HOW ALCOHOL AFFECTS THE BRAIN.
I once had the unusual, though unhappy, chance of observing the same phenomenon in the brain structure of a man, who, in a paroxysm of alcoholic excitement, decapitated himself below 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 after 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 had been incised, by its natural whiteness; and therefore the pia-mater, or internal vascular membrane covering the brain, resembled a fragile net of coagulated red blood, therefore tensely were its fine vessels engorged.
I should add that this condition extended through both the larger and also the smaller brain, the cerebrum and cerebellum, however was not so marked in 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 primary stage, the operate of the spinal wire is influenced. Through this half of the nervous system we tend to are accustomed, in health, to perform automatic acts of a mechanical kind, that proceed systematically even when we are thinking or speaking on different subjects. So a skilled workman will continue his mechanical work perfectly, while his mind is bent on another subject; and thus we all perform numerous acts in a purely automatic manner, without calling in the aid of the upper centres, except one thing additional than ordinary happens to demand their service, upon which we tend to assume before we have a tendency to perform. Under alcohol, because the spinal centres become influenced, these pure automatic acts cease to be properly carried on. {That the} hand may reach any object, or the foot be properly planted, the higher intellectual centre must be invoked to form the proceeding secure. There follows quickly upon this a deficient power of co-ordination of muscular movement. The nervous control of bound of the muscles is lost, and the nervous stimulus is additional or less enfeebled. The muscles of the lower lip in the human subject typically fail 1st of all, then the muscles of the lower limbs, and it is warrant remark {that the} extensor muscles give manner sooner than the flexors. The muscles themselves, by this time, also are failing in power; they respond a lot of feebly than is natural to the nervous stimulus; they, too, are coming back below the depressing influence of the paralyzing agent, their structure is briefly 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 is now, usually, 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 however a more degree, the cerebral or brain centres become influenced; they’re reduced in power, and the controlling influences of will and of judgment are lost. As these centres are unbalanced and thrown into chaos, the rational half of the character of the person gives method before the emotional, passional or organic part. The explanation is now off duty, or is fooling with duty, and every one the mere natural tendencies and sentiments are laid atrociously bare. The coward shows up more 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 rationale, the emotions, the instincts, are all in 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 therefore the body lies a mere log, dead by all but one-fourth, on that alone its life hangs. The heart still remains true to its duty, and whereas it just lives it feeds the breathing power. And thus the circulation and therefore the respiration, in the otherwise inert mass, keeps the mass within the blank domain of life till the poison begins to pass on and the nervous centres to revive again. It is happy for the inebriate that, most of the time, the brain fails so long before the center that he has neither the ability nor the sense to continue his process of destruction up to the act of death of his circulation. Thus he lives to die another day.
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