244 DISEASES DUE TO ALCOHOL. 



The brain and spinal cord are kept in a chronic state of 

 congestion* and overexcitement. This results at first 

 in inflammatory disease (delirium tremens); later in 

 paralysis, epilepsy, or insanity (pp. 212, 214). 



The senses are dulled, partly from disease of the nerves 

 and nerve-centres, partly by diseased changes in the 

 sense-organs. 



No tippler probably ever suffered from all of the dis- 

 eases above mentioned, and most of them may develop 

 in persons who are total abstainers, but some of them 

 are pretty sure to develop in habitual drinkers, and they 

 are all more frequently due to intemperance than to 

 any other single cause. It is also well known that in 

 any serious disease, the chances of recovery are smaller 

 in the case of drinkers. 



5. Continued Alcoholic Indulgence Causes Premature Old 

 Age. Many of the alterations in various tissues and or- 

 gans above described as brought about by alcohol, are 

 very like the changes which naturally occur in old age. 

 When alcohol does not cause some actual disease, as 

 Bright's disease, or delirium tremens, it often hastens 

 the ageing of the body. The organs lose strength and 

 activity, and become old before their time. 



The kidneys ? The brain and spinal cord ? The senses ? How does 

 habitual drinking affect the ch uices of recovery from disease? 



5. What does alcohol often do when it does not cause actual dis- 

 ease ? 



* " I once had the unusual though unhappy opportunity of observing the same 

 phenomenon in the brain-structure of a man who, in a fit of alcoholic excitement, 

 decapitated himself under the wheel of a railway-carriage, and whose brain was 

 instantaneously evolved from the skull by the crash. The brain it^Hf. entire, was 

 before me within three minutes after death. It exhaled the odor of spirit most 

 distinctly, and its membranes and minute structures were vascular in the extreme. 

 It looked as if it had been recently injected with vermilion. 1 ' DR. B. W. RICH- 



AKDSON. 



