I once had the unusual, though unhappy, the opportunity of observing the same phenomenon in the brain structure of a man, who, in a paroxysm of alcoholic excitement, decapitated himself under the wheel of a railway carriage, and whose brain was instantaneously evolved from the skull by the crash. The brain itself, entire, was before me within three minutes after the death. It exhaled the odour of spirit most distinctly, and its membranes and minute structures were vascular in the extreme. It looked as if it had been recently injected with vermilion. The white matter of the cerebrum, studded with red points, could scarcely be distinguished, when it was incised, by its natural whiteness; and the pia-mater, or internal vascular membrane covering the brain, resembled a delicate web of coagulated red blood, so tensely were its fine vessels engorged.
I should add that this
condition extended through both the larger and the smaller brain, the cerebrum
and cerebellum, but was not so marked in the medulla or commencing portion of
the spinal cord.
The spinal cord and
nerves.
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The action of alcohol
continued beyond the first stage, the function of the spinal cord is
influenced. Through this part of the nervous system, we are accustomed, in
health, to perform automatic acts of a mechanical kind, which proceed
systematically even when we are thinking or speaking on other subjects. Thus a
skilled workman will continue his mechanical work perfectly, while his mind is
bent on some other subject and thus we all perform various acts in a purely
automatic way, without calling in the aid of the higher centres, except
something more than ordinary occurs to demand their service, upon which we
think before we perform. Under alcohol, as the spinal centres become
influenced, these pure automatic acts cease to be correctly carried on. That
the hand may reach any object, or the foot be correctly planted, the higher
intellectual centre must be invoked to make the proceeding secure. There
follows quickly upon this a deficient power of co-ordination of muscular
movement. The nervous control of certain of the muscles is lost, and the
nervous stimulus is more or less enfeebled. The muscles of the lower lip in the
human subject usually fail first of all, then the muscles of the lower limbs,
and it is worthy of remark that the extensor muscles give way earlier than the
flexors. The muscles themselves, by this time, are also failing in power They
respond more feebly than is natural to the nervous stimulus they, too, are
coming under the depressing influence of the paralyzing agent, their structure
is temporarily deranged, and their contractile power reduced.
This modification of the
animal functions under alcohol marks the second degree of its action. In young
subjects, there is now, usually, vomiting with faintness, followed by gradual
relief from the burden of the poison.
Effect on the brain
centres.
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The alcoholic spirit
carried yet a further degree, the cerebral or brain centres become influenced;
they are reduced in power, and the controlling influences of will and judgment
are lost. As these centres are unbalanced and thrown into chaos, the rational
part of the nature of the man gives way before the emotional, passional or
organic part. The reason is now off duty or is fooling with duty, and all the
mere animal instincts and sentiments are laid atrociously bare. The coward
shows up more craven, the braggart more boastful, the cruel more merciless, the
untruthful more false, the carnal more degraded. ' In vino veritas ' expresses,
even, indeed, to physiological accuracy, the true condition. The reason, the
emotions, the instincts, are all in a state of carnival, and chaotic
feebleness.
Finally, the action of
the alcohol still extending, the superior brain centres are overpowered; the
senses are beclouded, the voluntary muscular prostration is perfected,
sensibility is lost, and the body lies a mere log, dead by all but one-fourth,
on which alone its life hangs. The heart remains true to its duty, and while it
just lives it feeds the breathing power. And so the circulation and the
respiration, in the otherwise inert mass, keeps the mass within the bare domain
of life until the poison begins to pass away and the nervous centres to revive
again. It is happy for the inebriate that, as a rule, the brain fails so long
before the heart that he has neither the power nor the sense to continue his
process of destruction up to the act of death of his circulation. Therefore he
lives to die another day.