Again, Dr Dickinson, writing “on the morbid effects of alcohol in persons who trade in liquor,” gave the results of an examination of 149 traders in liquor, as compared with 149 persons of various trades. The general results were diseases of the liver much more common in those who dealt in alcoholic drinks. In the lungs tubercle affected sixty-one persons of the alcoholic, forty-four of the non-alcoholic.
Tubercle in the brain, liver, kidneys, spleen, bowels, mesenteric glands, and peritoneum were twice as common in the alcoholic as in the non-alcoholic. The verdict, therefore, is unavoidable that alcohol (in excess) engenders tubercle in the brain, inflammations, atrophy, hæmorrhages; in the heart and vessels atheroma, hypertrophy, and other affections, were all more common in the alcoholic than in the non-alcoholic series. The evidence in kidney disease did not appear so conclusive, but some forms of kidney disease appear to be increased. The author sums up thus:—“Alcohol causes fatty infiltration and fibroid encroachment; it engenders tubercle, encourages suppuration, and retards healing; it produces untimely atheroma, invites hæmorrhage, and anticipates age. The most constant fatty change, replacement by oil of the material of epithelial cells and muscular fibres, though probably nearly universal, is most noticeable in the liver, the heart, and the kidney.”
Alcohol also seems to be the cause of special diseases, besides those more common and generally known ones, delirium tremens, alcoholism, &c. Of these we may mention one recorded by M. Galezowski, a peculiar affection of the eyes, which the doctor found very
prevalent during the siege of Paris in 1870-1. In the five months of the siege fifty patients were affected by it, whilst during the twelve months preceding the siege only nineteen were to be found. Dr Galowski ascribed the malady to the habit of taking alcoholic drinks in the morning fasting. A peculiar kind of palsy has also been referred to alcoholic poisoning.
The following table, compiled by Dr Joseph Williams, lends support to the fact that an indulgence in alcohol is either the cause of insanity, or that it tends to its increase:
| Total admission. | Proportion caused by intemperance. | |
| Charenton | 855 | 134 |
| Bicêtre and Salpêtrière | 2012 | 414 |
| Bordeaux | 156 | 20 |
| Turin, 1830-31 | 158 | 17 |
| Turin, 1831-36 | 390 | 76 |
| Gard | 209 | 4 |
| United States | 551 | 146 |
| Palermo | 189 | 9 |
| Caen | 60 | 16 |
| Dundee | 14 | 4 |
| M. Parchappe | 167 | 46 |
| M. Batten | 288 | 54 |
| ——— | ——— | |
| 5019 | 940 |
Commenting on these figures, Mr Walter Blyth remarks, “There may be another explanation of the fact that many mad people have been great drinkers. A large proportion of those subject to insanity are driven by their morbid minds to drink; so that it may be that insanity causes drink, and not drink causes insanity.”
Many medical writers who are no advocates for the total abandonment of alcohol limit its consumption, in healthy people, to one or two fluid ounces a day, in the form of wine, beer, or spirits and water; two fluid ounces is, we believe, the quantity apportioned daily to every able-bodied seaman in the Royal Navy. Any slight habitual departure from this standard—even when the evidences of excess are not perceptible to others—all authority, historical, pathological, and physiological (unless it be given as a medicine), shows to be injurious. The researches of Anstie, Parkes, and Count Wollowicz, appear to prove that any quantity of alcohol exceeding an ounce and a half taken by an adult showed itself in the urine, a circumstance which these writers look upon as tending to show that the system has taken more alcohol than can be used in the body itself. In slight doses the action of alcohol is to produce a sedative effect upon the nerves, to redden slightly the lining membrane of the stomach, and to stimulate the secretion of the gastric juice.
Thus, in small doses alcohol may, and doubtless does, promote appetite. In excess, however, all these effects are turned to evil, and then ensue an inflammatory condition of the stomach, compression of the gland ducts from thickening of the tissue around them, excessive mucous secretion, and great loss of appetite. When carried into the circulation it greatly increases the force of the heart’s action, and at the same time paralyses, as it were, the restraining nervous supply to the arteries and small vessels, so that they can no longer oppose themselves to the blood-current, but dilate. This action in a small degree, occurring in persons of a weak and languid circulation, is no doubt beneficial; on the other hand, when in excess, it is most dangerous, and is a cause of the greater part of the diseases of the heart and great vessels.
“There appears to be a slight fall of temperature with moderate doses of alcohol, a very decided fall with excessive doses; the muscular and nervous systems are transitorily stimulated, and may do more work when small doses are given in cases of fatigue, but in other cases there is a marked torpor of the nervous and a want of co-ordination of the muscular system.”—Blyth.