O'SHEA — ASPECTS OF MENTAL ECONOMY. 117 



an infinitely long time in the process of evolution to elaborate. 

 One would certainly not be extreme in saying that an intoxi- 

 cated person returns to the estate of the brute, since while he 

 is in this condition the higher cerebral structures, those which 

 hare been built in the last stages of the evolutionary process, 

 through which are manifested the highest attributes of the hu- 

 man mind, are rendered inactive, and the individual lives for 

 the time being upon a lower plane, when old reflex arcs again 

 become complete and have their way.. If from the point of 

 view of science there are such creatures as fools, then a man, 

 and especially a student, who will deliberately become drunk, 

 must certainly be catalogued in this group. Let it be remarked 

 in passing that no more pitiable or grievous spectacle can be 

 witnessed than that which is presented when a number of uni- 

 versity men, in whom should be evidenced the glory and tri- 

 umph of evolution, and who above all others should be the last 

 to yield mental poise and balance, its supremest blessing, — when 

 such men forfeit the right to manhood and voluntarily bring 

 upon themselves dissolution, intellectual, emotional, and phys- 

 ical. 



The view which is here presented of the neurological influ- 

 ence of alcohol as a paralyzing agent upon nerve action and 

 control is not a wholly new one. I find that the eminent phy- 

 sician Harley arrived at this opinion some years ago, approach- 

 ino* thereunto bv a different route from that taken above. He 

 says r 1 



"Alcohol, when taken in small quantity, is in general said to act 

 as a direct cardiac stimulant, and its stimulating effect is supposed 

 to be due to its possessing the faculty of increasing the muscular 

 power of the heart. I take an entirely different view of the mat- 

 ter, and shall now endeavor to show how the increase in the force 

 of the heart's movements, the quickening of the pulse, the flushing 

 of the face, the congestion of the retinal blood-vessels, as well 

 as all the other visible appearances of accelerated cardiac functional 

 activity, are in reality in no wise due to the stimulating action of 

 alcohol, either on the heart's muscular tissue or the nerves supply- 

 ing it, but actually to the very reverse— namely, its paralyzing effects 



1 Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 33, pp. 191-199. 



