Alcoholic drinks as diet, as medicines, and as poisons : the oration delivered to the Medical Society of London for the year 1878 / by Alfred Carpenter.
- Carpenter, Alfred, 1825-
- Date:
- 1878
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Alcoholic drinks as diet, as medicines, and as poisons : the oration delivered to the Medical Society of London for the year 1878 / by Alfred Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![the gastric juice, as well as on the lining membrane on the vessels, and destroys the power of digesting and re-arranging the materials which are contained in the food. There is no difficulty in accounting for the anorexia of the drunkard, or for the temporary flash and power which another dose of his liquor provides for him. The rapidity of the current of blood being delayed in the capillaries of the stomach, their tension is interfered with, they dilate, and a larger quantity of blood is present than is right; as a sequence, local warmth is promoted, and, in vulgar parlance, “ coppers are hot.” But it has been fully proved by accurate observers, that the quantity of heat in the body is not materially added to by Alcohol, but that, on the contrary, there is a reduction from the general amount in consequence of the loss which arises out of increased radiation from the surface of the body. The tempera¬ ture of the “ dead drunk ” man is lower than that which usually marks the natural heat of the body. This rule does not obtain at all times, as there are exceptional conditions] which occasionally modify it. A dead drunk man often has some disease going on in his body which raises the temperature to above 98*5 ; but if there be no active disease, and if the temperature of the body of an insensible person is found below the natural standard without any evidence of collapse from any other cause, it may be safely assumed that he is drunk rather than that he is suffering from active cerebral lesion. The peculiar way in which Alcohol transudes through membrane, its diffusive power as it is called,.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30575059_0020.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
