III. There is reason to believe that there results a further action of alcohol upon the electrical currents of the body, which originate in and proceed from the brain. Dr. Mulvaney, Staff Surgeon of the Royal Navy of England, conducted some experiments upon the effects of alcohol on these electrical currents, with the following results: "He discovered that an ounce of brandy, equal to about half an ounce of alcohol, taken by a healthy man, raised the galvanometer in a few minutes, in one case twenty-five degrees, and in another case forty-five degrees. He concluded that the thermo-electric currents of the system were strongly excited by small doses of alcohol, and that this excitement may be profitably employed when there is 'clear evidence of derangement of function springing from enfeeblement of the organic system of nerves'; but that 'in health, when function, nutrition, and blood and nerve influence are harmonized by structural integrity,' such artificially excited currents, by tending to abstract an undue amount of water from the brain-cells, 'must interfere with their normal working.'"[17] It appears, then, that there are three well-recognized and clearly pronounced effects upon the elements of brain-structure which must result from the use of alcohol even in small doses. It will be observed that nothing has been said as to its physiological effects upon membranes in other portions of the body. I hardly need enter upon this branch of the subject in order to establish proof of its very great effect as an agent in producing a changed and unstable condition of brain-action. And yet we need to bear in mind how greatly its effects on the nervous system in general are increased by its affinity for water; and how it absorbs this from all portions of the body with which it may come in contact, thus tending to leave them in a shrivelled and dry condition,--one unfavorable to discharge of function. That this may be more clearly understood in relation to the membranes of other portions of the system, as well as those of the brain, I quote from Dr. Richardson[18] a few sentences: "Upon all these membraneous structures alcohol exerts a direct perverting power of action. It produces in them a thickening, a shrinking, and an inactivity that reduces their functional power. That they may work rapidly and equally, the membranes require to be at all times properly charged with water. If into contact with them any agent is brought that deprives them of water, then is their work interfered with; they cease to separate the saline constituents correctly; and if the evil that is thus started be allowed to continue, they contract upon their contained matter, in whatever organ it may be situated, and condense it. "By its effects upon these membranes, envelopes, and coverings, alcohol becomes one of the most extreme causes of modification of animal function, and one of the greatest sources of structural degeneration."