164 FOODS 



terms the nervous system is disturbed, so that many movements are at 

 first increased for a short time and hastened. Afterward, if the dose 

 be large enough, they are made ataxic or incoordinate, vision double, for 

 example, speech "thick," and the gait staggering, because the muscles 

 do not pull together in the proper degree and sequence. When quantities 

 of alcohol larger than this have been imbibed, an obviously depressive 

 stuporous sleep may be caused, deepening perhaps after a time into a coma 

 somewhat like that of chloroform-narcosis, in which the tendon-reflexes 

 are lost. In this condition the muscles have little of their normal tone, 

 but are relaxed, and death may follow from paralysis of the movements 

 of respiration. It will be observed, then, that the general trend of the action 

 of alcohol on the nervous system is asthenic or depressive and not excita- 

 tory. Some researchers in physiology, notably Meltzer, maintain that 

 alcohol has no proper sthenic or stimulating effects on any sort of pro- 

 toplasm, and that its effects are always depressive and devitalizing. 

 They well account for the preliminary phenomena of exhilaration by 

 postulating that at first and from small doses its action is wholly on the 

 delicate repressive or inhibitory centers of the brain, depressing their action 

 and so removing the inhibitory control which they normally exercise over 

 the emotional activities. As we have seen in our discussion of brain- 

 action and of the heart, inhibition is a function of great but unknown 

 importance and extent in the nervous system, and more and more 

 does this repressive aspect of its action become emphasized in different 

 directions. As regards the action of alcohol, inhibition may be pre- 

 eminently important; at present, however, we can not be actually certain 

 that such is the case. The opposed way of explaining the action of 

 alcohol on the nervous system is that the drug at first stimulates and then 

 depresses the actual protoplasmic activities in the nerve-cells. How a 

 substance can be supposed to act in this double way it is hard to define, 

 especially when the two effects are of an opposite sort. Numerous 

 elaborate researches have shown beyond doubt that while there is an 

 initial stimulation of muscular movements arising from small doses, the 

 general effect on both muscular accuracy and endurance is harmful 

 rather than beneficial. For example, soldiers do arduous, long-continued 

 labor much better without alcohol than with it. Exactly the same 

 effect is observed when the muscular action is not that requiring long 

 endurance, but of a sort necessitating fine adjustments. Alcohol removes 

 the depressive feelings of fatigue following unusual exertion, and is often 

 used as a beverage for this purpose. As Herter points out, however, the 

 excessive exertion itself is harmful, and would probably not be undertaken 

 could the pains of it not be removed by drinking alcohol thus inciting 

 sometimes to an abnormally exhausting mode of life. 



On the mental process or mind the effect of alcohol is stimulating if 

 it is so in any place. This comes through its probable action on the cells 

 of the cortex cerebri, and is experienced as a sense of well-being and of 

 happiness, of freedom from care, and in an increase in the workings of 

 the imagination, and, in some individuals, not in others, in an increased 



