Dr. Richardson, in his lectures on alcohol, given both in England and America, speaking of the action of this substance on the blood after passing from the stomach, says:
"Suppose, then, a
certain measure of alcohol be taken into the stomach, it will be absorbed
there, but, previous to absorption, it will have to undergo a proper degree of
dilution with water, for there is this peculiarity respecting alcohol when it is
separated by an animal membrane from a watery fluid like the blood, that it
will not pass through the membrane until it has become charged, to a given
point of dilution, with water. It is itself, in fact, so greedy for water, it will pick it up from
watery textures, and deprive them of it until, by its saturation, its power of
reception is exhausted, after which it will diffuse into the current of
circulating fluid."
It is this power of
absorbing water from every texture with which alcoholic spirits come in
contact, which creates the burning thirst of those who freely indulge in its
use. Its effect, when it reaches the circulation, is thus described by Dr.
Richardson:
"As it passes
through the circulation of the lungs it is exposed to the air, and some little
of it, raised into vapor by the natural heat, is thrown off in expiration. If
the quantity of it be large, this loss may be considerable, and the odor of the
spirit may be detected in the expired breath. If the quantity is small, the
loss will be comparatively little, as the spirit will be held in solution by
the water in the blood. After it has passed through the lungs and has been
driven by the left heart over the arterial circuit, it passes into what is
called the minute circulation, or the structural circulation of the organism.
The arteries here extend into very small vessels, which are called arterioles,
and from these infinitely small vessels spring the equally minute radicals or
roots of the veins, which are ultimately to become the great rivers bearing the
blood back to the heart. In its passage through this minute circulation the
alcohol finds its way to every organ. To this brain, to these muscles, to these
secreting or excreting organs, nay, even into this bony structure itself, it
moves with the blood. In some of these parts which are not excreting, it
remains for a time diffused, and in those parts where there is a large
percentage of water, it remains longer than in other parts. From some organs
which have an open tube for conveying fluids away, as the liver and kidneys, it
is thrown out or eliminated, and in this way a portion of it is ultimately
removed from the body. The rest passing round and round with the circulation is
probably decomposed and carried off in new forms of matter.
"When we know the
course which the alcohol takes in its passage through the body, from the period
of its absorption to that of its elimination, we are the better able to judge
what physical changes it induces in the different organs and structures with
which it comes in contact. It first reaches the blood, but, as a rule, the
quantity of it that enters is insufficient to produce any material effect on
that fluid. If, however, the dose taken be poisonous or semi-poisonous, then
even the blood, rich as it is in water and it contains seven hundred and ninety
parts in a thousand is affected. The alcohol is diffused through this water,
and there it comes in contact with the other constituent parts, with the
fibrine, that plastic substance which, when blood is drawn, clots and
coagulates, and which is present in the proportion of from two to three parts
in a thousand; with the albumen which exists in the proportion of seventy
parts; with the salts which yield about ten parts; with the fatty matters; and
lastly, with those minute, round bodies which float in myriads in the blood
(which were discovered by the Dutch philosopher, Leuwenhock, as one of the
first results of microscopical observation, about the middle of the seventeenth
century), and which are called the blood globules or corpuscles. These
last-named bodies are, in fact, cells; their discs, when natural, have a smooth
outline, they are depressed in the center, and they are red, the color of the
blood being derived from them. We have discovered that there exist other
corpuscles or cells in the blood in much smaller quantities, which are called
white cells, and these different cells float in the blood-stream within the
vessels. The red take the center of the stream; the white lie externally near
the sides of the vessels, moving less quickly. Our business is mainly with the
red corpuscles. They perform the most important functions in the economy; they
absorb, in great part, the oxygen which we inhale in breathing, and carry it to
the extreme tissues of the body; they absorb, in great part, the carbonic acid
gas which is produced in the combustion of the body in the extreme tissues, and
bring that gas back to the lungs to be exchanged for oxygen there; in short,
they are the vital instruments of the circulation.
"With all these
parts of the blood, with the water, fibrine, albumen, salts, fatty matter and
corpuscles, the alcohol comes in contact when it enters the blood, and, if it is
insufficient quantity, it produces disturbing action. I have watched this disturbance
very carefully on the blood corpuscles, in some animals we can see these
floating along during life, and we can also observe them from men who are under
the effects of alcohol, by removing a speck of blood and examining it with the
microscope. The action of the alcohol, when it is observable, is varied. It may
cause the corpuscles to run too closely together, and to adhere in rolls; it
may modify their outline, making the clear-defined, smooth, outer edge
irregular or crenate, or even starlike, it may change the round corpuscle into
the oval form, or, in very extreme cases, it may produce what I may call a
truncated form of corpuscles, in which the change is so great that if we did
not trace it through all its stages, we should be puzzled to know whether the
object looked at were indeed a blood-cell. All these changes are due to the
action of the spirit upon the water contained in the corpuscles; upon the
capacity of the spirit to extract water from them. During every stage of
modification of corpuscles thus described, their function to absorb and fix
gases is impaired, and when the aggregation of the cells, in masses, is great,
other difficulties arise, for the cells, united together, pass less easily than
they should through the minute vessels of the lungs and of the general
circulation, and impede the current, by which local injury is produced.
"A further action
upon the blood, instituted by alcohol in excess, is upon the fibrine or the
plastic colloidal matter. On this the spirit may act in two different ways,
according to the degree in which it affects the water that holds the fibrine in
solution. It may fix the water with the fibrine, and thus destroy the power of
coagulation, or it may extract the water so determinately as to produce coagulation."