June 30, 1916J 



SCIENCE 



915 



few seconds, and failed to hear one stim- 

 ulus word; ten seconds later, after being 

 awakened, he responded normally both as 

 to latent time and the character of the 

 associated word. There was a distinct 

 effort in all cases for the subject to attempt 

 to pull himself together to make a showing, 

 but it is a striking fact that in spite of the 

 autogenic reinforcement, with one exception 

 the performance after alcohol was below 

 normal. The one exception was the eye re- 

 action to visual, peripheral stimuli after the 

 30 c.c. dose, where there apparently seemed 

 to be facilitation as the result of the mod- 

 erate dose of alcohol. An examination of 

 the data for all the subjects shows, how- 

 ever, that there was a marked practise 

 effect, which was entirely unlooked for in the 

 arrangement of our experiments. But even 

 this could not offset the effect of the larger 

 dose, which invariably showed depression 

 of the reaction. 



In the analysis of our data it becomes 

 necessary to consider all sensory and motor 

 processes as the resultant of complex, stimu- 

 lating and inhibiting factors. It was dis- 

 tinctly noted in our experiments that when 

 there were definite inhibitory processes, 

 such as, for example, in one or two instances 

 where the protective wink reflex was in- 

 hibited as the result of training, that this 

 inhibition suffered first under alcohol. This 

 was also noticeable in the threshold for 

 faradic stimulation where alcohol disturbed 

 the subject's caution and produced more 

 numerous false reactions, that is, reactions 

 when there were no stimuli. "We have, on 

 the one hand, with the higher senses a 

 capacity for autogenic reinforcement, and, 

 on the other hand, a tendency for the alco- 

 hol to affect inhibition. It seems not un- 

 likely that we have here a partial explana- 

 tion at least for the wide variety of effects 

 which are commonly observed in the social 

 use of alcohol, where environment gives the 



reinforcement and alcohol reduces the in- 

 hibitions. Our evidence is positive, how- 

 ever, that the ingestion of alcohol results in 

 a' depression of neuro-muscular processes 

 and that these phenomena can not be re- 

 duced to the excitation of the inhibitory 

 processes. But conversely, whenever an ap- 

 parent excitation occurs as a result of alco- 

 hol it is either demonstrably (as in the case 

 of the pulse rate, the reflexes, memory and 

 the threshold) or probably (as in the eye 

 reaction) due to a relatively overbalancing 

 depression of the controlling and inhibitory 

 processes. 



The most apparent exception to the gen- 

 eral trend of depressions noted in all the 

 processes was that of the pulse. A careful 

 analysis of individual pulse cycles showed, 

 however, by the method of Keid Hunt, that 

 there are large variations in the length of 

 diastole after alcohol. Since many of our 

 experimental observations were made in 

 relatively short periods, it appeared logical 

 to assume that the changes in pulse rate 

 were due not to the stimulation of the slow- 

 acting accelerating mechanism, but to the 

 rapidly reacting inhibitory mechanism. 

 We may therefore explain this apparent 

 relative acceleration of the pulse rate on the 

 ground of a partial paralysis of the cardio- 

 inhibitory mechanism. 



It is also of interest to note the time of 

 the maximum effect of alcohol in the vari- 

 ous processes. In general there was a re- 

 markable uniformity in the time after the 

 ingestion of alcohol when the greatest effect 

 was noted. This was practically from 90 

 to 100 minutes, in other words a little over 

 an hour and a half, and essentially con- 

 stant for all the processes. 



Finally, to note if there was a central 

 tendency in any one of the particular series 

 of measurements we compared the average 

 effect of alcohol upon each process for the 

 individual subjects with the average for the 



