VOL. XXXVIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 585 



likely to affect the economy, as that of the admission of a fluid into the blood, 

 much grosser and less fluid than itself? Such a mixture must render the whole 

 mass grosser, or of a thicker consistence, than before, as it quickly mixes with 

 the flner, and absorbs its most fluid parts ; but it will hardly be denied, that if 

 there is such a fluid as animal spirits, they must be the finest and most depurated 

 fluid of the blood: these therefore will be absorbed, and mixed with this grosser 

 crude fluid the chyle, and therefore will be diminished by it ; and being thus 

 entangled, will be more diflicultly secreted, and in less quantity : hence that 

 paucity of spirits, which will dispose to sleep in the manner above described, in 

 speaking of a paucity of spirits after labour or exercise. 



3. How far strong fermented vegetable juices or liquors, and their distilled 

 spirits, drunk to any pitch of excess, bring on sleep, or some degrees of it, has 

 already been said. 



The distilled spirits of fermented liquors, are known to lessen all the secre- 

 tions and excretions, and therefore are of use in diarrhoeas, in excessive and 

 colliquative sweatings ; and I have known French brandy, taken incautiously, 

 to have put a stop to a sweat procured by sudorifics. In habitual drinkers of 

 them, they gradually lessen the secretion of the bile, and insensible perspiration, 

 and thereby bring them at last into the jaundice and dropsy. 



Spirituous liquors, and particularly French brandy in the most remarkable 

 manner, being mixed with the blood, as it flows from a vein into a porringer, 

 unites the serous with the globular red part of the blood, to such a degree, as 

 that no serum separates from it in many hours, and in some not at all ; an ex- 

 periment which may be easily made ; which shows in what manner it prevents 

 the secretions in the body, these being all of the serous kind: hence that great 

 impurity of the blood arising from a restraint of the secretions in such people ; 

 and also that paucity of spirits, the general cause of sleep and dulness, very 

 difi'erent from the alacrity and vivacity of the temperate, and even of water- 

 drinkers. 



That therefore which fetters or binds up all the serosities, or most fluid parts 

 of the blood, and proves a strong copula between them and its red globules, 

 may be reasonably supposed to fetter or tye up the finest fluid of all, viz. the 

 animal spirits, with the rest, and in the same manner to hinder their secretion, 

 and thereby produce sleep, or some such degree of it as abovementioned. 



4. As to opium, and all the class of soporifics, if we compare their visible 

 efl^ects with what has been said above of brandy, or spirits of fermented liquors, 

 we shall find them much the same. Opium is known to lessen or suppress all 

 the secretions and excretions, and is therefore of such remarkable use in fluxes, 



VOL. VII. 4 F 



