The Effects of Alcohol Upon the Human Body

THE EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL UPON THE HUMAN BODY.

The body is made up mainly of cells, fibres and fluids. The cell is the most important structure in the living body. Life resides in the cell, and every animal may be considered a mass of cells, each of which is alive, and each of which has its own work to accomplish in the building up of the body.

The matter which forms the mass of a cell is called protoplasm, or bioplasm. It resembles somewhat the white of a raw egg, which is almost pure albumen. Cells make up the body, and do its work. Some are employed to construct the skeleton, others are used to form the organs which move the body; liver-cells secrete bile, and the cells in the kidneys separate poisonous matters from the blood in order that they may be expelled from the system.

These cells, composing the mass of the body, being very delicate, are easily acted upon by substances coming into contact with them. If substances other than natural foods or drinks are introduced into the body, the cells are injuriously affected. Alcohol is especially injurious to cells, “retarding the changes in their interior, hindering their appropriation of food, and elimination of waste matters, and therefore preventing their proper development and growth.”

“Bioplasm is living matter; it is structureless, semi-fluid, transparent and colorless. It is the only matter that can grow, move, divide itself and multiply, the only matter that can take up pabulum (food) and convert it into its own substance; and is the only matter that can be nourished. The bioplasm in the cell gets its nourishment by drawing in of the pabulum through the cell wall, and in that way building up the formed material while it is being disintegrated on the outer surface. This process is continually being carried on, and is what is meant by nutrition. Disintegration of the formed material is as essential as the building up of it. All organic structure is the result of change taking place in bioplasm. These small cell-like bioplasts are the workmen of the organism. All wounds are repaired by them, all fractures are united, and all diseased tissues brought back to their normal and healthy condition, unless there is not vitality enough to overcome disease, or they have been injured or killed by poisonous material. The body is kept in repair by this living matter, and all the functions of the body are but the result of its action. We may examine, watch and study bioplasm under the microscope; we see it take up pabulum and convert that which is adapted to itself into its own substance, while all other substances are rejected. We take a solution of what we call a stimulant and immerse the bioplasm in it, and we find that it increases its activity, moves faster, takes up more pabulum, and divides more rapidly than in the unstimulated condition. We next add an astringent, and it begins to move more slowly, and soon contracts into a spherical shape and remains contracted, or may move slowly to a limited extent, depending on the strength of the solution. We next take a relaxant, and gradually the living matter begins to spread in all directions, in a laxy-like manner, and becomes so thin as to be almost undiscernible, and takes up very little, if any, pabulum. If sufficiently relaxed or astringed, the movements may entirely cease so as to appear lifeless, but when a stimulant is again added the same result is obtained as before—it begins to move, and acts as vigorous as ever, which shows that it was not injured in the least by the agents used. Alcohol is called a stimulant. We take a weak solution of alcohol and try it in the same way; but we find that almost instantly the living matter contracts into a ball-like mass. Now, we may through ignorance suppose that alcohol acts as an astringent, and so we try to stimulate it with the same harmless agent before used, but no impression is made on it; it does not move; it is dead matter. These are demonstrable facts, and lie at the foundation of physiology, pathology and the practice of medicine. Alcohol destroys the very life force that alone keeps the body in repair. For a more simple experiment as to the action of alcohol, take the white of an egg (which consists of albumen, and is very similar to bioplasm), put it into alcohol, and notice it turn white, coagulate and harden. The same experiment can be made with blood with the same result—killing the blood bioplasts. Raw meat will turn white and harden in alcohol. Alcohol acts the same on food in the stomach as it does on the same substances before introduced into the stomach, and acts just the same on blood and all the living tissues in the system as out of it; and this alone is enough to condemn its use as a medicine.” From Alcohol, Is It a Medicine? by W. F. Pechuman, M. D., of Detroit, Michigan.

Alcohol as an Antipyretic

ALCOHOL AS AN ANTIPYRETIC.

“By the power of alcohol to retard the evolution of heat in retarding molecular changes in the tissues, the liquids containing it may be used as antipyretics when the temperature is too high, and to retard the processes of waste when these are too rapid. But the antipyretic influence of alcohol is so feeble in comparison with the proper application of water to the surface, or with the internal administration of sulphate of quinia, salicylic acid, digitalis, etc. that no one thinks of using it for antipyretic purposes.”—Dr. N. S. Davis in Principles and Practice of Medicine.

PROFESSOR ATWATER’S CONCLUSIONS UPON ALCOHOL AS A FUEL-FOOD.

In 1899 a decided sensation was caused by the announcement that Prof. Atwater, of Middletown, Conn., had proved that alcohol is a fuel-food equal in value to carbohydrates and fats. The study later of Prof. Atwater’s report of his investigations led to prolonged discussions among medical men interested in the alcohol question, and his theory that alcohol is a food because it is oxidized in the body was vigorously opposed by many scientists of high standing. Professor Abel, of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, an investigator of alcohol who worked with the Committee of Fifty, said on this point:—

“Oxidizability cannot be made the measure of usefulness in regard to this substance.”

Professor Gruber, president of the Royal Institute of Hygiene, Munich, said:—

“Does alcohol truly deserve to be called a food substance? Obviously, only such substances can be called food material, or be employed for food, as, like albumen, fat, and sugar, exert non-poisonous influence in the amounts in which they reach the blood and must circulate in it in order to nourish * * * * Although alcohol contributes energy it diminishes working ability. We are not able to find that its energy is turned to account for nerve and muscle work. Very small amounts, whose food value is insignificant, show an injurious effect upon the nervous system.”

Sir Victor Horsley, the well-known London surgeon, said:—

“We know that alcohol lowers the temperature of the body. It can only do that by diminishing the activity of the vital processes. It also diminishes very greatly the power of the muscles, and it diminishes the intellectual power of the nervous system. To call an agent that causes such diminution of activity throughout the whole body a food is ridiculous.”

An editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association said:

“The fallacy of the reasoning which would place alcohol among the foods is very apparent when we put it in the form of a syllogism: All foods are oxidized in the body; alcohol is oxidized in the body; therefore alcohol is food. As logically we might say: ‘All birds are bilaterally symmetrical; the earthworm is bilaterally symmetrical; therefore the earthworm is a bird.’ Oxidation within the body is simply one of several important properties of food, as bilateral symmetry is one of several important characteristics of a bird.”

Schafer’s Physiology says:—

“It cannot be doubted that any small production of energy resulting from the oxidation of alcohol is more than counterbalanced by its deleterious influences as a drug upon the tissue elements, and especially upon those of the nervous system.”

The Bulletin of the A. M. T. A. for July, 1899, contained an article upon Prof. Atwater by Dr. J. H. Kellogg, from which the following is taken:—

“Starch, sugar and fats become foods or fuels only through their assimilation. Abundant physiological evidence attests that no substance can act as a food, or as a true source of energy, unless it has first entered into the composition of the body. It must be assimilated. The forces manifested by the body, the muscular forces, or nervous energy, are the result of the breaking down of organized structure into simpler forms. For example, in the case of nervous energy, material from which nerve energy is derived is stored up in the nerve cell, and can be seen with the microscope in the form of minute granules, which disappear as the cell energy is expended, leaving the cell blank and shriveled when in a state of extreme fatigue from overwork. The same is essentially true of the muscle cell. The source of muscular energy is glycogen, an organized substance which becomes a part of the muscle tissue in a well-nourished muscle in a state of rest.

“Experiments have clearly shown that fat, sugar and starch must all alike be converted into the form of glycogen and enter into the muscle structure before they can become a source of energy.

“Professor Atwater tells us that alcohol can not form tissue, hence the query is pertinent, How can it be a source of vital energy? The body does not burn food as a stove does fuel. Food can be called fuel only in a highly figurative sense. The oxidation of food in the body does not take place directly. Food is assimilated, becoming a part of the tissue. Oxygen is also assimilated, entering into the composition of the tissue along with the food elements under the action of special organic ferments brought into play by nervous impulses received from the central ganglia.

“The molecules of these residual tissues which form the storehouse of energy in the body are rearranged in simpler forms, thereby giving up a portion of the energy which holds them together in the state in which they exist in the tissues, and this energy thus set free appears as muscle force, mental activity, glandular work and various other forms of functional activity.”

Alcohol as a Sedative

ALCOHOL AS A SEDATIVE.

Dr. J. J. Ridge says in the Medical Pioneer, April, 1893:—

“Alcohol, chiefly in the form of spirits, is often given to procure sleep and to relieve pain, such as that of neuralgia, dyspepsia, colic and diarrhœa. It is as a sedative that alcohol is so insidious and seductive in cases of chronic disease, as, if frequently resorted to, the drink craving is almost certainly developed. Hence the importance in many cases of rather bearing the ills we have than of flying to others that we know not of. It is clear that other narcotics, such as opium, morphia, chorodyne, chloral, are open to the same objection, and the victims of these drugs are terribly numerous. * * * * * In many instances some form of dyspepsia is the cause of the sleeplessness, palpitation or other uneasy feeling for which a sedative is desired, and when this is cured the symptoms vanish.”

A prominent minister in a large American city was afflicted with insomnia a few years ago, and, after trying various remedies, was advised by a physician to try whisky “night-caps.” He became a hopeless drunkard. A young medical student in New York appealed to one of his professors for aid in overcoming aggravated insomnia. The professor advised whisky and morphine! The advice led to the ruin of the young man.

Alcohol as a Tonic

ALCOHOL AS A TONIC.

Dr. J. J. Ridge, of London, says:—

“The action of alcohol in relaxing unstriped muscular fibre, which entitles it to be called an anti-spasmodic, robs it of all claim to give tone. The sense of exhilaration which follows small doses of alcohol has been mistaken for real strength and increase of vitality. It is well known that relaxation of the blood-vessels throughout the body is one of the first effects of alcohol. The arteries of the retina have been observed to dilate after very small doses of alcohol. The diminution of tone is well seen in the tracings of the pulse under the influence of alcohol. If one needs a tonic, therefore, alcohol is one of the things to be shunned altogether.

“But alcoholic beverages contain other things beside alcohol. Beer contains infusion of hops, or other bitter stomachics. Some wines contain tannin. These ingredients, by creating or stimulating the appetite, increase the strength and vital power in certain cases. But we have a large number of drugs which will do the same without the disadvantages arising from the presence of alcohol, and, if the flavor be objected to, many of them can be taken in the form of coated pills.

“The external use of cold, either by a dripping sheet, cold sponging, or a shower-bath, according to the power of reaction, is a valuable means of giving real tone.

“Wine is frequently prescribed for those young persons who are growing rapidly, and whose strength does not seem to keep pace with their growth. It is important to know that alcohol is not desirable in such circumstances. There is often found in such cases a defective appetite, perhaps even sub-acute gastric catarrh, which may be due to imperfect mastication through bad teeth, or aggravated by it. There are other causes, such as late hours, bad habits, improper food or irregular meals. In such cases those means must be resorted to which are so effectual in improving the condition and strengthening the heart of athletes. Regular and regulated meals, exercise in the fresh air, a good amount of rest and sleep—these will do more than anything else to invigorate the bodily health.”

Dr. N. S. Davis says:—

“Although I was taught, like all others, to use alcohol as a tonic when patients were sick, to hasten their recovery and promote their strength, yet it did not take me very long to find out that here and there was one already a teetotaler who would not take wine long, nor any kind of alcoholic drink unless prescribed, just as castor-oil, dose by dose, but who, when he got beyond the necessity of having it as a medicine, took no more. What was the comparison? My patients who refused, or did not take alcohol, got strong quicker and had less tendency to relapse than those who continued its use. Here was the first step in progress, and consequently I came soon to cease the recommending it merely to hasten recovery of strength. As a tonic, I found it of no value.”

Dr. James Miller, of Edinburgh, says in Alcohol, Its Place and Power, written many years ago:—

“It may be well here to correct an important error, yet very current, in regard to the medicinal use of alcohol. People regard it as a simple and common tonic; and are ready to accept its supposed help as such in every form of weakness and general disorder of health. But it is ordinarily, no true tonic.”

Dr. Ernest Hart, editor of the British Medical Journal, stated some years ago at a meeting of the British Medical Temperance Association that “the medical profession were nearly all agreed that alcohol is neither a food nor a tonic.”

Many drunkards have been made, especially among women, by the delusion that alcohol has tonic effect. As a sample of these sad cases the following is given, taken from a recent number of The National Advocate:—

“There is in the jail at Elizabeth, N. J., a woman who was arrested while participating in wild drunken orgies with a gang of tramps in the woods near the town. She appears nothing but a besotted hag, but was only a short time ago a dutiful wife of a respectable man, and the mother of three beautiful children. Her father, who is said to be living in a village in New York State, is a highly respected minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Her children are in an asylum, and her husband is a wanderer in the West. The cause of her ruin was beer, prescribed for her by the family physician as a tonic. At first she refused to take it, having always been a teetotaler, but persuaded to obey the physician, she soon acquired a taste for the drink that speedily developed into the overmastering appetite, which has brought her and hers to this sad condition.”

Consciousness as a Process or Stream | The Nature of Consiousness | The Mind and Its Education

Consciousness as a Process or Stream.—In looking in upon the mind we must expect to discover, then, not a thing, but a process. The thing forever eludes us, but the process is always present. Consciousness is like a stream, which, so far as we are concerned with it in a psychological discussion, has its rise at the cradle and its end at the grave. It begins with the babe's first faint gropings after light in his new world as he enters it, and ends with the man's last blind gropings after light in his old world as he leaves it. The stream is very narrow at first, only as wide as the few sensations which come to the babe when it sees the light or hears the sound; it grows wider as the mind develops, and is at last measured by the grand sum total of life's experience.

This mental stream is irresistible. No power outside6 of us can stop it while life lasts. We cannot stop it ourselves. When we try to stop thinking, the stream but changes its direction and flows on. While we wake and while we sleep, while we are unconscious under an anæsthetic, even, some sort of mental process continues. Sometimes the stream flows slowly, and our thoughts lag—we "feel slow"; again the stream flows faster, and we are lively and our thoughts come with a rush; or a fever seizes us and delirium comes on; then the stream runs wildly onward, defying our control, and a mad jargon of thoughts takes the place of our usual orderly array. In different persons, also, the mental stream moves at different rates, some minds being naturally slow-moving and some naturally quick in their operations.

Consciousness resembles a stream also in other particulars. A stream is an unbroken whole from its source to its mouth, and an observer stationed at one point cannot see all of it at once. He sees but the one little section which happens to be passing his station point at the time. The current may look much the same from moment to moment, but the component particles which constitute the stream are constantly changing. So it is with our thought. Its stream is continuous from birth till death, but we cannot see any considerable portion of it at one time. When we turn about quickly and look in upon our minds, we see but the little present moment. That of a few seconds ago is gone and will never return. The thought which occupied us a moment since can no more be recalled, just as it was, than can the particles composing a stream be re-collected and made to pass a given point in its course in precisely the same order and relation to one another as before. This means, then, that we can never have precisely the same mental state twice; that the thought of the moment cannot have the same associates that it had the first time; that the thought of this moment will never be ours again; that all we can know of our minds at any one time is the part of the process present in consciousness at that moment.

Studying Mental States of Others through Expression | How We Introspect | The Mind and Its Education

Studying Mental States of Others through Expression.—Although I can meet only my own mind face to face, I am, nevertheless, under the necessity of judging your mental states and knowing what is taking place in your consciousness. For in order to work successfully with you, in order to teach you, understand you, control you or obey you, be your friend or enemy, or associate with you in any other way, I must know you. But the real you that I must know is hidden behind the physical mask that we call the body. I must, therefore, be able to understand your states of consciousness as they are reflected in your bodily expressions. Your face, form, gesture, speech, the tone of voice, laughter and tears, the poise of attention, the droop of grief, the tenseness of anger and start of fear,—all these tell the story of the mental state that lies behind the senses. These various expressions are the pictures on the screen by which your mind reveals itself to others; they are the language by which the inner self speaks to the world without.

How We Introspect | The Mind and Its Education

How We Introspect.—Introspection is something of an art; it has to be learned. Some master it easily, some with more difficulty, and some, it is to be feared, never become skilled in its use. In order to introspect one must catch himself unawares, so to speak, in the very act of thinking, remembering, deciding, loving, hating, and all the rest. These fleeting phases of consciousness are ever on the wing; they never pause in their restless flight and we must catch them as they go. This is not so easy as it appears; for the moment we turn to look in upon the mind, that moment consciousness changes. The thing we meant to examine is gone, and something else has taken its place. All that is left us then is to view the mental object while it is still fresh in the memory, or to catch it again when it returns.

Introspection the Only Means of Discovering Nature of Consciousness

Introspection the Only Means of Discovering Nature of Consciousness.—What, then, is mind? What is the thing that we call consciousness? No mere definition can ever make it clearer than it is at this moment to each of us. The only way to know what mind is, is to look in upon our own consciousness and observe what is transpiring there. In the language of the psychologist, we must introspect. For one can never come to understand the nature of mind and its laws of working by listening to lectures or reading text books alone. There is no psychology in the text, but only in your living, flowing stream of thought and mine. True, the lecture and the book may tell us what to look for when we introspect, and how to understand what we find. But the statements and descriptions about our minds must be verified by our own observation and experience before they become vital truth to us.

How Mind is to be Known | The Mind and Its Education

How the Mind is to be known

The Personal Character of Consciousness.—Mind can be observed and known. But each one can know directly only his own mind, and not another's. You and I may look into each other's face and there guess the meaning that lies back of the smile or frown or flash of the eye, and so read something of the mind's activity. But neither directly meets the other's mind. I may learn to recognize your features, know your voice, respond to the clasp of your hand; but the mind, the consciousness, which does your thinking and feels your joys and sorrows, I can never know completely. Indeed I can never know your mind at all except through your bodily acts and expressions. Nor is there any way in which you can reveal your mind, your spiritual self, to me except through these means.

It follows therefore that only you can ever know you and only I can ever know I in any first-hand and immediate way. Between your consciousness and mine there exists a wide gap that cannot be bridged. Each of us lives apart. We are like ships that pass and hail each other in passing but do not touch. We may work together, live together, come to love or hate each other, and yet our inmost selves forever stand alone. They must live their own lives, think their own thoughts, and arrive at their own destiny.

The Mind, Or Consciousness | The Mind and Its Education

The Mind, Or Consciousness

We are to study the mind and its education; but how? It is easy to understand how we may investigate the great world of material things about us; for we can see it, touch it, weigh it, or measure it. But how are we to discover the nature of the mind, or come to know the processes by which consciousness works? For mind is intangible; we cannot see it, feel it, taste it, or handle it. Mind belongs not to the realm of matter which is known to the senses, but to the realm of spirit, which the senses can never grasp. And yet the mind can be known and studied as truly and as scientifically as can the world of matter. Let us first of all see how this can be done.