286 STUDIES IN PHYSIOLOGY 



faculties and leaving the lowest to the last, so that we find 

 that a man's judgment may be lessened, though at the same 

 time some lower faculties, such as the imagination and 

 emotions, may appear to be more active than before. . . . 

 Thus you find that after a man has taken alcohol his judg- 

 ment may be diminished, but he may become more loqua- 

 cious and more jolly than before. Then after a while his 

 faculties become dull ; he gets stupid and drowsy. . . . 

 Later on it affects the motor centers, probably the cere- 

 bellum, so that the man is no longer able to walk, and reels 

 whenever he makes the attempt. At this time, however, 

 he may still be able to ride (on horseback), and a man who 

 is so drunk that he cannot walk and cannot speak may ride 

 perfectly well. . . . Later on the further anaesthetic action 

 of the alcohol abolishes sensation, and its paralyzing action 

 destroys the power of the spinal cord, so that the man is 

 no longer able even to ride ; but still the respiratory center 

 in the medulla will go on acting, and it is not until enor- 

 mous doses of alcohol have been given that respiration 

 becomes paralyzed. 



"Alcohol . . . makes all the nervous processes slower, 

 but at the same time it has the curious effect of producing 

 a kind of mental anaesthesia, ... so that these processes 

 seem to the person himself to be all quicker than usual, 

 instead of being, as they really are, much slower. Thus a- 

 man, while doing things much more slowly than before, is 

 under the impression that he is doing things very much 

 more quickly. What applies to these very simple processes 

 applies also to the higher processes of the mind; and a 

 celebrated author once told me that if he wrote under the 

 influence of a small quantity of alcohol, he seemed to, him- 

 self to write very fluently and to write very well, but when 

 he came to examine what he had written next day, after 

 the effect of the alcohol had passed off, he found that it 

 would not stand criticism." T. LAUDER BRUNTON, London, 

 " Lectures on the Action of Medicine/ 7 pp. 190, 191, 194. 



