Alcohol is so rapidly absorbed from the stomach and the upper intestine, that it does not as a rule produce much change in the small intestines. The absorption of the digested food from the intestinal tract by alcoholics when recovering from a debauch is greater than normal, provided they have ceased from their alcohol. The absorbing powers of the intestine remain a long time, and is the reason that so many alcoholics appear so well nourished. The acids of the gastric juice also stimulate the excretion of bile from the liver, and combining with the same ferment, the secretion, being taken up by the blood, stimulates the liver to an increased secretion of bile. If therefore one has so injured the stomach with the taking of alcohol that the mucous membrane is unable to secrete a proper gastric juice, it is readily seen that the proper stimulation to the liver and the pancreas are lacking, and the equilibrium of the entire digestive process of the body is upset. The blood from all the intestines goes directly to the liver, the circulation of this organ being so arranged that the blood must filter through and bathe the liver cells before it is gathered into a central vein and returns into the general circulation. In fact the liver is the great chemical laboratory of the body, and the complex processes that go on there are as yet but little understood. The processes which I have described as generally characteristic of alcohol are seen to a very marked extent in the liver. There is a chronic congestion, and there is very frequently various forms of degeneration in the hepatic cells, and in many cases an increase in the connective tissue to such an extent as to cause the disease known as cirrhosis of the liver. Alcohol may also under certain circumstances produce such excessive fatty degeneration in the liver, as in itself to be a menace to existence, for if the liver ceases to do its proper work, the whole minute nutritive chemistry, the metabolism of the body, breaks to pieces. The liver stands an enormous amount of use and abuse, and it is one of the last organs to give way under great strain, but when its functional processes do break down, the existence of the individual is not much further prolonged. The liver can consume and break down a certain amount of alcohol, but when more is poured into it than it can assimilate, some of it must go through into the general circulation and over the body, flowing to the brain and poisoning this organ, and the other nervous tissues.