WORKING OF ALCOHOLIC STIMULANTS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 754, 29 September 1876, Page 4

WORKING OF ALCOHOLIC STIMULANTS.

In a late number of the Edinburgh Review is an exhaustive and carefully, written paper upon “ Physiological Influence on Alcohol.” It is calm and scientific, nob emotional, but crowded with‘facts and information. According to'this article, when a spirituous drink is taken into the body it does not simply run through the digestive ‘cavity of the body, but it-runs through the blood before it can find any escape and it clings to that blood for 'a considerable period, flowing with it round and round through the circling stream of its increasing progress. It goes everywhere, in each fibre, membrane, and tissue, aiid fills and saturates each vital organ—flesh, brain, heart, liver, lung, kidney, skin, and secreting apparatus. When there should be blood under the natural arrangements of life, there is now blood mingled with alcoholic spirit. Articles of food are ■“ complex bodies, built up from simpler elements by the effort of vegetable life.” Alcohol is not such a complex principle. The foods -which furnish substance to the living structures are, for the moSt part, composed with the acid of nitrogen, and have therefore an affinity with the vital parts of the human structure. “ The fibrine of the blood, the muscular flesh, the cartilage and tendons, the membranes and akin, the soft nerve pulp and the brain, are also so many examples of the nitrogenised matter.” But alcohol is entirely devoid of matter in any form. In the exceptional cases where alcohol has been found useful as a medicine, an unnatural condition 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 cf the spinal cords—are principally composed of matter of the most pulpy -consistence, so soft that it may almost be termed melting. This nerve-pulp is packed into minute filmy sacks and tubes, discernable only by microscopic aid. Through these tiny and almost invisible films the Hood is “filtered.” The nerve-pulp appropriates such qualities of blood as nourish life and build up the structure, and at the same time they reject and throw into the stream their own waste particles. Large quantities of water enter into the composition of this pulpy matter, and the first evil effects of alcohol is an “uncontrollable impulse” to draw water into itself. Excessive use of alcohol hardens and dries up the nerve-pulp in such away as to impair if not spoil 'it for its proper office. When excessive drinking does not produce’intoxication it is because the nerve-pulp has become insensible as an “oiled silk.” The flushed face upon the approach of inebriation is among the earliest signs of the disturbance of those delicate “ filters” in their work, the face being among the parts of the body exceptionally supplied with blood. The “ restraining,, or filtering work of the pulpy substance is impaired, and hence the unnatural reception of the blood into the pulp-cells. If this ununnatural process is repeated or becomes habitual, the blotched, red, swollen, or pimpled face is the result cf keeping the nerve pulp saturated with alcohol, the delicate membranes thickened, dried, and clyed 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 a man is what is termed “ dead drunk,” the paralysis of the higher nerve centres and of the brain is carried to its full end All the inlets- of the senses are closed, all consciousness;and all power of voluntary 'movement is effaced. The heart —the seat of life—toils on. If an enormous -quantity of alcohol is swallowed at once, as in the case of foolish wagers, the toil of the heart soon ceases, and the man is dead in deed. But in ordinary instances the torpor saves life, as 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, slcpplessness, and nausea, palpitation of the heart, and the “ trembling delirium,” accompany and follow the excessive use of alcohol. A poison in the stomach can he pumped or voided. A poison in the blood must wait i-emoval till the effects of nature effect it. (But when nature itself is abused or impaired, the recuoerative power soon becomes destroyed. The effect of continued al■coholisation upon the liver, kidneys and stomach, it is unnecessary to describe, as they are well understood. But where the mischievous process begins, and .how it is -continued, are points new to most non-medical leaders.