424 



ACTION OF ALCOHOL ON NERVES. 



proved by its remarkable effects upon healthy persons. 

 Can we then believe that in extreme cases of low 

 disease, in which the nervous phenomena appear 

 almost as in the healthy state, although a patient takes 

 more than enough alcohol to intoxicate a healthy 

 man, that the alcohol exerts no influence whatever? 

 True, that in many cases, so little is the ordinary 

 action of alcohol manifested, that a patient may be 

 taking an ounce of brandy every hour, and a bystander 

 would not believe he was taking alcohol at all. Yet 

 surely no one would maintain that therefore the 

 alcohol is powerless and produces no more effect 

 than so much water or any perfectly inert substance. 

 That alcohol will produce delirium in health, and 

 remove or prevent the occurrence of delirium in an 

 exhausted state of the system, are facts, but they 

 cannot be fully explained in the present imperfect 

 state of our knowledge concerning the action of nerve- 

 centres and nerves, especially the nerve-centres which 

 control vascular phenomena. 



Action of Alcohol upon Bioplasm outside Vessels 

 in Pneumonia. I propose now to consider what is 

 actually going on in pneumonia, and shall endeavour 

 to account in some measure for the beneficial action 

 of alcohol in bad cases of this disease. The air-cells 

 of the lung are filled with multitudes of living actively 

 growing particles of bioplasm which have passed 

 through the vascular wall with the serum, and are now 

 absorbing nutrient pabulum at a very rapid rate ; and 



