Grappling with the Monster; Or, the Curse and the Cure of Strong DrinkArthur, T. S. (Timothy Shay)
Religion
Grappling with the Monster; Or, the Curse and the Cure of Strong Drink
Arthur, T. S. (Timothy Shay)
Temperance
"By common observation, the flush seen on the cheek during the first
stage of alcoholic excitation, is presumed to extend merely to the parts
actually exposed to view. It cannot, however, be too forcibly impressed
that the condition is universal in the body. If the lungs could be seen,
they, too, would be found with their vessels injected; if the brain and
spinal cord could be laid open to view, they would be discovered in the
same condition; if the stomach, the liver, the spleen, the kidneys or
any other vascular organs or parts could be exposed, the vascular
engorgement would be equally manifest. In the lower animals, I have been
able to witness this extreme vascular condition in the lungs, and there
are here presented to you two drawings from nature, showing, one the
lungs in a natural state of an animal killed by a sudden blow, the other
the lungs of an animal killed equally suddenly, but at a time when it
was under the influence of alcohol. You will see, as if you were looking
at the structures themselves, how different they are in respect to the
blood which they contained, how intensely charged with blood is the lung
in which the vessels had been paralyzed by the alcoholic Spirit."
EFFECT ON THE BRAIN.
"I once had the unusual, though unhappy, opportunity of observing the
same phenomenon in the brain structure of a man, who, in a paroxysm of
alcoholic excitement, decapitated himself under the wheel of a railway
carriage, and whose brain was instantaneously evolved from the skull by
the crash. The brain itself, entire, was before me within three minutes
after the death. It exhaled the odor of spirit most distinctly, and its
membranes and minute structures were vascular in the extreme. It looked
as if it had been recently injected with vermilion. The white matter of
the cerebrum, studded with red points, could scarcely be distinguished,
when it was incised, by its natural whiteness; and the pia-mater, or
internal vascular membrane covering the brain, resembled a delicate web
of coagulated red blood, so tensely were its fine vessels engorged.
"I should add that this condition extended through both the larger and
the smaller brain, the cerebrum and cerebellum, but was not so marked in
the medulla or commencing portion of the spinal cord."
THE SPINAL CORD AND NERVES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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