Recent researches on the action of alcohol in health and in sickness : a lecture / by G. Sims Woodhead.

  • Woodhead, G. Sims.
Date:
1903
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Recent researches on the action of alcohol in health and in sickness : a lecture / by G. Sims Woodhead. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    \vast(' nitmgerioiis Ki]l)stancoK. In tliOHC wises tli(> aiiiinals ffi'fujuallv waste away. Certain otliei' poisons—ether, j)liosplioi'us, arsenic, tlie coarser ja-oducts of metabolism, and the ])roducts of disease-producinfjf organisms—all act in the same way. Alcohol, theivfore, may he look<‘d upon as inducing changes similar to tho.se .set up by starvation, and by certain organic and inorganic poi.sons. A similar condition is induced by prolonged muscular exertion when insuilicient time is allowed for rest and repair. Jietw'oen alcohol-poisoning and starvation there is, however, this essential difference : in the latter much of the fat storerl up under the skin, etc., is u.sed up before the other cells of the animal are attacked, but in alcohol-poisoning this is not the case. Fatty de- generation of a most marked kind may occur in very stout patients in whom there still remains a considerable quantity of subcutaneous and omental fat in addition to that found between the muscular fibres of the heart and in the liver cells. Fatty Degeneration, a Manifestation of Disease. Further, from a doctor’s point of view it is exceedingly interesting to note that the fatty degeneration observed in alcoholic patients is veiy like that met with in cases of diphtheria and other bacterial poi.sonings, and the more carefully these analogies are analysed, the more are pathologists who have devoted attention to this question convinced that the conditions set up by the poisons of disease-producing organisms and by alcohol are the same in many of their essential details, and that they usually run on parallel lines. The Heart Affected. Dr. Berkley,^ an American physician, has been able to bring forward direct proof of this action of alcohol in causing fatty de- generation of the heart, so fruitful a cause of heart failure. In making a series of experiments on acute and chronic alcohol-poisoning in rabbits, he found, in four cases out of five of chronic alcohol-poison- ing in these animals, fatty degeneration of the heart muscle, a condition which, he says, “ seems to be present in all animals subjected to a continual administration of alcohol in which sufficient time between the doses is not allowed for complete elimination.” Cowan, 2 in an admirable work on fatty degeneration of the heart, points out how badly alcoholic cases “ bear acute disease, failure of the heart always ensuing at an earlier period than one would anticipate and, in summing up the causes of fatty degeneration, he speaks of the presence of a toxic agent in the circulating blood or in the fluid contained in the small nutrient spaces between the tissues of the heart as being one of the most important factors in its production. Amongst such poisonings or toxic conditions he gives a prominent place to phosphorus, arsenical and chloroform poi.soning, iUcoholism, urajmia, ' Journ. Hopkiw Hoxpital Reports, Baltimore, 1807, vol. vi., ji. .SO. “ Journ. of Path, and Had., Edin. and London, 1002, vol. viii., pp. 177-108.