The reactions which take place between the blood and alcohol remain, notwithstanding the energy devoted to their investigation, among the unsolved problems of physiological chemistry. It were a profitless task to here review the researches into this subject or to set forth their conflicting results. It may be stated that conclusions based upon the reactions between blood drawn from the vessels and tested with alcohol in the laboratory are wholly inapplicable to the inquiry. While it is generally conceded that some part of the alcohol ingested undergoes decomposition within the organism, what the steps of the process are and what the products are have not yet been demonstrated. Rossbach and Nothnagel8 state that it has not yet been possible to detect in the organism the products of the oxidation of alcohol—namely, aldehyde, acetic acid, and oxalic acid; nevertheless, acetic acid formed in the economy by the general combustion of alcohol may form acetates, which, undergoing decomposition, are transformed into carbonates and water, and are eliminated as such in the urine.9 This view is also held by Parkes.10
8 Cited by Peeters, L'Alcool, physiologie, pathologie, médecine légale, 1885.
9 Henri Toffier found in the brain of a man who died of acute poisoning by alcohol not only alcohol, but also aldehyde: Considerations sur l'empoisonment aiqu par Alcohol, Paris, 1880.
10 Journal of Practical Hygiene, 4th ed., Lond., 1873.
According to Peeters, the action of alcohol upon the blood may be summed up as follows: That portion of the ingested alcohol which undergoes decomposition takes from the blood some part of its oxygen for this purpose, with the result of a diminished amount of oxygen and an increase of carbon dioxide, the blood thus being made to resemble venous blood. A part of the oxygen destined for the oxidation of waste products being thus diverted, these substances are not completely transformed. In this respect also blood charged with alcohol resembles venous blood. Alcohol even when diluted is capable of retarding the combustion of oxidizable organic substances, and there is no reason to doubt that this agent has in the blood the same chemical properties that it elsewhere possesses.
The exhalation of some part of the alcohol circulating in the blood by the way of the pulmonary mucous membrane interferes with the elimination of carbon dioxide, with the result that the latter agent further tends to accumulate in the blood.11
11 David Brodie, Medical Temperance Journal, October, 1880.
Alcohol must act, to some degree at least, directly upon the water of the blood and upon its albuminoid principles. The products of the reactions normally taking place within the corpuscles pass with greater difficulty into serum containing alcohol as the current of osmosis tends rather from the serum to the corpuscles. It is in accord with this fact that the corpuscles of alcoholized animals have been found relatively large.
The blood of individuals who have died in a state of alcoholic intoxication has been frequently found to contain an unusual amount of fatty matter in a fine state of subdivision.
Upon the respiration the influence of alcohol is twofold: it modifies the respiratory movements and the results of the respiratory processes. After moderate doses the movements are accelerated without disturbances of rhythm; after large doses the respiratory acts become embarrassed, feeble, irregular, finally wholly diaphragmatic.