HOW ALCOHOL AFFECTS THE BRAIN.

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I once had the unusual, though unhappy, chance of observing the same phenomenon within the brain structure of a man, who, in a paroxysm of alcoholic excitement, decapitated himself under the wheel of a railway carriage, and whose brain was instantaneously evolved from the skull by the crash. The brain itself, entire, was before me at intervals three minutes when the death. It exhaled the odor of spirit most distinctly, and its membranes and minute structures were vascular within the extreme. It looked as if it had been recently injected with vermilion. The white matter of the cerebrum, studded with red points, could scarcely be distinguished, when it was incised, by its natural whiteness; and the pia-mater, or internal vascular membrane covering the brain, resembled a fragile internet of coagulated red blood, therefore tensely were its fine vessels engorged.

I ought to add that this condition extended through both the larger and therefore the smaller brain, the cerebrum and cerebellum, but wasn’t thus marked within the medulla or commencing portion of the spinal cord.

The spinal twine and nerves.
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The action of alcohol continued beyond the first stage, the function of the spinal cord is influenced. Through this half of the nervous system we have a tendency to are accustomed, in health, to perform automatic acts of a mechanical kind, that proceed systematically even once we are thinking or speaking on other subjects. Therefore a skilled workman can continue his mechanical work perfectly, whereas his mind is bent on some other subject; and so we tend to all perform various acts in a very purely automatic manner, without calling in the aid of the upper centres, except something additional than normal occurs to demand their service, upon that we assume before we tend to perform. Under alcohol, as the spinal centres become influenced, these pure automatic acts stop to be properly carried on. {That the} hand could reach any object, or the foot be properly planted, the upper intellectual centre should be invoked to make the proceeding secure. There follows quickly upon this a deficient power of co-ordination of muscular movement. The nervous management of bound of the muscles is lost, and the nervous stimulus is more or less enfeebled. The muscles of the lower lip within the human subject typically fail initial of all, then the muscles of the lower limbs, and it is ought to have remark {that the} extensor muscles offer way ahead of the flexors. The muscles themselves, by now, also are failing in power; they respond a lot of feebly than is natural to the nervous stimulus; they, too, are coming back under the depressing influence of the paralyzing agent, their structure is quickly deranged, and their contractile power reduced.

This modification of the animal functions beneath alcohol, marks the second degree of its action. In young subjects, there’s currently, sometimes, vomiting with faintness, followed by gradual relief from the burden of the poison.

Result on the brain centres.
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The alcoholic spirit carried nevertheless a additional degree, the cerebral or brain centres become influenced; they are reduced in power, and also the controlling influences of can and of judgment are lost. As these centres are unbalanced and thrown into chaos, the rational part of the nature of the man offers approach before the emotional, passional or organic part. The reason is now off duty, or is fooling with duty, and all the mere animal instincts and sentiments are laid atrociously bare. The coward shows up additional craven, the braggart additional boastful, the cruel more merciless, the untruthful a lot of false, the carnal additional degraded. ‘ In vino veritas ‘ expresses, even, indeed, to physiological accuracy, the true condition. The explanation, the emotions, the instincts, are all during a state of carnival, and in chaotic feebleness.

Finally, the action of the alcohol still extending, the superior brain centres are overpowered; the senses are beclouded, the voluntary muscular prostration is perfected, sensibility is lost, and the body lies a mere log, dead by all but one-fourth, on which alone its life hangs. The heart still remains true to its duty, and while it just lives it feeds the respiratory power. And thus the circulation and the respiration, in the otherwise inert mass, keeps the mass at intervals the blank domain of life till the poison begins to pass away and the nervous centres to revive again. It is happy for the inebriate that, normally, the brain fails so long before the center that he has neither the facility nor the sense to continue his method of destruction up to the act of death of his circulation. Therefore he lives to die another day.

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