Smoking and Drinking

by James Parton

The few experiments which have been made, with a view to trace the course of alcohol in the living system, all confirm what all drinkers feel, that it is to the brain alcohol hurries when it has passed the lips. Some innocent dogs have suffered and died in this investigation. Dr. Percy, a British physician, records, that he injected two ounces and a half of alcohol into the stomach of a dog, which caused its almost instant death. The dog dropped very much as he would if he had been struck upon the head with a club. The experimenter, without a moment's unnecessary delay, removed the animal's brain, subjected it to distillation, and extracted from it a surprising quantity of alcohol,—a larger proportion than he could distil from the blood or liver. The alcohol seemed to have rushed to the brain: it was a blow upon the head which killed the dog. Dr. Percy introduced into the stomachs of other dogs smaller quantities of alcohol, not sufficient to cause death; but upon killing the dogs, and subjecting the brain, the blood, the bile, the liver, and other portions of the body, to distillation, he invariably found more alcohol in the brain than in the same weight of other organs. He injected alcohol into the blood of dogs, which caused death; but the deadly effect was produced, not upon the substance of the blood, but upon the brain. His experiments go far toward explaining why the drinking of alcoholic liquors does not sensibly retard digestion. It seems that, when we take wine at dinner, the alcohol does not remain in the stomach, but is immediately absorbed into the blood, and swiftly conveyed to the brain and other organs. If one of those "four-bottle men" of the last generation had fallen down dead, after boozing till past midnight, and he had been treated as Dr. Percy treated the dogs, his brain, his liver, and all the other centres of power, would have yielded alcohol in abundance; his blood would have smelt of it; his flesh would have contained it; but there would have been very little in the stomach. Those men were able to drink four, six, and seven bottles of wine at a sitting, because the sitting lasted four, six, and seven hours, which gave time for the alcohol to be distributed over the system. But instances have occurred of laboring men who have kept themselves steadily drunk for forty-eight hours, and then died. The bodies of two such were dissected some years ago in England, and the food which they had eaten at the beginning of the debauch was undigested. It had been preserved in alcohol as we preserve snakes.

Once, and only once, in the lifetime of man, an intelligent human eye has been able to look into the living stomach, and watch the process of digestion. In 1822, at the United States military post of Michilimackinac, Alexis St. Martin, a Canadian of French extraction, received accidentally a heavy charge of duck-shot in his side, while he was standing one yard from the muzzle of the gun. The wound was frightful. One of the lungs protruded, and from an enormous aperture in the stomach the food recently eaten was oozing. Dr. William Beaumont, U.S.A., the surgeon of the post, was notified, and dressed the wound. In exactly one year from that day the young man was well enough to get out of doors, and walk about the fort; and he continued to improve in health and strength, until he was as strong and hardy as most of his race. He married, became the father of a large family, and performed for many years the laborious duties appertaining to an officer's servant at a frontier post. But the aperture into the stomach never closed, and the patient would not submit to the painful operation by which such wounds are sometimes closed artificially. He wore a compress arranged by the doctor, without which his dinner was not safe after he had eaten it.

By a most blessed chance it happened that this Dr. William Beaumont, stationed there on the outskirts of creation, was an intelligent, inquisitive human being, who perceived all the value of the opportunity afforded him by this unique event. He set about improving that opportunity. He took the young man into his service, and, at intervals, for eight years, he experimented upon him. He alone among the sons of men has seen liquid flowing into the stomach of a living person while yet the vessel was at the drinker's lips. Through the aperture (which remained two and a half inches in circumference) he could watch the entire operation of digestion, and he did so hundreds of times. If the man's stomach ached, he could look into it and see what was the matter; and, having found out, he would drop a rectifying pill into the aperture. He ascertained the time it takes to digest each of the articles of food commonly eaten, and the effects of all the usual errors in eating and drinking. In 1833, he published a thin volume, at Plattsburg on Lake Champlain, in which the results of thousands of experiments and observations were only too briefly stated. He appears not to have heard of teetotalism, and hence all that he says upon the effects of alcoholic liquors is free from the suspicion which the arrogance and extravagance of some teetotalers have thrown over much that has been published on this subject. With a mind unbiassed, Dr. Beaumont, peering into the stomach of this stout Canadian, notices that a glass of brandy causes the coats of that organ to assume the same inflamed appearance as when he had been very angry, or much frightened, or had overeaten, or had had the flow of perspiration suddenly checked. In other words, brandy played the part of a foe in his system, not that of a friend; it produced effects which were morbid, not healthy. Nor did it make any material difference whether St. Martin drank brandy, whiskey, wine, cider, or beer, except so far as one was stronger than the other.

"Simple water," says Dr. Beaumont, "is perhaps the only fluid that is called for by the wants of the economy. The artificial drinks are probably all more or less injurious; some more so than others, but none can claim exemption from the general charge. Even tea and coffee, the common beverages of all classes of people, have a tendency to debilitate the digestive organs…. The whole class of alcoholic liquors may be considered as narcotics, producing very little difference in their ultimate effects upon the system."

He ascertained too (not guessed, or inferred, but ascertained, watch in hand) that such things as mustard, horse-radish, and pepper retard digestion. At the close of his invaluable work Dr. Beaumont appends a long list of "Inferences," among which are the following: "That solid food of a certain texture is easier of digestion than fluid; that stimulating condiments are injurious to the healthy system; that the use of ardent spirits always produces disease of the stomach if persisted in; that water, ardent spirits, and most other fluids, are not affected by the gastric juice, but pass from the stomach soon after they have been received." One thing appears to have much surprised Dr. Beaumont, and that was, the degree to which St. Martin's system could be disordered without his being much inconvenienced by it. After drinking hard every day for eight or ten days, the stomach would show alarming appearances of disease; and yet the man would only feel a slight headache, and a general dulness and languor.

If there is no comfort for drinkers in Dr. Beaumont's precious little volume, it must be also confessed, that neither the dissecting-knife nor the microscope afford us the least countenance. All that has yet been ascertained of the effects of alcohol by the dissection of the body favors the extreme position of the extreme teetotalers. A brain alcoholized the microscope proves to be a brain diseased. Blood which has absorbed alcohol is unhealthy blood,—the microscope shows it. The liver, the heart, and other organs, which have been accustomed to absorb alcohol, all give testimony under the microscope which produces discomfort in the mind of one who likes a glass of wine, and hopes to be able to continue the enjoyment of it. The dissecting-knife and the microscope so far have nothing to say for us,—nothing at all: they are dead against us.

Of all the experiments which have yet been undertaken with a view to trace the course of alcohol through the human system, the most important were those made in Paris a few years ago by Professors Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy, distinguished physicians and chemists. Frenchmen have a way of co-operating with one another, both in the investigation of scientific questions and in the production of literature, which is creditable to their civilization and beneficial to the world. The experiments conducted by these gentlemen produced the remarkable effect of causing the editor of a leading periodical to confess to the public that he was not infallible. In 1855 the Westminster Review contained an article by Mr. Lewes, in which the teetotal side of these questions was effectively ridiculed; but, in 1861, the same periodical reviewed the work of the French professors just named, and honored itself by appending a note in which it said: "Since the date of our former article, scientific research has brought to light important facts which necessarily modify the opinions we then expressed concerning the rôle of alcohol in the animal body." Those facts were revealed or indicated in the experiments of Messrs. Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy.

Ether and chloroform,—their mode of operation; why and how they render the living body insensible to pain under the surgeon's knife; what becomes of them after they have performed that office,—these were the points which engaged their attention, and in the investigation of which they spent several years. They were rewarded, at length, with the success due to patience and ingenuity. By the aid of ingenious apparatus, after experiments almost numberless, they felt themselves in a position to demonstrate, that, when ether is inhaled, it is immediately absorbed by the blood, and by the blood is conveyed to the brain. If a surgeon were to commit such a breach of professional etiquette as to cut off a patient's head at the moment of complete insensibility, he would be able to distil from the brain a great quantity of ether. But it is not usual to take that liberty except with dogs. The inhalation, therefore, proceeds until the surgical operation is finished, when the handkerchief is withdrawn from the patient's face, and he is left to regain his senses. What happens then? What becomes of the ether? These learned Frenchmen discovered that most of it goes out of the body by the road it came in at,—the lungs. It was breathed in; it is breathed out. The rest escapes by other channels of egress; it all escapes, and it escapes unchanged! That is the point: it escapes without having left anything in the system. All that can be said of it is, that it entered the body, created morbid conditions in the body, and then left the body. It cost these patient men years to arrive at this result; but any one who has ever had charge of a patient that has been rendered insensible by ether will find little difficulty in believing it.

Having reached this demonstration, the experimenters naturally thought of applying the same method and similar apparatus to the investigation of the effects of alcohol, which is the fluid nearest resembling ether and chloroform. Dogs and men suffered in the cause. In the moisture exhaled from the pores of a drunken dog's skin, these cunning Frenchmen detected the alcohol which had made him drunk. They proved it to exist in the breath of a man, at six o'clock in the evening, who had drunk a bottle of claret for breakfast at half past ten in the morning. They also proved that, at midnight, the alcohol of that bottle of wine was still availing itself of other avenues of escape. They proved that when alcohol is taken into the system in any of its dilutions,—wine, cider, spirits, or beer,—the whole animal economy speedily busies itself with its expulsion, and continues to do so until it has expelled it. The lungs exhale it; the pores of the skin let out a little of it; the kidneys do their part; and by whatever other road an enemy can escape it seeks the outer air. Like ether, alcohol enters the body, makes a disturbance there, and goes out of the body, leaving it no richer than it found it. It is a guest that departs, after giving a great deal of trouble, without paying his bill or "remembering" the servants. Now, to make the demonstration complete, it would be necessary to take some unfortunate man or dog, give him a certain quantity of alcohol,—say one ounce,—and afterwards distil from his breath, perspiration, &c., the whole quantity that he had swallowed. This has not been done; it never will be done; it is obviously impossible. Enough has been done to justify these conscientious and indefatigable inquirers in announcing, as a thing susceptible of all but demonstration, that alcohol contributes to the human system nothing whatever, but leaves it undigested and wholly unchanged. They are fully persuaded (and so will you be, reader, if you read their book) that, if you take into your system an ounce of alcohol, the whole ounce leaves the system within forty-eight hours, just as good alcohol as it went in.

There is a boy in Pickwick who swallowed a farthing. "Out with it," said the father; and it is to be presumed—though Mr. Weller does not mention the fact—that the boy complied with a request so reasonable. Just as much nutrition as that small copper coin left in the system of that boy, plus a small lump of sugar, did the claret which we drank yesterday deposit in ours; so, at least, we must infer from the experiments of Messrs. Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy.