Thrust to the Heart on New Year's Eve

Millie's on the couch reading Les Miserables on a Kindle.  Chuckling, she just brought it to me, with the following portion highlighted for my edification:

You have but one fault, O woman, and that is nibbling sugar. O nibbling sex, your pretty little white teeth adore sugar. Now, heed me well, sugar is a salt. All salts are withering. Sugar is the most desiccating of all salts; it sucks the liquids of the blood through the veins; hence the coagulation, and then the solidification of the blood; hence tubercles in the lungs, hence death. That is why diabetes borders on consumption.  Then, do not crunch sugar, and you will live.