414 HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY 



early stages the changes are rather indefinite, a greater sharpness 

 of contour being the most obvious. In the cerebrum the cells 

 appear as mere shadows, both substances disappearing, whilst 

 the nuclei are also altered." — London Lancet, October 31, 1896, 

 p. 1245. 



" Just why the alcohol should select a set of nerves on which to 

 act at one time and a different set at another does not at once 

 appear, but it is a well-authenticated fact that it has a selective 

 power. Most hkely the explanation lies in the chemical or elec- 

 trical condition of the white substance at the time of action, or 

 it may be attributable to the different chemical constituents of 

 the liquor used." — Dr. Wilkins, in the New York Medical Jour- 

 nal, September 22, 1894. 



"Professor Kraepelin of Heidelberg tried a number of experi- 

 ments on individuals, with the object of seeing whether a small 

 quantity of alcohol hindered the nervous transmission of intel- 

 ligence to the brain. Flags were raised at a given distance, 

 and the exact time was noted when the various men experimented 

 upon observed the raising of the flag. The result proved that the 

 watchers who had been given a small quantity of alcohol, though 

 they felt that they had seen the flag rise sooner than those who 

 had received no alcohol, actually took longer." — Hall, Elementary 

 Physiology. 



Professor Woodhead says, ''After careful examination of the 

 whole question, physiologists — and among physiologists I include 

 those who maintain alcohol may be useful, as well as those who 

 hold that it is harmful — have come to the conclusion that the 

 principal action of alcohol is to blunt sensation, and to remove 

 what we may call the power of inhibition by blunting the higher 

 centers of the brain." 



Professor David Starr Jordan in the Popular Science Monthly, 

 February, 1898, said: '' The healthy mind stands in clear and 

 normal relations with Nature. It feels pain as pain. It feels 

 action as pleasure. The drug which conceals pain or gives false 

 pleasure when pleasure does not exist forces a lie upon the nervous 

 system. The drug which disposes to reverie rather than to work, 

 which makes us feel well when we are not v/ell, destroys the sanity 



