TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 147 



When the usual dose of a spirit or alcohol was taken duly diluted with water, 

 he had found, by numerous experiments, that the following sequence of pheno- 

 mena took place": — 



1. Upon the heart, probably by the direct contact of the alcohol, and occurring 

 in 2 to 4 minutes. 



2. Upon the brain, in from 3 to 7 minutes, as shown by the effect upon conscious- 

 mental and sensual perceptions. 



3. Upon the spinal cord, as shown by lessened tone, lessened power of controlling 

 and lessened desire to use the muscles, a sense of purring through the whole 

 system, and the sensation of heat and cold. 



4. Upon the respiratory nervous tract. 



5. Upon the secretory (sympathetic nervous) system. 



The exhilaration of spirits, accompanied by sense of heat, swelling and redness of 

 the skin, occurred in the first stage, and continued about 30 minutes, and this was 

 changed for taciturnity, chilliness, and sense of miserable depression in the second 

 stage. 



Alcohol usually increases the activity of the respiratory actions in a moderate 

 degree ; as did also whisky in many instances, and rum commonly, whilst brandy 

 and gin lessened them. 



Beers he believed to act also by their sugar and gluten, and thus tend to pro- 

 mote the digestion of starchy food ; but for this purpose only small quantities, as 

 by an ale-glass, should be taken at a time, so as to obtain this action apart from the 

 alcoholic action. 



The author also appended a few remarks on the action of coffee, on account of 

 its parallel use with tea, and proved that whilst both agree in increasing vital 

 action, they differ in the important particular of their action upon the skin. 

 Coffee usually lessens the action of the skin, and thereby renders it dry and hot, at 

 the same time increasing the action of the heart, and, as a further consequence of 

 the former, increasing the action of the kidney, or tailing that, inducing diarrhoea. 

 Hence it is applicable in conditions widely differing from those suited to the 

 use of tea. 



In contrasting tea and coffee with alcohols, the author found only one analogy 

 with tea, viz. that of beers, since both tend to promote the digestion of starchy 

 food, and therefore both the teatotallers and the anti-teatotallers may be equally 

 right. There is no similarity whatever between the action of tea and alcohols ; but 

 both are in their essential actions opposed, whilst there is an important correspond- 

 ence in the action of alcohols and coffee. The use of tea in the arctic regions 

 must be associated with that of alcohols, or the substance having an equivalent 

 but less perceptible and more enduring action upon the skin, viz. fats, whilst rum 

 is less injurious to the sailor of all countries than brandy or gin would be, by its 

 special power of increasing the respiratory and other vital actions. When it is 

 conjoined with milk, it is the most perfect restorative known. 



The author did not regard any of these substances as true food, viz. substances 

 which by their own elements directly nourish the system, but having the special 

 power of cm-tailing the power of assimilating other food. Hence, although there 

 may not be "more nutritive matter in a pint of beer than will lie upon a sixpence," 

 there is a power whereby other food is made more useful to the system. 



The Physiological Relations of the Colovring Matter of the Bile. 

 By J. L. W. Thudichum, M.D. 

 The author having convinced himself by experiment that the ordinary method of 

 purifying eholochrome (the colouring matter of bile) does not give a uniform 

 material, has sought for such a reaction as would give the rational composition of 

 this substance in order to establish its formula by metamorphoses. Such a reaction 

 he has obtained with nitrous acid, which, when passed in the gaseous state into 

 water, alcohol, or ether containing eholochrome in suspension in a finely divided 

 state, decomposes the latter with effervescence due to the evolution of nitrogen. 

 There remains in the vessel a new acid, viz. cholochromic acid, insoluble in water, 

 but soluble in alcohol, ether, and chloroform, and very changeable on exposure to 

 air. It crystallizes in dark-red rhombic octohedra when its solution in chloroform 



10* 



