The first day of alcohol gave an excess of one per cent., and the last of twenty-three per cent.; and the mean of these two gives almost the same percentage of excess as the mean of the six days.
Admitting that each beat of the heart was as strong during the alcoholic as in the water period (and it was really more powerful), the heart on the last two days of alcohol was doing one-fifth more work.
Adopting the lowest estimate which has been given of the daily work done by the heart, viz., as equal to 122 tons lifted one foot, the heart, during the alcoholic period, did daily work in excess equal to lifting 15.8 tons one foot, and in the last two days did extra work to the amount of twenty-four tons lifted as far.
The period of rest for the heart was shortened, though, perhaps, not to such an extent as would be inferred from the number of beats; for each contraction was sooner over. The beat on the fifth and sixth days after alcohol was left off, and apparently at the time when the last traces of alcohol were eliminated, showed, in the sphygmographic tracing, signs of unusual feebleness; and, perhaps, in consequence of this, when the brandy quickened the heart again, the tracing showed a more rapid contraction of the ventricles, but less power than in the alcoholic period. The brandy acted, in fact, on a heart whose nutrition had not been perfectly restored."
The flush often seen on the cheeks of those who are under the influence of alcoholic liquors, and which is produced by a relaxed and distended condition of the superficial blood vessels, is erroneously supposed by many to merely extend to the parts exposed to view. On this subject, Dr. Richardson says: "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 laid open to the eye, 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 once I had the unusual, though unhappy opportunity of observing the same phenomenon in the brain of a man who, in a paroxysm of alcoholic delirium, cast himself under the wheels of a railway carriage. The brain, instantaneously thrown out from the skull by the crash, was before me within three minutes after the accident. 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 injection. The white matter of the cerebrum, studded with red points, could scarcely be distinguished when it was incised, it was so preternaturally red; 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. This condition extended through both the larger and the smaller brain, cerebrum, and cerebellum, but was not so marked in the medulla, or commencing portion of the spinal cord, as in the other portions.
In course of time, in persons accustomed to alcohol, the vascular changes, temporary only in the novitiate, become confirmed and permanent. The bloom on the nose which characterizes the genial toper is the established sign of alcoholic action on the vascular structure.
Recently, physiological research has served to explain the reason why, under alcohol the heart at first beats so quickly, why the pulse rises, and why the minute blood-vessels become so strongly injected.
At one time it was imagined that alcohol acts immediately upon the heart by stimulating it to increased motion; and from this idea,—false idea, I should say,—of the primary action of alcohol, many erroneous conclusions have been drawn. We have now learned that there exist many chemical bodies which act in the same manner as alcohol, and that their effect is not to stimulate the heart, but to weaken the contractile force of the extreme and minute vessels which the heart fills with blood at each of its strokes. These bodies produce, in fact, a paralysis of the organic nervous supply of the vessels which constitute the minute vascular structures. The minute vessels when paralysed offer inefficient resistance to the force of the heart, and the pulsating organ thus liberated, like the main-spring of a clock from which the resistance has been removed, quickens in action, dilating the feebly resistant vessels, and giving evidence really not of increased, but of wasted power."
The continued use of alcoholic liquors in any considerable quantity produces irritation and inflammation of the stomach, and structural disease of the liver. Dr. Hammond has shown that alcohol has a special affinity for nervous matter, and is, therefore, found in greater quantity in the brain and spinal cord than elsewhere in the body. The gray matter of the brain undergoes, to a certain extent, a fatty degeneration, and there is a shrinking of the whole cerebrum, with impairment of the intellectual faculties, muscular tremor, and a shambling gait.
Large doses of alcohol cause a diminution of the temperature of the body, which in fevers is more marked than in the normal state.