EFFECTS OF CERTAIN DRUGS AND POISONS T65 



observed in cats and guinea pigs given either small or large quantities of 

 alcohol for periods up to one week in duration. 



In diabetics Benedict and Forok observed that replacement of fifty 

 to eighty grams of food fat by isodynamic quantities of alcohol lessened 

 the excretion of sugar, acetone and nitrogen. Higgins, Peabody and Fitz, 

 however, could not prevent the appearance of acidosis in normal persons 

 on a carbohydrate-free diet by giving alcohol. Mosenthal and Harrop 

 found that the addition of alcohol to a carbohydrate-free diet does not 

 alter the nitrogen balance in diabetes. No positive value in this condition 

 has been demonstrated. 



Fat Metabolism. The fatty degeneration resulting from alcohol was 

 described by Rosenfeld. Ducceschi found that repeated doses of alcohol 

 sometimes tripled the total fat of the liver in association with an increase 

 in its cholesterol and total solid content. The adrenals, on the other hand, 

 lost forty per cent of their cholesterol, but gained slightly in total solids 

 and fat. 



Reproduction and Growth. No effects of chronic alcoholism upon the 

 offspring in man have been demonstrated as due to the poison itself. 

 Stockard has observed the production of defective offspring in guinea 

 pigs and other species, but Nice, on the other hand, finds in white mice 

 that the offspring are normal and the growth of the alcoholic lines exceeds 

 that of non-alcoholic descendants. 



Opiates. The opiates differ particularly from other narcotics in their 

 tendency to increase rather than to reduce the alkali reserve and in the 

 absence, in general, of changes in the fat metabolism. 



Total Metabolism. Various investigators have found the respiratory 

 exchange reduced under morphin, but to this no unusual significance at- 

 taches since the reduction is essentially parallel to the narcotic effect. 

 Higgins and Means, as well as Barbour, Maurer and von Glahn, have 

 observed that sixteen milligrams of morphin sulphate will usually cause 

 a definite depression of oxidations even when given after a fasting indi- 

 vidual has been lying practically motionless for from one and a half to 

 two hours. The latter group of investigators were able to diminish or 

 prevent this effect by simultaneous administration of forty-milligram 

 doses of tyramin hydrochlorid. Heroin (diacetyl morphin) in five- 

 milligram doses does not appear to affect the metabolism (Higgins and 

 Means), and the results of earlier observers with heroin and codein 

 (Dreser) and other morphin derivatives appear to lack much positive 

 significance. 



Body Temperature. The effects of morphin upon the heat-regulating 

 mechanism were extensively studied by Reichert, who demonstrated 

 that neither the depression nor the antagonistic pyretic effect of cocain 

 could be produced after an operation interfering with the caudate nucleus 

 of the corpus striatum. (For the effects upon total metabolism and body 



