesh-forming), and bacon (if fat, chiefly heat-giving). Oatmeal more nearly contains a

HEAT-GIVING AND FLESH-FORMING FOODS. 33 proper quantity of both these necessary kinds of food than bread does, and if mixed with milk is a perfect food. Milk itself contains fat (butter) and sugar, which are heat-giving, and caseine (cheese or curds) which are flesh-forming, but rather more of the latter than a man requires who has done growing; it just suits the babies whose bodies have to be made larger quickly and who therefore require much flesh-forming food.

o

Exercise III.

1. What is sugar changed into when it is completely burned ? and what when it is eaten?

2. What gases enter our lungs when we breathe and what come out ?

3. Name some heat-giving foods, and some flesh-forming foods.

4. What elements do each of these kinds of food contain ?

*f" 5. How can you prove that there is Carbon in sugar ?

■f* 6. How does exercise make us warm ?

f7. Describe starch and where it is found.

■f- 8. What is the advantage of a mixed diet ? Give examples.

CHAPTER IV. On Sugar, Malt, Yeast, and Beer

Sugar is found in many trees, plants, and vegetables. There are several kinds. The sugar which we use every day, both “ moist ” and “ white,” is called cane-sugar [sucrose*], because it is found in the sugar-cane. But a great deal of it comes from beet-root, and the same kind of sugar is also found in the sap of the maple and in Chinese sugar-grass. The next most important kind of sugar is called grape-sugar [glucose*]. It is found in grapes and in other sweet fruits. There are three varieties of it. One kind [dextrose*] is that in sweet fruits; another [Irevulose*] is in acid fruits, and this will not form crystals,* as the first kind does ;

SUGAR, MALT, YEAST, AND BEER.

the third kind [maltose*] is found in sprouting seeds. Besides grape-sugar, there is another which is found in milk, and is therefore called milk-sugar [lactose*].

[The composition of these sugars is as follows : —

Sucrose = CJ2H220n Lactose = Ci2IT210i2 Glucose = CnH280i4.]

Grape-sugar can he made from starch or cane-sugar by boiling them for some time in weak acid and water. Starch does not seem much like sugar, but it is formed of the same three elements, namely, Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen, but contains less Hydrogen and Oxygen than sugar does. You know that Hydrogen and Oxygen combined together form water ; if sufficient of these two gases to make four atoms of water is combined with one atom of starch we have grape-sugar.

Starch. Water. Grape-sujar.

THE TEMPERANCE PRIMEIi.

Starch can also be made into grape-sugar in another way. When a seed is sown, or is moistened with -water and kept in a warm place, part of it decays and changes into a substance called diastase. This substance acts on the starch in the seed, and changes it into sugar. If it is mixed with starch and warm water, it can thus change 2,000 times its own weight of starch.

This is the change which takes place when barley is “ malted,” that is, is made into malt. Malt is made in this way : — 1. Steeping. The grains of barley are soaked in water for fortyeight hours. 2. Couching* The moist barley is put into heaps; it gets warm, and begins to sprout or grow ; as it grows diastase is formed. 3. Flooring. It is then spread out in thin layers on a floor, so that it may not become too hot, and is turned over by men every day for from ten to twenty days, generally fourteen, according to the heat of the weather: thus, you see, malt cannot be made without working on