96 ACTION OP ALCOHOL ON ANIMAL HEAT. 



were given definite tasks to accomplish. The result was 

 that on the days on which they were supplied with 

 spirits, they could neither use their muscles as power- 

 fully, nor for as long a time, as on the days when they 

 got no alcoholic drink. 



10. Does Alcohol keep up the Heat of the Body ? To 

 this question, also, the answer is no, though this may 

 seem strange in view of the fact that a drink is often 

 taken " to warm one up." The apparent inconsistency 

 is easily explained. We have already learned that our 

 feeling of being warm depends on the nerves of the 

 skin (p. 76). We have no nerves which tell us whether 

 heart or muscles or brain are warmer or cooler. These 

 inside parts are always hotter than the skin, and if 

 blood which has been made hot in them, flows in large 

 quantity to the skin, we feel warmer because the skin is 

 heated. As alcoholic drinks make more blood flow 

 through the skin, they often make a man feel warmer. 

 But their actual effect upon the temperature of the whole 

 body is to decrease it. The more blood that flows 

 through the skin, the more heat is given off from the 

 body to the air, and the more blood so cooled is sent 

 back to the internal organs. The consequence is that 

 alcohol cools the body as a whole, though it may for a 

 short time heat the skin. That a large dose of alcohol 

 leads to excessive loss of heat from the body, has been 

 thoroughly proved by many 6bservations on drunken 

 men, and by experiments on the lower animals. 



10. Does alcohol maintain the heat of the body ? Why does a 

 drink sometimes make a person feel warmer? What is the real 

 effect of alcoholic drinks on the temperature of the body? How has 

 it been proved ? 



