CHEMICAL ACTION OF ALCOHOL. 



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ACTION OF ALCOHOL. 



Chemical action of alcohol. It seems to me that 

 we should not ignore the probable chemical action of 

 alcohol upon important constituents of the blood. It 

 is scarcely possible to believe that the large quantity of 

 alcohol taken by many patients does not influence the 

 permeating properties of the fluid part of the blood, 

 and cause some chemical alteration in the soluble 

 constituents which belong to the albumen class, 

 besides exerting a local action upon soft and rapidly 

 growing bioplasts. Many of the so-called tonics 

 have the property of coagulating albuminous fluids 

 and solutions of extractive matters. Preparations 

 containing tannin, the mineral salts, such as the 

 sulphate and sesquichloride of iron, nitric and hydro- 

 chloric acids, and a host of other substances employed 

 as remedies, that will occur to every one, possess this 

 property, and render solutions containing albumi- 

 nous and allied matters less permeable, perhaps by 

 increasing their viscidity. The favourable action of 

 such remedies may be due to their direct influence on 

 the fluid constituents of the blood. They, no doubt, 

 also cause a reduction in the rate at which blood - 

 corpuscles are destroyed, and at the same time they 

 tend to render the walls of the blood-vessels less 

 permeable to fluids. 



But, of all the remedies we possess, I believe 

 alcohol acts most rapidly in this way, and in particular 



