INTOXICATION. 91 



mortem, says, * In the lower animals I have been able to 

 witness this extreme vascular condition of the lungs,' the 

 result or concomitant of the first stage of alcoholic excite- 

 ment that of exhilaration a condition of congestion that is 

 universal throughout the body. In this first or exhilarative 

 stage in birds and mammals there is during life the same 

 rise of temperature of body that occurs in man ; while in the 

 third stage of insensibility there is, as in him, an unnatural 

 fall of temperature. 



Alcoholism is virtually the same in its character using 

 the term in its most comprehensive signification, as including 

 all the phenomena, mental and bodily, produced by alcohol 

 throughout the animal series. Thus the recent experiments 

 of Eomanes show that even the Medusa? suffer in the same 

 way that man does under the influence of alcohol. ' A tipsy 

 jelly-fish rolled about in the water just like the staggering 

 of a drunken man, and this was followed by torpidity, or a 

 state of complete drunkenness, from which nothing could 

 arouse it. In the course of a few hours it began to recover, 

 and eventually the recovery was complete.' 



Nor must we ever forget the suggestive fact that the 

 effects, mental or bodily, in the individual, of the use or 

 abuse of alcohol in any of its many forms become organised 

 and hereditary as certainly in other animals as in man. 



The dog recognises the condition of drunkenness in man, 

 and appreciates its practical effects so far, at least, as 

 itself is concerned. Experience, no doubt, has taught it 

 that a tipsy man is apt to become irritable, and that his 

 irritability is likely to find vent on its own ribs if it does not 

 keep out of his way. The sensible animal avoids the only 

 too probable ill-usage of a tipsy master by absenting itself 

 from his presence so long as he is visibly under the minor 

 influence of drink. Thus Wood gives two anecdotes illus- 

 trative of the shrewdness of dogs in avoiding their masters 

 when tipsiness was threatened, and so long as the chance of 

 it continued. One of them hid itself whenever its master, 

 in his drinking bouts, got the length of his fourth tumbler 

 of toddy, ' never showing itself until the effects had passed 

 off, and its master was restored to sobriety.' 



