Alcohol at the bar : the highest medical and scientific testimony concerning its use / compiled by G.W. Bacon.
- Date:
- [between 1880 and 1889?]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Alcohol at the bar : the highest medical and scientific testimony concerning its use / compiled by G.W. Bacon. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![of life. In tlie confirmed alcoholic the alcohol is, in a cer- tain sense, so disposed of that it fits, as it were, the body for a long season, nay, becomes part of it ; and yet it is silently doing its fatal woii. The organs of the body may be slowdy brought into a state of adaptation to receive it and dispose of it. But in that very preparation they are themselves made to undergo physical changes tending to the destruction of their function, to perversion of their structure, and to all those varied modifications of organic parts, which the dissector of the human subject so soon learns to recognise, as the devastations incident to alcoholic indulgence. “The afflicted from alcohol form great populations, and, under one condition or other of the alcoholic disease, they comprise a fair majority of our community. The simplest form of the disease is seen in those who have become habituated to the use of alcohol up to the first degree [explained in a previous chapter]. In this degree the alcohol, when in action, is producing arterial relaxation, and the extreme or peripheral circulation is surcharged with blood. Persons who are thus far habituated to it find in it what seems to them to be a daily necessity. They rise in the morning imperfectly refreshed by sleep, and they discover in the first meal of the day, in the ordinary breakfast of domestic life, a very imperfect sus- tainment. As the day advances, some want is felt, generally; the stomach seems to require a fillip, the nervous system is languid, the mind is dull, and the muscles are easily wearied. . , . Under the apparent necessity created by these desires, some alcohol is imbibed, and relief is, for a time, obtained. . . . But the effect is of short duration. After a brief period the alcohol is de- manded again, either with or without food, and at each meal it is felt to be as essential as the food itself—nay, it is often felt to be so essential that food is as nothing without it. Thus the want is day by day sustained; the heart cannot perform its work when, from the removal of the reducing influence of the alcohol, the tension of the minute arterial vessels becomes natural, and complete](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28057077_0052.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
