well-beered brain even to read the pamphlet on Liberty and Necessity
which Franklin wrote in those times.
The few experiments which have been made, with a view to trace the
course of alcohol in the living system, all confirm what all drinkers
feel, that it is to the brain alcohol hurries when it has passed the
lips. Some innocent dogs have suffered and died in this investigation.
Dr. Percy, a British physician, records, that he injected two ounces
and a half of alcohol into the stomach of a dog, which caused its
almost instant death. The dog dropped very much as he would if he had
been struck upon the head with a club. The experimenter, without a
moment's unnecessary delay, removed the animal's brain, subjected it to
distillation, and extracted from it a surprising quantity of
alcohol,--a larger proportion than he could distil from the blood or
liver. The alcohol seemed to have rushed to the brain: it was a blow
upon the head which killed the dog. Dr. Percy introduced into the
stomachs of other dogs smaller quantities of alcohol, not sufficient to
cause death; but upon killing the dogs, and subjecting the brain, the
blood, the bile, the liver, and other portions of the body, to
distillation, he invariably found more alcohol in the brain than in the
same weight of other organs. He injected alcohol into the blood of
dogs, which caused death; but the deadly effect was produced, not upon
the substance of the blood, but upon the brain. His experiments go far
toward explaining why the drinking of alcoholic liquors does not
sensibly retard digestion. It seems that, when we take wine at dinner,
the alcohol does not remain in the stomach, but is immediately absorbed
into the blood, and swiftly conveyed to the brain and other organs. If
one of those "four-bottle men" of the last generation had fallen down
dead, after boozing till past midnight, and he had been treated as Dr.
Percy treated the dogs, his brain, his liver, and all the other centres
of power, would have yielded alcohol in abundance; his blood would have
smelt of it; his flesh would have contained it; but there would have
been very little in the stomach. Those men were able to drink four,
six, and seven bottles of wine at a sitting, because the sitting lasted
four, six, and seven hours, which gave time for the alcohol to be
distributed over the system. But instances have occurred of laboring
men who have kept themselves steadily drunk for forty-eight hours, and
then died. The bodies of two such were dissected some years ago in
England, and the food which they had eaten at the beginning of the
debauch was undigested. It had been preserved in alcohol as we preserve
snakes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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