of these membranous expansions, and the way in which alcohol
deteriorates them, and obstructs their work, we quote again from Dr.
Richardson:

"The animal receives from the vegetable world and from the earth the
food and drink it requires for its sustenance and motion. It receives
colloidal food for its muscles: combustible food for its motion; water
for the solution of its various parts; salt for constructive and other
physical purposes. These have all to be arranged in the body; and they
are arranged by means of the membranous envelopes. Through these
membranes nothing can pass that is not, for the time, in a state of
aqueous solution, like water or soluble salts. Water passes freely
through them, salts pass freely through them, but the constructive
matter of the active parts that is colloidal does not pass; it is
retained in them until it is chemically decomposed into the soluble type
of matter. When we take for our food a portion of animal flesh, it is
first resolved, in digestion, into a soluble fluid before it can be
absorbed; in the blood it is resolved into the fluid colloidal
condition; in the solids it is laid down within the membranes into new
structure, and when it has played its part, it is digested again, if I
may so say, into a crystalloidal soluble substance, ready to be carried
away and replaced by addition of new matter, then it is dialysed or
passed through, the membranes into the blood, and is disposed of in the
excretions.

"See, then, what an all-important part these membranous structures play
in the animal life. Upon their integrity all the silent work of the
building up of the body depends. If these membranes are rendered too
porous, and let out the colloidal fluids of the blood--the albumen, for
example--the body so circumstanced, dies; dies as if it were slowly bled