IT CURSES THE BODY.
First as to the body. One would suppose, from the marred and scarred,
and sometimes awfully disfigured forms and faces of men who have
indulged in intoxicating drinks, which are to be seen everywhere and
among all classes of society, that there would be no need of other
testimony to show that alcohol is an enemy to the body. And yet, strange
to say, men of good sense, clear judgment and quick perception in all
moral questions and in the general affairs of life, are often so blind,
or infatuated here, as to affirm that this substance, alcohol, which
they use under the various forms of wine, brandy, whisky, gin, ale or
beer, is not only harmless, when taken in moderation--each being his own
judge as to what "moderation" means--but actually useful and nutritious!
Until within the last fifteen or twenty years, a large proportion of the
medical profession not only favored this view, but made constant
prescription of alcohol in one form or another, the sad results of which
too often made their appearance in exacerbations of disease, or in the
formation of intemperate habits among their patients. Since then, the
chemist and the physiologist have subjected alcohol to the most rigid
tests, carried on often for years, and with a faithfulness that could
not be satisfied with guess work, or inference, or hasty conclusion.
ALCOHOL NOT A FOOD AND OF DOUBTFUL USE AS A MEDICINE.
As a result of these carefully-conducted and long-continued examinations
and experiments, the medical profession stands to-day almost as a unit
against alcohol; and makes solemn public declaration to the people that
it "is not shown to have a definite food value by any of the usual
methods of chemical analysis or physiological investigations;" and that
as a medicine its range is very limited, admitting often of a
substitute, and that it should never be taken unless prescribed by a
physician.
Reports of these investigations to which we have referred have appeared,
from time to time, in the medical journals of Europe and America, and
their results are now embodied in many of the standard and most reliable
treatises and text-books of the medical profession.
In this chapter we shall endeavor to give our readers a description of
the changes and deteriorations which take place in the blood, nerves,
membranes, tissues and organs, in consequence of the continued
introduction of alcohol into the human body; and in doing so, we shall
quote freely from medical writers, in order that our readers may have
the testimony before them in its directest form, and so be able to judge
for themselves as to its value.
DIGESTION.
And here, in order to give those who are not familiar with, the process
of digestion, a clear idea of that important operation, and the effect
produced when alcohol is taken with food, we quote from the lecture of
an English physician, Dr. Henry Monroe, on "The Physiological Action of
Alcohol." He says:
"Every kind of substance employed by man as food consists of sugar,
starch, oil and glutinous matters, mingled together in various
proportions; these are designed for the support of the animal frame. The
glutinous principles of food--_fibrine, albumen_ and _casein_--are
employed to build up the structure; while the _oil, starch_ and _sugar_
are chiefly used to generate heat in the body.
"The first step of the digestive process is the breaking up of the food
in the mouth by means of the jaws and teeth. On this being done, the
saliva, a viscid liquor, is poured into the mouth from the salivary
glands, and as it mixes with the food, it performs a very important part
in the operation of digestion, rendering the starch of the food soluble,
and gradually changing it into a sort of sugar, after which the other
principles become more miscible with it. Nearly a pint of saliva is
furnished every twenty-four hours for the use of an adult. When the
food has been masticated and mixed with the saliva, it is then passed
into the stomach, where it is acted upon by a juice secreted by the
filaments of that organ, and poured into the stomach in large quantities
whenever food comes in contact with its mucous coats. It consists of a
dilute acid known to the chemists as hydrochloric acid, composed of
hydrogen and chlorine, united together in certain definite proportions.
The gastric juice contains, also, a peculiar organic-ferment or
decomposing substance, containing nitrogen--something of the nature of
yeast--termed _pepsine_, which is easily soluble in the acid just named.
That gastric juice acts as a simple chemical solvent, is proved by the
fact that, after death, it has been known to dissolve the stomach
itself."
ALCOHOL RETARDS DIGESTION.
"It is an error to suppose that, after a good dinner, a glass of spirits
or beer assists digestion; or that any liquor containing alcohol--even
bitter beer--can in any way assist digestion. Mix some bread and meat
with gastric juice; place them in a phial, and keep that phial in a
sand-bath at the slow heat of 98 degrees, occasionally shaking briskly
the contents to imitate the motion of the stomach; you will find, after
six or eight hours, the whole contents blended into one pultaceous mass.
If to another phial of food and gastric juice, treated in the same way,
I add a glass of pale ale or a quantity of alcohol, at the end of seven
or eight hours, or even some days, the food is scarcely acted upon at
all. This is a fact; and if you are led to ask why, I answer, because
alcohol has the peculiar power of chemically affecting or decomposing
the gastric juice by precipitating one of its principal constituents,
viz., pepsine, rendering its solvent properties much less efficacious.
Hence alcohol can not be considered either as food or as a solvent for
food. Not as the latter certainly, for it refuses to act with the
gastric juice.
"'It is a remarkable fact,' says Dr. Dundas Thompson, 'that alcohol,
when added to the digestive fluid, produces a white precipitate, so that
the fluid is no longer capable of digesting animal or vegetable matter.'
'The use of alcoholic stimulants,' say Drs. Todd and Bowman, 'retards
digestion by coagulating the pepsine, an essential element of the
gastric juice, and thereby interfering with its action. Were it not that
wine and spirits are rapidly absorbed, the introduction of these into
the stomach, in any quantity, would be a complete bar to the digestion
of food, as the pepsine would be precipitated from the solution as
quickly as it was formed by the stomach.' Spirit, in any quantity, as a
dietary adjunct, is pernicious on account of its antiseptic qualities,
which resist the digestion of food by the absorption of water from its
particles, in direct antagonism to chemical operation."
ITS EFFECT ON THE BLOOD.
Dr. Richardson, in his lectures on alcohol, given both in England and
America, speaking of the action of this substance on the blood after
passing from the stomach, says:
"Suppose, then, a certain measure of alcohol be taken into the stomach,
it will be absorbed there, but, previous to absorption, it will have to
undergo a proper degree of dilution with water, for there is this
peculiarity respecting alcohol when it is separated by an animal
membrane from a watery fluid like the blood, that it will not pass
through the membrane until it has become charged, to a given point of
dilution, with water. It is itself, in fact, _so greedy for water, it
will pick it up from watery textures, and deprive them of it until, by
its saturation, its power of reception is exhausted_, after which it
will diffuse into the current of circulating fluid."
It is this power of absorbing water from every texture with which
alcoholic spirits comes in contact, that creates the burning thirst of
those who freely indulge in its use. Its effect, when it reaches the
circulation, is thus described by Dr. Richardson:
"As it passes through the circulation of the lungs it is exposed to the
air, and some little of it, raised into vapor by the natural heat, is
thrown off in expiration. If the quantity of it be large, this loss may
be considerable, and the odor of the spirit may be detected in the
expired breath. If the quantity be small, the loss will be comparatively
little, as the spirit will be held in solution by the water in the
blood. After it has passed through the lungs, and has been driven by the
left heart over the arterial circuit, it passes into what is called the
minute circulation, or the structural circulation of the organism. The
arteries here extend into very small vessels, which are called
arterioles, and from these infinitely small vessels spring the equally
minute radicals or roots of the veins, which are ultimately to become
the great rivers bearing the blood back to the heart. In its passage
through this minute circulation the alcohol finds its way to every
organ. To this brain, to these muscles, to these secreting or excreting
organs, nay, even into this bony structure itself, it moves with the
blood. In some of these parts which are not excreting, it remains for a
time diffused, and in those parts where there is a large percentage of
water, it remains longer than in other parts. From some organs which
have an open tube for conveying fluids away, as the liver and kidneys,
it is thrown out or eliminated, and in this way a portion of it is
ultimately removed from the body. The rest passing round and round with
the circulation, is probably decomposed and carried off in new forms of
matter.
"When we know the course which the alcohol takes in its passage through
the body, from the period of its absorption to that of its elimination,
we are the better able to judge what physical changes it induces in the
different organs and structures with which it comes in contact. It
first reaches the blood; but, as a rule, the quantity of it that enters
is insufficient to produce any material effect on that fluid. If,
however, the dose taken be poisonous or semi-poisonous, then even the
blood, rich as it is in water--and it contains seven hundred and ninety
parts in a thousand--is affected. The alcohol is diffused through this
water, and there it comes in contact with the other constituent parts,
with the fibrine, that plastic substance which, when blood is drawn,
clots and coagulates, and which is present in the proportion of from two
to three parts in a thousand; with the albumen which exists in the
proportion of seventy parts; with the salts which yield about ten parts;
with the fatty matters; and lastly, with those minute, round bodies
which float in myriads in the blood (which were discovered by the Dutch
philosopher, Leuwenhock, as one of the first results of microscopical
observation, about the middle of the seventeenth century), and which are
called the blood globules or corpuscles. These last-named bodies are, in
fact, cells; their discs, when natural, have a smooth outline, they are
depressed in the centre, and they are red in color; the color of the
blood being derived from them. We have discovered in recent years that
there exist other corpuscles or cells in the blood in much smaller
quantity, which are called white cells, and these different cells float
in the blood-stream within the vessels. The red take the centre of the
stream; the white lie externally near the sides of the vessels, moving
less quickly. Our business is mainly with the red corpuscles. They
perform the most important functions in the economy; they absorb, in
great part, the oxygen which we inhale in breathing, and carry it to the
extreme tissues of the body; they absorb, in great part, the carbonic
acid gas which is produced in the combustion of the body in the extreme
tissues, and bring that gas back to the lungs to be exchanged for oxygen
there; in short, they are the vital instruments of the circulation.
"With all these parts of the blood, with the water, fibrine, albumen,
salts, fatty matter and corpuscles, the alcohol comes in contact when it
enters the blood, and, if it be in sufficient quantity, it produces
disturbing action. I have watched this disturbance very carefully on the
blood corpuscles; for, in some animals we can see these floating along
during life, and we can also observe them from men who are under the
effects of alcohol, by removing a speck of blood, and examining it with
the microscope. The action of the alcohol, when it is observable, is
varied. It may cause the corpuscles to run too closely together, and to
adhere in rolls; it may modify their outline, making the clear-defined,
smooth, outer edge irregular or crenate, or even starlike; it may change
the round corpuscle into the oval form, or, in very extreme cases, it
may produce what I may call a truncated form of corpuscles, in which the
change is so great that if we did not trace it through all its stages,
we should be puzzled to know whether the object looked at were indeed a
blood-cell. All these changes are due to the action of the spirit upon
the water contained in the corpuscles; upon the capacity of the spirit
to extract water from them. During every stage of modification of
corpuscles thus described, their function to absorb and fix gases is
impaired, and when the aggregation of the cells, in masses, is great,
other difficulties arise, for the cells, united together, pass less
easily than they should through the minute vessels of the lungs and of
the general circulation, and impede the current, by which local injury
is produced.
"A further action upon the blood, instituted by alcohol in excess, is
upon the fibrine or the plastic colloidal matter. On this the spirit may
act in two different ways, according to the degree in which it affects
the water that holds the fibrine in solution. It may fix the water with
the fibrine, and thus destroy the power of coagulation; or it may
extract the water so determinately as to produce coagulation."
ON THE MINUTE CIRCULATION.
The doctor then goes on to describe the minute circulation through which
the constructive material in the blood is distributed to every part of
the body. "From this distribution of blood in these minute vessels," he
says, "the structure of organs derive their constituent parts; through
these vessels brain matter, muscle, gland, membrane, are given out from
the blood by a refined process of selection of material, which, up to
this time, is only so far understood as to enable us to say that it
exists. The minute and intermediate vessels are more intimately
connected than any other part with the construction and with the
function of the living matter of which the body is composed. Think you
that this mechanism is left uncontrolled? No; the vessels, small as they
are, are under distinct control. Infinitely refined in structure, they
nevertheless have the power of contraction and dilatation, which power
is governed by nervous action of a special kind."
Now, there are certain chemical agents, which, by their action on the
nerves, have the power to paralyze and relax these minute blood-vessels,
at their extreme points. "The whole series of nitrates," says Dr.
Richardson, "possess this power; ether possesses it; but the great point
I wish to bring forth is, that the substance we are specially dealing
with, alcohol, possesses the self-same power. By this influence it
produces all those peculiar effects which in every-day life are so
frequently illustrated."
PARALYZES THE MINUTE BLOOD-VESSELS.
It paralyzes the minute blood-vessels, and allows them to become dilated
with the flowing blood.
"If you attend a large dinner party, you will observe, after the first
few courses, when the wine is beginning to circulate, a progressive
change in some of those about you who have taken wine. The face begins
to get flushed, the eye brightens, and the murmur of conversation
becomes loud. What is the reason of that flushing of the countenance? It
is the same as the flush from blushing, or from the reaction of cold, or
from the nitrite of amyl. It is the dilatation of vessels following upon
the reduction of nervous control, which reduction has been induced by
the alcohol. In a word, the first stage, the stage of vascular
excitement from alcohol, has been established."
HEART DISTURBANCE.
"The action of the alcohol extending so far does not stop there. With
the disturbance of power in the extreme vessels, more disturbance is set
up in other organs, and the first organ that shares in it is the heart.
With each beat of the heart a certain degree of resistance is offered by
the vessels when their nervous supply is perfect, and the stroke of the
heart is moderated in respect both to tension and to time. But when the
vessels are rendered relaxed, the resistance is removed, the heart
begins to run quicker, like a watch from which the pallets have been
removed, and the heart-stroke, losing nothing in force, is greatly
increased in frequency, with a weakened recoil stroke. It is easy to
account, in this manner, for the quickened heart and pulse which
accompany the first stage of deranged action from alcohol, and you will
be interested to know to what extent this increase of vascular action
proceeds. The information on this subject is exceedingly curious and
important."
* * * * *
"The stage of primary excitement of the circulation thus induced lasts
for a considerable time, but at length the heart flags from its
overaction, and requires the stimulus of more spirit to carry it on in
its work. Let us take what we may call a moderate amount of alcohol, say
two ounces by volume, in form of wine, or beer, or spirits. What is
called strong sherry or port may contain as much as twenty-five per
cent. by volume. Brandy over fifty; gin, thirty-eight; rum, forty-eight;
whisky, forty-three; vin ordeinaire, eight; strong ale, fourteen;
champagne, ten to eleven; it matters not which, if the quantity of
alcohol be regulated by the amount present in the liquor imbibed. When
we reach the two ounces, a distinct physiological effect follows,
leading on to that first stage of excitement with which we are now
conversant. The reception of the spirit arrested at this point, there
need be no important mischief done to the organism; but if the quantity
imbibed be increased, further changes quickly occur. We have seen that
all the organs of the body are built upon the vascular structures, and
therefore it follows that a prolonged paralysis of the minute
circulation must of necessity lead to disturbance in other organs than
the heart."
OTHER ORGANS INVOLVED.
"By common observation, the flush seen on the cheek during the first
stage of alcoholic excitation, is presumed to extend merely to the parts
actually exposed to view. It cannot, however, be too forcibly impressed
that the condition is universal in the body. If the lungs could be seen,
they, too, would be found with their vessels injected; if the brain and
spinal cord could be laid open to view, they would be discovered in the
same condition; if the stomach, the liver, the spleen, the kidneys or
any other vascular organs or parts could be exposed, the vascular
engorgement would be equally manifest. In the lower animals, I have been
able to witness this extreme vascular condition in the lungs, and there
are here presented to you two drawings from nature, showing, one the
lungs in a natural state of an animal killed by a sudden blow, the other
the lungs of an animal killed equally suddenly, but at a time when it
was under the influence of alcohol. You will see, as if you were looking
at the structures themselves, how different they are in respect to the
blood which they contained, how intensely charged with blood is the lung
in which the vessels had been paralyzed by the alcoholic Spirit."
EFFECT ON THE BRAIN.
"I once had the unusual, though unhappy, opportunity of observing the
same phenomenon in the brain structure of a man, who, in a paroxysm of
alcoholic excitement, decapitated himself under the wheel of a railway
carriage, and whose brain was instantaneously evolved from the skull by
the crash. The brain itself, entire, was before me within three minutes
after the death. It exhaled the odor of spirit most distinctly, and its
membranes and minute structures were vascular in the extreme. It looked
as if it had been recently injected with vermilion. The white matter of
the cerebrum, studded with red points, could scarcely be distinguished,
when it was incised, by its natural whiteness; and the pia-mater, or
internal vascular membrane covering the brain, resembled a delicate web
of coagulated red blood, so tensely were its fine vessels engorged.
"I should add that this condition extended through both the larger and
the smaller brain, the cerebrum and cerebellum, but was not so marked in
the medulla or commencing portion of the spinal cord."
THE SPINAL CORD AND NERVES.
"The action of alcohol continued beyond the first stage, the function of
the spinal cord is influenced. Through this part of the nervous system
we are accustomed, in health, to perform automatic acts of a mechanical
kind, which proceed systematically even when we are thinking or speaking
on other subjects. Thus a skilled workman will continue his mechanical
work perfectly, while his mind is bent on some other subject; and thus
we all perform various acts in a purely automatic way, without calling
in the aid of the higher centres, except something more than ordinary
occurs to demand their service, upon which we think before we perform.
Under alcohol, as the spinal centres become influenced, these pure
automatic acts cease to be correctly carried on. That the hand may reach
any object, or the foot be correctly planted, the higher intellectual
centre must be invoked to make the proceeding secure. There follows
quickly upon this a deficient power of co-ordination of muscular
movement. The nervous control of certain of the muscles is lost, and the
nervous stimulus is more or less enfeebled. The muscles of the lower lip
in the human subject usually fail first of all, then the muscles of the
lower limbs, and it is worthy of remark that the extensor muscles give
way earlier than the flexors. The muscles themselves, by this time, are
also failing in power; they respond more feebly than is natural to the
nervous stimulus; they, too, are coming under the depressing influence
of the paralyzing agent, their structure is temporarily deranged, and
their contractile power reduced.
"This modification of the animal functions under alcohol, marks the
second degree of its action. In young subjects, there is now, usually,
vomiting with faintness, followed by gradual relief from the burden of
the poison."
[Illustration: AN UTTER WRECK.]
EFFECT ON THE BRAIN CENTRES.
"The alcoholic spirit carried yet a further degree, the cerebral or
brain centres become influenced; they are reduced in power, and the
controlling influences of will and of judgment are lost. As these
centres are unbalanced and thrown into chaos, the rational part of the
nature of the man gives way before the emotional, passional or organic
part. The reason is now off duty, or is fooling with duty, and all the
mere animal instincts and sentiments are laid atrociously bare. The
coward shows up more craven, the braggart more boastful, the cruel more
merciless, the untruthful more false, the carnal more degraded. '_In
vino veritas_' expresses, even, indeed, to physiological accuracy, the
true condition. The reason, the emotions, the instincts, are all in a
state of carnival, and in chaotic feebleness.
"Finally, the action of the alcohol still extending, the superior brain
centres are overpowered; the senses are beclouded, the voluntary
muscular prostration is perfected, sensibility is lost, and the body
lies a mere log, dead by all but one-fourth, on which alone its life
hangs. The heart still remains true to its duty, and while it just lives
it feeds the breathing power. And so the circulation and the
respiration, in the otherwise inert mass, keeps the mass within the bare
domain of life until the poison begins to pass away and the nervous
centres to revive again. It is happy for the inebriate that, as a rule,
the brain fails so long before the heart that he has neither the power
nor the sense to continue his process of destruction up to the act of
death of his circulation. Therefore he lives to die another day.
* * * * *
"Such is an outline of the primary action of alcohol on those who may be
said to be unaccustomed to it, or who have not yet fallen into a fixed
habit of taking it: For a long time the organism will bear these
perversions of its functions without apparent injury, but if the
experiment be repeated too often and too long, if it be continued after
the term of life when the body is fully developed, when the elasticity
of the membranes and of the blood-vessels is lessened, and when the tone
of the muscular fibre is reduced, then organic series of structural
changes, so characteristic of the persistent effects of spirit, become
prominent and permanent. Then the external surface becomes darkened and
congested, its vessels, in parts, visibly large; the skin becomes
blotched, the proverbial red nose is defined, and those other striking
vascular changes which disfigure many who may probably be called
moderate alcoholics, are developed. These changes, belonging, as they
do, to external surfaces, come under direct observation; they are
accompanied with certain other changes in the internal organs, which we
shall show to be more destructive still."