192 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



movements are totally arrested, and death closes the scene. Ef- 

 fects on the human organism being, when properly interjjreted, 

 like effects in the inorganic world — exactly proportionate to 

 cause — the at first sight apparently stimulating and consequently 

 salutary action of alcohol on the heart, when taken in modera- 

 tion, is as much due to the alcohol's paralyzing power as the 

 destruction of all vital action is its result when it is taken in 

 poisonous quantities. From this, however, it is not to be in- 

 ferred that its incipient paralyzing power over the inhibitory 

 cardiac nerve mechanism must necessarily be in all cases detri- 

 mental. On the contrary, it may actually in many instances be 

 beneficial. Just in the same way as atropia, strophantus, digi- 

 talis, and daturine — which are all cardiac inhibitory nerve para- 

 lyzers — prove exceedingly useful medicinal agents when they are 

 judiciously employed in appropriate cases. So alcohol, by the 

 doctor's skill, may in like manner be so used as to paralyze to 

 cure, and not to kill. 



It being well known that intemperance is a most fruitful 

 cause, not only of all the various forms of heart-disease, but 

 likewise of the degenerations of the coats of the blood-vessels, all 

 I at present require to do is to prove that even what is called 

 moderate drinking has a much greater share than is generally 

 supposed, in not only greatly increasing heart-diseases, in cases 

 where they already exist, but also in inducing their development 

 in the constitutionally and hereditarily predisposed to become 

 affected by them. The reason why moderate drinking should 

 induce not only hypertrophy and dilatation, but likewise valvu- 

 lar disease of the heart, is not far to seek — from its being a rec- 

 ognized fact that every increase in a muscle's activity is associ- 

 ated with an increase in its development, as well as its tension 

 on the parts with which it is connected. The truth of the fore- 

 going statements will, by a little reflection, be gleaned from the 

 results of drinking small quantities of alcohol frequently during 

 the day, as manifested by the figures in the subjoined table 

 of mortality I have drawn up from the registrar-general's re- 

 ports,* of the relative frequency of diseases of the circulatory 

 system among men between the ages of twenty-five and sixty- 

 five employed in different industries. For it not only shows the 

 effects of so-called moderate drinking per se, but likewise the 

 still more pernicious effects of it when it is associated with inter- 

 mittent muscular strain — that is to say, when the stimulus of 

 alcohol upon the heart has superadded to it an increase in the 

 heart's activity necessitated by oft-repeated sudden muscular 



* Supplement to the forty-fifth Annual Report, 18S5, which takes in the whole pre- 

 vious ten years' death-rates, and may consequently be accepted as yielding a reliable 



