Alcohol / by C.R. Francis.

  • Francis, C. R. (Charles Richard), 1821-1901
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Alcohol / by C.R. Francis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    pugilists, oarsmen, pedestrians,* and other athletes, in whose “training dietary” alcohol has formed no part, and of ab- staining cyclists, who sometimes perform long journeys with little or no fatigue,—all testify to the value of total ab- stinence. It is somewhat remarkable that, in muscular failures from alcohol—in paralysis partial or complete,—the motor fibres in nerves supplying voluntary muscles (those which cause motion in a limb or part) are the first to be affected. Though the power of moving or regulating a limb, or part of one, may be impaired, its sensibility, as a rule, will remain intact. (In the face the lower lip first falls.) I have known a tooth-brush, in the hand of a gentleman of splendid physique, but the victim, from excessive indulgence in spirits, of incomplete general paralysis, to be spasmodically jerked to the other end of the room, whilst the gentleman—in full possession of his mental faculties and with undiminished sensation—was, after a fashion, cleaning his teeth. The in- voluntary muscular movements (startings) which sometimes occur, in tipplers, at the commencement of sleep—evidence of muscular instability—are due to impairment of the functions of the brain or of a nerve-centre. The nervous trembling in the morning, especially conspicuous in the hands, in the dissipated is another illustration of the (temporary) unsteadiness of the motor nerve- fibres. THE SENSES. Contrary to the popular belief that alcohol sharpens the senses, it blunts them. A small wineglassful of claret or cham- pagne, or half that amount of port or sherry—a quantity equal to two drachms of alcohol,—will cause a person, looking at a * The most remarkable instance, perhaps, on record, of sustained muscular vigour was witnessed a few years ago in this country, when Mr. Edward Payson Weston, an American pedestrian, being then 45 years of age, walked—starting from London—5,000 miles in 100 consecutive days (excepting Sundays and Christmas Day) through some of the provinces at the rate of 50 miles a day; and delivered, at the close of each, in the town where he stopped for the night, an address on temperance. Mr. Weston completed his task in the Victoria Coffee Hall,—once the headquarters (in that part of the metropolis) of low-class music and singing, and where intoxicants were sold, but now, under the management of Miss Cons and a committee, who conduct it on total abstinence principles, a model establishment for popular education and evening recreation,—and few of the large concourse of temperance advocates and others, assembled to witness it, will forget the display of unabated energy with which the last mile was walked Mr. Weston is an abstainer from alcohol and tobacco ; and the task was undertaken for no wager nor reward, but purely in the cause of temperance, under the auspices of the Church of England Temperance Society and of two temperance philanthropists, who paid all the expenses. The same task was subsequently undertaken by a non- abstainer, but ultimately abandoned.
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