EFFECT UPON THE BLOOD. [Footnote: Alcohol acts upon the oxygen carrier, the coloring matter of the red corpuscles, causing it to settle in one part of the globule, or even to leave the corpuscle, and deposit itself in other elements of the blood. Thus the red corpuscle may become colorless, distorted, shrunken, and even entirely broken up—Dr. G. B. HARRIMAN.]— From the stomach, alcohol passes directly into the circulation, and so, in a few minutes, is swept through the entire system. If it be present in sufficient amount and strength, its eager desire for water will lead it to absorb moisture from the red corpuscles, causing them to shrink, change their form, harden, and lose some of their ability to carry oxygen; it may even make them adhere in masses, and so hinder their passage through the tiny capillaries.—RICHARDSON.
With most persons who indulge freely in alcoholic drinks, the blood is thin, the avidity of alcohol for water causing the burning thirst so familiar to all drinkers, and hence the use of enormous quantities of water, oftener of beer, which unnaturally dilutes the blood. The blood then easily flows from a wound, and renders an accident or surgical operation very dangerous.
When the blood tends, as in other cases of an excessive use of spirits, to coagulate in the capillaries, [Footnote: The blood is rendered unduly thin, or is coagulated, according to the amount of alcohol that is carried into the circulatory system. "The spirit may fix the water with the fibrin, and thus destroy the power of coagulation; or it may extract the water so determinately as to produce coagulation. This explains why, in acute cases of poisoning by alcohol, the blood is sometimes found quite fluid, at other times firmly coagulated in the vessels."—B. W. RICHARDSON.]
Reckless persons have sometimes drunk a large quantity of liquor for a wager, and, as the result of their folly, have died instantly. The whole of the blood in the heart having coagulated, the circulation was stopped, and death inevitably ensued.] there is a liability of an obstruction to the flow of the vital current through the heart, liver, lungs, etc., that may cause disease, and in the brain may lay the foundation of paralysis, or, in extreme cases, of apoplexy.
Wherever the alcoholized blood goes through the body, it bathes the delicate cells with an irritating narcotic poison, instead of a bland, nutritious substance.
EFFECT UPON THE LUNGS.—Here we can see how certainly the presence of alcohol interferes with the red corpuscles in their task of carrying oxygen. "Even so small a quantity as one part of alcohol to five hundred of the blood will materially check the absorption of oxygen in the lungs."
The cells, unable to take up oxygen, retain their carbonic-acid gas, and so return from the lungs, carrying back, to poison the system, the refuse matter the body has sought to throw off. Thus the lungs no longer furnish properly oxygenized blood.
The rapid stroke of the heart, already spoken of, is followed by a corresponding quickening of the respiration. The flush of the cheek is repeated in the reddened mucous membrane lining the lungs.
When this "Vascular enlargement" becomes permanent, and the highly albuminous membrane of the air cells is hardened and thickened as well as congested, the Osmose of the gases to and fro through its pores can no longer be prompt and free as before. Even when the effect passes off in a few days after the occasional indulgence, there has been, during that time, a diminished supply of the life-giving oxygen furnished to the system; weakness follows, and, in the case of hard drinkers, there is a marked liability to epidemics. [Footnote: There is no doubt that alcohol alters and impairs tissues so that they are more prone to disease.—DR. G. K. SABINE. A volume of statistics could be filled with quotations like the following: "Mr. Huber, who saw in one town in Russia two thousand one hundred and sixty persons perish with the cholera in twenty days, said: 'It is a most remarkable circumstance that persons given to drink have been swept away like flies. In Tiflis, with twenty thousand inhabitants, every drunkard has fallen,—all are dead, not one remaining.'">[
Physicians tell us, also, that there is a peculiar form of consumption known as Alcoholic Phthisis caused by long-continued and excessive use of liquor. It generally attacks those whose splendid physique has enabled them to "drink deep" with apparent impunity. This type of consumption appears late in life and is considered incurable. Severe cases of pneumonia are also generally fatal with inebriates. [Footnote: The Influence of Alcohol is continued in the chapter on Digestion.]