ON STIMULANTS. 



37 



import, it was with a feeling of great disappoint- 

 ment that I discovered in what purports to be a 

 popular scientific account of alcohol, eighteen 

 thousand copies of which are said to be in the 

 hands of the public, the following statement : 

 "Alcohol cannot, by any ingenuity of excuse for 

 it, be classified among the foods of man. It nei- 

 ther supplies matter for construction nor heat. 

 On the contrary, it injures construction and it 

 reduces temperature." ' I wish, in the first place, 

 to put alongside of this statement another con- 

 temporary utterance on the same subject. "It" 

 (i. e., alcohol) " undergoes combustion in the body, 

 maintains or increases the body-weight, and pro- 

 longs life on an insufficient diet. It is therefore 

 entitled to be reckoned as a food." 2 Now, both 

 these statements, of which I believe the latter to 

 be unquestionably true, are founded on experi- 

 ments, but Dr. Richardson's experiments appear 

 to have been undertaken with that fatal desire to 

 establish a preaccepted theory which is the bane 

 of experimental science. In all his experiments 

 he appears to have administered alcohol in poi- 

 sonous or intoxicating doses, and then, when the 

 system was struggling with the influence of a 

 potent poison, he found some reduction of bod- 

 ily temperature. " In man," he says, " it is con- 

 fined to three-fourths of a degree ; " that is, in 

 what he calls the second stage of alcoholism. 

 In plain English, when a man has taken enough 

 alcohol to make him drunk, and when he is 

 drunk, you may find the temperature of his body 

 reduced • three-fourths of a degree. But Dr. 

 Richardson is compelled to admit that in the first 

 stage of alcoholism " the external temperature 

 of the body is raised." Now, no decent person, 

 who may wish to know whether alcohol acts as a 

 food or not, contemplates ever passing into that 

 second stage, until he reaches which he may feel 

 assured, even on Dr. Richardson's authority, that 

 his body temperature will be raised and not low- 

 ered. 



A great deal has been said recently about 

 alcohol lowering the temperature of the body, 

 and the late Dr. Parkes investigated this subject 

 with his usual carefulness and accuracy. The 

 following are some of his conclusions : " In 

 healthy men who have been accustomed to take 

 alcohol in moderate quantities the results are 

 rather contradictory. In a man accustomed to 

 alcohol, Ringer found no change; in two men, 

 temperate, but accustomed to take beer and 



1 Richardson on " Alcohol," Cantor Lectures, p. Ti. 



2 Brunton : " The Physiological Action of Alcohol," 

 the Practitioner, vol. xvi., p. 135. 



sometimes spirit, I could not detect any raising or 

 lowering of the thermometer. Dr. Mainzer found 

 no fall of temperature in trials on himself, but a 

 slight fall in another healthy person. Some 

 experiments by Obernier and by Follker are also 

 quite negative. . . . We may conclude that the 

 effect on temperature in healthy men is extremely 

 slight ; there is no increase, and in many persons 

 no decrease. In those in whom there is a slight 

 decrease the amount is trifling." It appears, 

 therefore, that we have no sound scientific basis 

 for the general assertion that alcohol in moderate 

 quantity lowers the bodily temperature. It cer- 

 tainly does so, however, in very large doses. 

 The following is the explanation usually given of 

 the manner in which alcohol produces a reduc- 

 tion of the temperature of the body : It has 

 two very marked effects on the organs of circu- 

 lation. In the first place, it quickens the action 

 of the heart — the heart under its influence beats 

 with increased frequency and with additional 

 force ; in the second place, it relaxes the blood- 

 vessels on the surface of the body, by paralyzing 

 what are called the vaso-motor nerves, i. e., the 

 nerves which control the condition of the walls 

 of the blood-vessels as regards their state of con- 

 traction or relaxation. Alcohol thus leads to 

 dilatation of the peripheral vessels, and the 

 blood, therefore, under its influence flows freely 

 to the surface of the body. Hence the comfort- 

 able warmth and the diffused glow which are felt 

 soon after taking a dose of spirits, and hence 

 the common practice of taking spirits to keep 

 out the cold. But it is asserted that, instead of 

 " keeping out the cold," this practice, under cer- 

 tain circumstances, may have the contrary effect 

 of letting in the cold. For, as the blood is 

 brought to the surface in greater quantity on ac- 

 count both of the dilatation of the vessels and the 

 increased rapidity of the heart's action, it parts 

 with its heat, by radiation from the surface, with 

 greater readiness ; and as the blood, cooled at the 

 surface, is rapidly carried away into the interior 

 of the body, the blood in the internal organs, and 

 indeed the whole mass of blood in the body, be- 

 comes quickly reduced in temperature. This is 

 the theory, but I am not aware of any experiment 

 on record in which any noteworthy fall of tem- 

 perature has been observed during this period of 

 cardiac excitement ; reduction of temperature is 

 the characteristic of the stage of depression from 

 alcoholic poisoning when the cardiac action is 

 weakened. Nor need we conclude that the gen- 

 eral experience of mankind as to the effect of a 

 moderate dose of alcohol in conferring, for a 



