CHAPTER VIII. 



EFFECT OF ALCOHOL ON THE PULSE-RATE, DURING MENTAL AND 



PHYSICAL WORK EXPERIMENTS. 



Reports of the effects of alcohol on the circulation are among the 

 earliest and most common data on the plwsiology and pharmacology 

 of alcohol. But, notwithstanding an enormous amount of experimental 

 material, there is no commonly accepted generalization. The discrep- 

 ancies and contradictions of the earlier investigations appear in the 

 more recent. Alcohol has been found (1) to increase the pulse-rate, 

 (2) to decrease it, (3) to do neither, and (4) to do both. Some illustra- 

 tive observations are given on page 187. 



Summaries which attempt to generalize at all concerning the effect of 

 alcohol on pulse naturally reflect the experimental discrepancies. Thus 

 Lauder Brunton 1 states that alcohol in moderate doses increases the 

 pulse-rate. Horseley and Sturge 2 hold that alcohol decreases the 

 pulse-rate. Notnagel and Rossbach, 3 and Rosenfeld, 4 state that it 

 has no significant effect, while Cushny 5 accepts the vie\v that it both 

 increases and decreases the pulse, according to circumstances, but has 

 no effect on normal quiet subjects. Meyer and Gottlieb, 6 while classi- 

 fying alcohol among the heart-accelerating medicaments, appear to 

 hold that its action has not been proved for normal human subjects. 

 Indeed, the more recent general summaries show a conspicuous ten- 

 dency to regard the effect of moderate doses of alcohol on the human 

 pulse as more or less problematic. This uncertainty seems to be widely 

 reflected in medical practice. 



These discrepancies in the traditional data make it all the more 

 necessary to reinvestigate the pulse-changes of human subjects after 

 the ingestion of alcohol under the largest possible number of experi- 

 mental conditions, with modern recording instruments, as proposed 

 under the Nutrition Laboratory Plan. Such an investigation of 

 the effects of alcohol on the circulation of man is outlined where it 

 obviously belongs, in the physiological program. In its proper place 



'Brunton, Therapeutics of the Circulation, London, 1911, p. 17s. 



2 Horseley and Sturge, Alcohol and the Human Body, London, 1907. 



3 Notnagel and Rossbach, Handbuch der Artzneimittellohre, Berlin and Vienna, 1894. 



4 Rosenfeld, Der Einfluss des Alkohols auf den Organismus, Wiesbaden, 1901. 



''Cushny, Pharmacology, Philadelphia, 1910. 



f 'Meyer and Gottlieb, Die experiinentelle Pharmacologie, 3d ed., Berlin. 1914. 



186 



