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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
Through the whole of this last stage two centres remain 
longest true to their duty, the centre that calls into play the 
respiratory action, and the centre that stimulates the heart. 
There is then an interval during which there are no movements 
whatever, save these of the diaphragm and the heart, and when 
these fail the primary failure is in the breathing muscle : to 
the last the heart continues in action. 
The leading peculiarity of the action of alcohol is the slow- 
ness with which the two centres that supply the heart and the 
great respiratory muscle are affected. In this lies the com- 
parative safety of alcohol : acting evenly and slowly, the diffe- 
rent systems of organs die after each other, or together, 
gently, with the exception of those two on which the continuance 
of mere animal life depends. But for this provision every 
deeply intoxicated animal would inevitably die. 
It happens usually, nevertheless, that under favourable 
circumstances the intoxicated live : the temperature of the 
body sinks two or three degrees lower, but the alcohol diffusing 
through all the tissues, and escaping by diffusion and elimi- 
nation, the living centres are slowly relieved, and so there is 
slow return of power. If death actually occurs, the cause of it 
is condensation of fluid on the bronchial surfaces and arrest of 
respiration from this purely mechanical cause. The animal is 
literally drowned in his own secretion. 
Such are the stages or degrees of alcoholic narcotism, from 
the first to the last. And with the description of them, and 
the order in which they come, my present task is well nigh 
complete. There arise, however, a few thoughts and suggestions 
deserving of brief notice. 
1. In the first place we gather from the physiological 
reading of the action of alcohol that the agent is a narcotic. 
I have compared it throughout to chloroform, and the compa- 
rison is good in all respects save one, viz. that alcohol is less fatal 
than chloroform as an immediate destroyer. It kills certainly 
in its own way to the extent, according to Dr. De Marmon, of 
fifty thousand persons a year in England, and ten thousand a 
year in Bussia, but its method of killing is slow, indirect, and 
by painful disease. 
2. The well proven fact that alcohol, when it is taken into 
the body, reduces the animal temperature, is full of the most 
important suggestions. The fact shows that alcohol does not 
in any sense act as a supplier of vital heat as is so commonly 
supposed, and that it does not prevent the loss of heat as those 
imagine ‘ who take just a drop to keep out the cold.’ It shows, 
on the contrary, that cold and alcohol in their effects on the 
body run closely together, an opinion most fully confirmed by 
the experience of those who live or travel in cold regions of the 
