The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English: or, Medicine Simplified, 54th ed., One Million, Six Hundred; and Fifty Thousand
John Stuart Mill · en
The flush often seen on the cheeks of those who are under the influence
of alcoholic liquors, and which is produced by a relaxed and distended
condition of the superficial blood vessels, is erroneously supposed by
many to merely extend to the parts exposed to view. On this subject, Dr.
Richardson says: "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 laid open to the eye, 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 once I had the
unusual, though unhappy opportunity of observing the same phenomenon in
the brain of a man who, in a paroxysm of alcoholic delirium, cast
himself under the wheels of a railway carriage. The brain,
instantaneously thrown out from the skull by the crash, was before me
within three minutes after the accident. 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 injection. The white matter of the cerebrum, studded with red
points, could scarcely be distinguished when it was incised, it was so
preternaturally red; 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. This condition extended through
both the larger and the smaller brain, cerebrum, and cerebellum, but was
not so marked in the medulla, or commencing portion of the spinal cord,
as in the other portions.
In course of time, in persons accustomed to alcohol, the vascular
changes, temporary only in the novitiate, become confirmed and
permanent. The bloom on the nose which characterizes the genial toper is
the established sign of alcoholic action on the vascular structure.
Recently, physiological research has served to explain the reason why,
under alcohol the heart at first beats so quickly, why the pulse rises,
and why the minute blood-vessels become so strongly injected.