THE PHYSIOLOGICAL POSITION OF ALCOHOL. 
161 
minimum, and in birds comes down from five and a half 
to six degrees ; in rabbits from two and a half to three 
degrees. In this condition the animal temperature often 
remains until there are signs of recovery, viz., conscious 
or semi-conscious movements, upon which there may be a second 
fall of temperature of two or even three degrees in birds. In 
this course of recovery I have seen, for instance, the temperature 
of a pigeon which had a natural standard of 110° Fahr. reduced 
to 102°. Usually with this depression of force there is a desire 
for sleep, and with perfect rest in a w r arm air there is a return 
of animal heat ; but the return is very slow, the space of time 
required to bring back the natural heat being fron^ three to 
four times longer than that which was required to reduce it to 
the minimum. 
In these fluctuations of temperature the ordinary influences 
of the external air play an important part as regards duration 
of the fluctuation, and to some extent as regards extremes of 
fluctuation. 
These facts respecting fall of temperature of the animal body 
under alcohol were derived from observations originally taken 
from the inferior animals ; they have been confirmed since by 
other observers from the human subject. Dr. De Marmon, of 
King’s Bridge, New York, has specially proved this fact in some 
instances of poisoning by whisky in young children. In one 
of these examples the temperature of the body fell from the 
natural standard of 98° Fahr. to 94°, in another to 93^-°. 
Through all the three stages noticed in the above, the decline 
of animal heat is a steadily progressing phenomenon. It is 
true that in the first stage the heat of the flushed parts of the 
body is for a brief time raised, but this is due to greater distri- 
bution of blood and increased radiation, not to an actual 
increment of heat within the body. The mass of the body is 
cooling, in fact, while the surfaces are more briskly radiating, 
and soon, as the supply of heat-motion fails, there is fall of 
surface temperature also ; a fall becoming more decided from 
hour to hour up to the occurrence of the fourth and final stage, 
of which I have now to treat. 
The fourth degree of alcoholic intoxication is one of collapse 
of the volitional nervous centres, of the muscular organs under 
the control of those centres, and of some of the organic or mere 
animal centres. It is true that while the body lies prostrate 
under alcohol there are observed certain curious movements of 
the limbs, but these are not stimulated from the centres of 
volition, nor are they reflected motions derived from any external 
stimulus ; they are strange automatic movements, as if still in 
the spinal cord there were some life, and they continue irregularly 
nearly to the end of the chapter, even when the end is death. 
VOL. xi. — NO. XLIII. M 
