132 CHARLES R. STOCKARD AND GEORGE N. PAPANICOLAOU 



a. Contrast between the immediate effects of alcohol taken by 

 inhalation and by stomach 



An important point to keep in mind when considering these 

 animals intoxicated by the inhalation method is that on being 

 removed from the tanks they use up the alcohol in their systems 

 very rapidly and also begin to throw off alcohol by respiration. 

 The intoxication is, therefore, of short duration so that the 

 animal may be fairly well recovered within half an hour or perhaps 

 only a few minutes, depending upon the amount of the treatment. 

 In other words, this is an acute short intoxication closely com- 

 parable to an ether anaesthesia from which the animal readily 

 recovers when the fumes are no longer inhaled, but which during 

 the inhalation may give a complete intoxication. On the other 

 hand, a drunken condition resulting from taking alcohol into the 

 stomach is of much greater duration since the gradual absorption 

 of the alcohol continues for a longer time before the system 

 begins to burn it up or throw it off to such a degree that the 

 amount present begins to be continuously reduced, permitting 

 the animal to slowly recover from the drunken state. A guinea- 

 pig receiving a dose of about 25 cc. of 15 per cent alcohol into 

 its stomach will be decidedly intoxicated within fifteen or twenty 

 minutes, and the extent of intoxication will increase until the 

 animal becomes unable to walk or stand and lies in a drunken 

 stupor. Such a condition may persist for six or seven hours or 

 longer, and the body temperature may be lowered from one to 

 even four degrees Fahrenheit. 



It seems to us, therefore, that the chief difference between 

 inhaling alcohol and drinking it into the stomach is that in the 

 first case the action of the substance on the animal system is of 

 shorter duration, lasting but little longer than the length of the 

 sojourn in the fume tanks — a short acute effect — while alcohol 

 in the stomach is gradually and continuously absorbed for a 

 considerable length of time so that the animal's tissues are acted 

 upon for hours after receiving the dose. Another very serious 

 phase of the stomach alcohol, aside from the typical intoxication 

 effects, is its tendency to derange the animal's powers of diges- 



