Year: 1876

In a late number of the Edinburgh
Review is an exhaustive and carefully
written paper upon "The Physiological
Influence of Alcohol" 1t is calm and
scientific, not emotional, but crowded
with facts and information. According
TO this article, when a spirituous drink is
taken into the body it docs net simply
run through the digestive cavity of the
body, but it runs through the blood be-
fore it can find any escape, and it clings
to that blood for considerable period,
flowing with it round and through the
circling stream of its increasing progress.
1t goes everywhere, in such fiber, men,
brane and tissue, and fills and saturates
each vital Organ-flesh, brain, heart,
liver, lung, kidney, skin and secreting
apparatus. Whenever there should be
blood under the natural arrangements of
life, there is now blood mingled with the
alcoholic spirit.


Articles of food are complex bodies,
built up from simpler elements by the
effort of vegetable life." Alcohol is not
such complex principle. The foods
which furnish substance to the living
structures are, for the most part, compOsd
with the aid of nitrogen, and have there
fore an affinity with the vital parts of the
human structure. "The fibrin of the
blood. the muscular flesh. the cartilages
and tendons. the membranes and the
skin, the soft nerve-pulp and the brain,
are all so many examples of nitrogenized
matter" But alcohol is entire devoid
of nitrogen in any form. In the excep-
tional cases where alcohol has been found
useful as a medicine, an unnatural con-
dition of the body exists, and physicians
should determine when stimulants as a
medicine are necessary.


The parts of the body which possess
the most energetic vitality, the brain,
the nerves and the nervous material of
the spinal cord, are principally composed
of matter of the most pulpy consistence,
so soft that it may be almost termed
melting This nerve pulp is packed into
minute filmy sacks and tubes discerna-
bic only by microscopic aid. Through
these tiny and almost invisible films the
blood is filtered" The nerve appro-
PIRATES such qualities of the blood as
nourish life and build up the structure,
and at the same time they reject and
throw back into the stream their own
waste particles. Large quantities of
pulpy matter, and the first evil effect of
alcohol is an uncomfortable impulse"
to draw water into itself Excessive use
of alcohol burdens and dries up the
nerve-pulp in such way as to impair if
it spoils its proper Office. When exces-
sive drinking does not produce intoxica-
tion it is because the nerve-pulp has be-
come insensible as an "oiled silk"


The flushed face upon the approach of
inebriation is among the earliest signs of
the disturbance of these delicate "filters"
in their work, the face among the parts
of the body exceptionally supplied with
blood. The restraining or filteriny
work of the pulpy substance is impaired,
and hence the unnatural reception of
blood into the pulp cells. If this un-
natural process is repeated, or becomes
habitual, the blotched, red, swollen or
pimpled face is the result of keeping the
nerve-pulp saturated with alcohol, and
the delicate membranes, thickened,
dried and dyed red, show through the
skin.


The first stages of intoxication are
shown in the want of command over the
lower lip and lower limbs. The nerve.
pulp of the spinal cord is touched. The
muscles feel the torpor. Trembling and
shuddering follow. Next the nerve-pulp
of the brain comes under evil influence,
and the control of the judgment and the
will disappears. When man is what is
termed "dead drunk" the paralysis of
the higher perve centers and of the brain
is carried to its full end. All inlets of
the senses are closed; all consciousness
and sensation are destroyed, and all
power of voluntary movement is effaced.
The heart--the ssat of life-toils on. If
an enormous quantity of alcohol is swal-
lowed at once, as in the case of foolish
wagers, the toll of the heart soon ceases
and the man is dead indeed. But in
ordinary instances the torpor saves life, rs
it stops the drinker just at the point
when further drinking would kill him
outright.


With this general view of the effects of
alcohol, and the manner in which they
are produced, it is easy to understand
why headache, sleeplessness, nausea,
dalpitation of the heart, and the "tremb-
ling delirium" accompany and follow the
excessive use of alcohol. A poison in
the stomach can be pumped cut or
voided. A poison in the blood must wait
removal tiltthe efforts of nature effect it.
But when nature itself is abused or i'm
paired, its recuperative power soon be.
comes destroyed. The effects of con-
tinued alcoholization upon the liver,
kidneys, and stomach it is unnecessary to
describe, as they are well understood.
But where the mischievous process be-
gins and how it is continued are points
new to the most non-medical readers.