HOW ALCOHOL AFFECTS THE BRAIN
I as soon as
had the unusual, eleven though unhappy, possibility of gazing the equal
phenomenon with inside the mind shape of a man, who, in a paroxysm Of alcoholic
excitement, decapitated himself underneath the wheel of a railway carriage, and
whose thoughts have become immediately superior from the skull with the useful
resource of the use of the mind itself, entire, changed into earlier than me
inside 3 mins after the death.
It exhaled
the smell of spirit maximum distinctly, and its membranes and minute systems
have been vascular with inside the extreme.
It appeared
as though it were lately injected with vermilion.
The white
depend on the cerebrum, studded with pink points, ought to scarcely be
distinguished, whilst it turned into incised, with the aid of using its herbal
whiteness; and The diameter, or inner vascular membrane masking the brain,
resembled a sensitive net of coagulated crimson blood, so tensely have been its
first-rate vessels engorged.
I ought to
upload that this situation prolonged via each the bigger and the smaller brain,
the cerebrum And cerebellum, however turned into now no longer so marked with
inside the medulla or starting up part of the spinal cord.
The spinal
twine and nerves.
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The movement
of alcohol persevered past the primary stage, the characteristic of the spinal
wire is influenced.
Through this
a part of the anxious machine we're accustomed, in health, to carry out
automated acts Of a mechanical kind, which continue systematically even if
we're questioning or speak me on different subjects.
Thus a
professional workman will hold his mechanical paintings perfectly, whilst his
thoughts is bent on a few other subject; and thus we all perform various acts
in a purely automatic way, without calling in the aid of the higher centers,
except something more than ordinary occurs to demand their service, upon which
we think before webs; Under alcohol, as the spinal centers become influenced,
these pure automatic acts cease to be correctly carried on.
That the
hand may reach any object, or the foot be correctly planted, the higher
intellectual center must be invoked to make the proceeding secure.
There
follows quickly upon this a deficient power of co-ordination of muscular
movement. The frightened manage of sure of the muscle tissue is lost, and the
frightened stimulus is extra or much less enfeebled.
The muscle
mass of the decrease lip with inside the human problem commonly fail first,
then the muscle mass of the lower limbs, and it is worthy of remark that the
extensor muscles give way earlier than the flexors.
The muscles
themselves, by this time, are also failing in power; they respond more feebly
than is natural to the nervous stimulus; they, too, are coming under the
depressing influence of the paralyzing agent, their structure is temporarily
deranged, and their contractile power reduced.
This change
of the animal features below alcohol, marks the second one diploma of its
action. In young subjects, there is now, usually, vomiting with faintness,
followed by gradual relief from the burden of the poison.
Effect on
the brain centers.
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The
alcoholic spirit carried yet a further degree, the cerebral or brain centers
become influenced; they are reduced in power, and the controlling influences of
will and of judgment are lost.
As these
centers are unbalanced and thrown into chaos, the rational part of the nature
of the man gives way before the emotional, passion or organic part.
The reason
is now off duty, or is fooling with duty, and all the mere animal instincts and
sentiments are laid atrociously bare.
The coward
shows up more craven, the braggart more boastful, the cruel more merciless, the
untruthful more false, the carnal more degraded. ' In vino veritas' expresses,
even, indeed, to physiological accuracy, the true condition.
The reason,
the emotions, the instincts, are all in a state of carnival, and in chaotic
feebleness. Finally, the action of the alcohol still extending, the superior
brain centers are overpowered; the senses are beclouded, the voluntary muscular
prostration is perfected, sensibility is lost, and the body lies a mere log,
dead by all but one-fourth, on which alone is life hangs.
The heart
still remains true to its duty, and while it just lives it feeds the breathing
power.
And so the
circulation and the respiration, in the otherwise inert mass, keeps the mass
within the bare domain of life until the poison begins to pass away and the
nervous centers to revive again.
It is happy for the inebriate that, as a rule, the brain fails so long before the heart that he has neither the power nor the sense to continue his process of destruction up to the act of death of his circulation.
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