10 Effect of Alcohol on Psycho-Physiological Functions. 



sidered uneconomical or even of minor value from some standpoints, 

 they have a specific usefulness. There are, moreover, certain advan- 

 tages in the individual experiment; the experiments are apt to be more 

 carefully made, the details and special experimental incidents are more 

 faithfully reported, and the results may be more thoroughly analyzed. 



The single subject of the alcohol experiments treated of in this mono- 

 graph was an adult male, 26 years old, who had been found 1 to show the 

 smallest general effect of the alcohol. This second series of experi- 

 ments employed the same alcohol dose as was used for the first series, 

 i. e., 30 c.c. of absolute alcohol, the smaller dose used by Dodge and 

 Benedict, and it was compounded in the same way. Measurements of 

 the various processes studied by them were repeated, with only minor 

 changes in technique and procedure, in the same laboratory with the 

 same apparatus and thus under almost identical conditions. Longer 

 experimental days (5 hours in contrast to 3 hours) were used in the 

 second series; since these days were successive, the apparatus was con- 

 tinually in adjustment for the subject, with the result that a minimum 

 of experimental time was lost. The data are thus more extensive than 

 any that have heretofore been gathered on a single subject over a simi- 

 lar period of time; 2 but still there is much to be desired. There are as 

 many normal as alcohol data. 



The comparison of the results from the two sets of experiments has 

 necessitated a large expenditure of time in working over the Dodge and 

 Benedict material. Certain minor corrections and notes concerning 

 their publication are embodied here which seem of significance either to 

 the former or to the later experiments. No attempt has been made to 

 review other recent literature in connection with these findings, and 

 this omission here must be pardoned. The unique feature of this study 

 is the comparison of two series of alcohol experiments, one more inten- 

 sive than the other, performed by different investigators under other- 

 wise identical laboratory conditions and on the same subject. The 

 comparison has been made as simple and as uninvolved as possible. 



SUBJECT SELECTED FOR THE REPETITION OF THE MEASUREMENTS. 



The experimental measurements employed by Dodge and Benedict 

 in their study on the psychological effects of alcohol were chosen with 

 the definite purpose of bringing together coordinated data concerning 

 the most fundamental aspects of neuro-muscular action. It was their 

 conviction that the attempt to secure accura te measurements of as 



1 Dodge and Benedict, Carnegie Inst. Wash. Pub. No. 232, 1915, p. 55. 



2 Other individual studies on the influence of alcohol have continued over a longer period and 

 have in this sense been more extensive, as, for example, the work of Frankfurther concerning the 

 effect of alcohol on the complicated process of learning typewriting, and that of Vogt on memory 

 and alcohol. But none of these studies employed such a variety of measurements which at the 

 same time concern closely related processes. Dodge and Benedict did not use all their measure- 

 ments on the same day, except in their 12-hour experiments. They divided the experimental 

 processes into two convenient series (Dodge and Benedict, Carnegie Inst. Wash. Pub. No. 232, 

 1915, p. 15) and gave these series on different days. 



