The Coconino weekly sun., 1895-06-20
ALCOHOL AND PNEUMONIA.

ALCOHOL AND PNEUMONIA.
 Notwithstanding the recent learning from experiment and use, there are some physicians who cling to alcohol as an important factor in their treat ment of febrile disorders. A few ad- here to the old notion that alcohol contains food properties and insist lpon giving it in cases of tissue waste md gastric depression. It has been we'll established that the habit of lrinking spirituous beverages is an un fortunate element in the cons iteration of lung troubles, the alcoholic habitue when attacked with pneumonia usually ptfering case of which the prognoscis is grave.
 To determine the effect of alcohol in producing diseased or degenerate con- litions of the lungs a series of expert ments upon dogs was made in the winter of 1890, 1891, 1892 and 1893. The dogs were mixed lot of mongrel, adhered in by the city dog, catchers. They varied in weight from fifteen to twenty-five pounds and were appar- ently in good health. Iu all, thirty ,nimals were experimented on.
 According to the Medical News, '" the experiments were performed as ollows: A carefully etherized animal lad injected into his trachea, just below the larynz, a quantity of com mercial alcohol varying from one dram 70 one ounce in amount It was
 ound that the effects of equal amounts
 f alcohol upon animals of the same weight varied greatly. Two dogs, weighing twenty-five pounds each, were injected with two drams of alco' hol. One died in an hour and the other in six hours after the injection. Four other dogs, two weighing twenty iour pounds each, another eighteen ,ounds, and the fourth fifteen pounds, were ali injected with the same amount, two drams. All four sur vived and were as we'll as usual in four weeks. Another dog of eighteen bounds died five minutes after an in- ection of two drams, while another of fifteen pounds took one ounce and re- covered.
 The symptoms following the injec' tions were very much the same Tn all the dogs. There was dyspnGa, in. creasing as the inflammation increased, until the accessory muscles of respira- tion were called into play. The steth' oscope showed that air had great difficulty in entering the bronchi and air vesicles and there was also a tumultuous beating of the heart in pumping blood through the lung. It was impossible to take the tempera- lures. Post mortem examinations showed the lungs dark, cUngested and solid in some places. The air passages were filled with frothy, bloody mucus, even in the dog that died in five minutes. On section, the lungs were found dark, congested and full of bloody mucus. All this clearly shows how acutely sensitive the respiratory passages are to the action of alcohol. On microscopic .examination of the lungs, the air tubes and vesicles were found filled with immense numbers of ed and white corpuscles and much mucus. The same picture was pre- sented as in slide from the lungs of broncho pneumonia child. The strik ing similarity between the two is enough to prove that the pathological condition is the same and that alcohol has produced a lasion very closely re sembling, if not absolutely like, that of broncho pneumonia ir the human sub. ject. This explains to some extent why drunkards attacked by pneu- monia Ruccumb more readily than the temperate. The sensitive lung tissue is enveloped in alcohol flowing through the capillaries of the lung on one side, and exhaled, filling the air vesicles and tubes on the other. The condition must create state of semi engo:gement or of mild inflammation, similar to the drunkard's red nose or his epgorged gastric mucus membrane, i Such a state will seriously reduce the vitality of the pulmonary tissue and its power of resistance to external in. h