CHAPTER XXI
HOW NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS AFFECT THE
BRAIN AND NERVES
What Narcotics and Stimulants Are.—A narcotic is something which when taken into the body makes the organs do their work more slowly and tends to cause sleepiness. Alcoholic drinks, tobacco, opium, soothing sirups, and pain killers are narcotics.
A stimulant is a substance which makes the organs of the body do more and quicker work and does not later make the organs work more slowly. Coffee and tea are stimulants. Beer, wine, and whisky were once thought to be stimulants, but experiments have shown them to be narcotics. They urge the brain to faster work for a few minutes, but a half hour later they make it act slower than usual.
Alcohol hurts the Brain.—Within five minutes after a drink of beer or whisky has been swallowed, part of the alcohol has reached the blood. Within fifteen minutes much of the alcohol has gone from the stomach directly into the blood. In a minute after entering the blood vessels it reaches the brain.
If much strong drink is taken, the cells of the brain become so numbed that they cannot give the right orders to the muscles to move the limbs. The person then staggers about and is said to be drunk. Much whisky taken will make the nerve cells so numb that a man cannot move, and he will then lie down as if in a deep sleep.
A tablespoonful of whisky will make a child drunk and twice that amount may make him very sick. Much use of strong drink sometimes gives to the brain a terrible disease called delirium tremens. In this sickness the man thinks he sees horned animals, hissing snakes, and other creatures which annoy him.
Alcohol injures the Thinking Part of the Brain.—It was once thought that wine or whisky would make a man think better. Now we know that either of these drinks makes his thoughts slower and also causes him to make mistakes.
Two doctors in Europe made many tests with men to learn how alcohol affected their thinking. They found that when using wine the men could do about one tenth less work in adding numbers than when they took no strong drink. These doctors also tested the effect of alcohol on memory and discovered that the use of even small quantities of liquor caused their pupils to learn their lessons more slowly.