On the use of alcohol as a medicine / by T.K. Monro and John Wainman Findlay.
- Thomas Kirkpatrick Monro
- Date:
- [1904]
Licence: In copyright
Credit: On the use of alcohol as a medicine / by T.K. Monro and John Wainman Findlay. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
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![I submit that the experimental evidence is strongly against alcohol, while the clinical evidence is, at the least, not very favourable. Ringer and Sainsbury,^ experimenting on the different alcohols by means of an isolated frog's heart, fed with bullock's blood, found that they all arrested the heart in diastole. I ([uote these words from their report:— It is to be noted that, by their direct action on the cardiac tissues, these drugs are clearly paralysant, and that this appears to be the case from the outset, no stage of increased force of contraction preceding. Experiments carried out by Martin and Stevens ^ in 1887, on the isolated dog's heart, also showed that diluted ethyl alcohol poisoned the cardiac muscle tissue, though it possibly acted, in addition, on the coronary arteries. The result was greater and greater stretching of the ventricular wall, with less and less complete systole, until the distended heart filled the pericardium and could stretch no more. The most striking experiments, however, are those of Hemmeter,'^ who isolated the heart and lungs of dogs, supplied them with defibrinated calf's blood or dog's blood, and measured the quantities of blood pumped around by such hearts, under varying conditions, in periods of thirtj?- seconds each. One observation may be quoted as illustrative of the series:— Supplied with nou-alcoholisecl blood, the heart propelled 196 c.c. in 30 seconds. 1 minute after alcoholised blood was turned on, it „ 186 „ ,, .3 minutes ,, ,i >> >> 175 ,i 6 „ „ » . 7 pure ,, again turned on, ,, ,, 3 ,, alcoholised ,, ,, 174 ,, ,, This experiment was made with 0-2 per cent methyl alcohol. Ethyl alcohol was not quite so hurtful, the loss of work in thirty seconds amounting to 17-45 c.c. with ethyl, as compared with 19-46 c.c. with methyl alcohol. The diminution in the work done by the heart when supplied by alcoholised blood was accounted for by dilatation and imperfect systole. There was no change in the pulse-rate which could be attributed to the alcohol employed. These vei-y important results of Ringer and Sainsbury, Martin and Stevens, and Hcmmeter, are (juite in accordance with the teaching of a more recent English writer, Leonard 1 Practitioner, 1883, vol. i, ]). 33!). 2 Studies from liiol. Lnh. Johns Hopk: i'niv., 1887, vol. ii, ji. 213. 3 Slvdies from liiol. L(tb. Johns Hopk: Univ., 188!), vol. iv, No. T),](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21466749_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
