498 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



muscles, deprived of blood, convulse tremulously, or pass into active 

 convulsions, as in tetanus. Alcohol, on the other hand, through its 

 influence on nervous functions, relaxes the vessels of the minute cir- 

 culation, sets free the heart, reduces the muscular power, and in every 

 particular counteracts the tobacco. When a person receives a stun, 

 or is shocked by some intelligence, or sight, or sound, that thereby 

 stuns him, so that, like Hamlet, he is bechilled 



" Almost to jelly by the act of fear, 

 Stands dumb and speaks not," 



he is for the moment in the same state as the man who first tries to 

 smoke tobacco, and who, with pallid face, cold surface, and reeling 

 brain, is to his sense and feeling stricken with all but mortal suffering 

 and prostration. In each of these cases alcohol, for a moment, acts as 

 an antidote not necessarily as the best antidote, but as a fair one. 

 When, therefore, we see a man smoking and drinking, quaffing off the 

 cup of wine or spirit to quiet the qualm which would otherwise be in- 

 flicted by the fumes of the cigar or the pipe, we really observe the 

 facts of a most excellently though innocently devised physiological 

 experiment on a living animal. The man, unconsciously to his knowl- 

 edge, if not to his sensation unless he be a physiologist is inducing 

 a balance in the tension of his arterial circuit. 



In process of time the nervous system, becoming accustomed to 

 these influences, one or both, in a certain degree tolerates them, for a 

 period. The tolerance while it lasts is an advantage to the habit, and, 

 if the habit were a necessity, it would be a blessing. But the advan- 

 tage is not permanent. In the end the nutrition of the organic parts 

 which are under the influence of the same nervous regulation is sure to 

 suffer, and in many organizations to suffer rapidly and fatally. 



It is probable, if not as yet provable, that all the agents named 

 above produce their specific effect by the influence they exert over the 

 automatic, self -regulating nervous function. In my researches on the 

 action of some substances on the minute circulation, I have been able 

 to differentiate their action by this general rule. The alcohols, the 

 lighter alcohols, including common alcohol, relax the vessels ; nicotine 

 constringes ; chloroform, by virtue of the chlorine in its composition, 

 constringes ; opium relaxes, then constringes ; ether relaxes ; absinthe, 

 after a time, constringes ; chloral hydrate first constringes, and after- 

 ward relaxes. From these differences of action the differences of phe- 

 nomena in the persons affected are explainable. In like manner the 

 ultimate deleterious effects of these agents on the nutrition of the 

 body are explainable. It is a necessary result, for example, that under 

 the long-continued use of alcohol the constantly relaxed and congested 

 vessels should assume a new character and local function ; that the 

 parts depending on them for their supplies of blood should be changed 

 from the natural structure to unnatural but definable, and now well- 



