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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    tho rellox (or iiidiroct) action of alcohol on the heart through the nervouH system. Most of those who have made ex- periments on this .subject have convinced themselves that compaiatively small cjuantitie.s ot alcohol cii'cidating in the blood and acting upon the nerve cells have a di.stinct effect in causing the heart’s action to become abnormal. ]fut the direct action also comes in. The heart, an organ constantly at woi'k, one on which the l)ody depends bn- tlie continuance of its organic life, is made up of rnu.scular tissue, whicli, according to Ringer and Sain.sbury,i appears to resist the action of exceedingly strong do.ses of alcohol. The.se observers maintain that an artificial blood must contain nearly 7 per cent, (jf ethyl alcohol before it can act directly upon (then pai'aly.sing) the muscular substance of the heart. They say that under these conditions the paralysis commences at once, and is never preceded by any evident stimulation to increased activity. Herameter^ says that .such doses kill the muscle of the heart instantaneously; for the present let us accept the lesser degree of toxicity as being the correctly determined one. This muscular tissue of the heart wall may be taken as representing ordinary protoplasm of normal functional activity and development as compared with the much more highly and later de- veloped nerve cells. It has already been stated that it required nearly 7 per cent, of ethyl alcohol to affect the individual muscle fibres of the heart of a dog, •'* * but it has been proved by experiment by Martin and Stevens (quoted by Monro and Findlay)^ that blood containing^ percent, of ethyl alcohol so alters the protoplasm of these muscles that within a single minute there is a measurable diminution in the amount of work done by the heart, even when it is isolated from its external ner^'e-supply. If the strength of the solution be doubled, the activity of the heart may be so far diminished that it is scarcely able to drive out a suffi- cient amount of blood to supply its own nutrient arteries. Under these conditions the heart becomes abnormally dilated; it never con- tracts completely, and this condition becomes more marked as the administration of the alcohol is prolonged. Action of Alcohol on Phosphorescent Protoplasm. Looking round for some form of protoplasm in which changes in the functional activity might be readily noted, it struck me that Beyerinck’s phosphorescent bacillus offered a protoplasm of low organisa- tion, and one having a definite and easily-measured functional activity. When this bacillus is grown in fish broth and in the presence of air, it gives off a peculiar phosphorescent light readily seen with the naked * The Practitioner, London, 1883, vol. xxx, p. 339. - “ Studies from the Biol. Lab., John.s Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, 1889,’ vol. iv., no. 5. ■’* Ibid, 1887, vol. ii.