NERVOUS ALCOHOLIC DISEASES. 21$ 



nied by indistinct speech and the dizziness by trembling 

 hands and a staggering walk, both showing loss of con- 

 trol over the voluntary muscles and the will. The sense 

 of touch is dulled; the eyeballs do not move together, so 

 as to look exactly at the same point at the same moment, 

 and objects, accordingly, appear double. (You may imi- 

 tate this effect by pushing one eyeball gently while 

 looking with both eyes at something.) Then follows 

 profound drunken sleep, which may pass into " coma," 

 a condition of deep unconsciousness from which the 

 person cannot be aroused, and in which the breathing is 

 slow and labored because the involuntary nerve-centres 

 which govern the breathing-muscles are affected. Some- 

 times these centres become at last quite paralyzed and 

 death results, but more often the man sleeps off his 

 drunken fit, to awaken with a state of his nerves to be 

 relieved only by renewed drinking, followed each time 

 by worse results. 



The nerve-centres, however, soon get used to the 

 stimulant; it takes a larger amount each time to make 

 them unsteady, but all the while brain and spinal cord 

 are becoming surely, if slowly, diseased. 



13. Some of the Nervous Diseases due to Alcohol. Deli- 

 rium tremens (trembling madness) is a frightful form of 

 temporary madness, accompanied by great trembling. 

 The senses are partly lost; the man sees spectres, usually 

 foul and horrible, about him, and has all sorts of terrify- 

 ing visions. He is at times violently excited and raving 



What if the amount be increased? What is coma? Why is the 

 breathing labored during coma? What may result? Why is one fit 

 of drinking likely to lead to another? Why does it need more alcohol 

 to make a practised toper drunk ? 



13. What is delirium tremens ? Its symptoms? Its causes? Dip- 



