Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/231

Rh for each contraction was sooner over. The heart, on the fifth and sixth days after alcohol was left off, and apparently at the time when the last traces of alcohol were eliminated, showed in the sphygmographic tracings signs of unusual feebleness; and, perhaps, in consequence of this, when the brandy quickened the heart again, the tracings showed a more rapid contraction of the ventricles, but less power, than in the alcoholic period. The brandy acted, in fact, on a heart whose nutrition had not been perfectly restored.

It is difficult, at first glance, to realize the excessive amount of work performed by the heart under this extreme excitement. Little wonder is it that, after the labor imposed upon it by six ounces of alcohol, the heart should flag; still less wonder that the brain and muscles which depend upon the heart for their blood-supply should be languid for many hours, and should require the rest of long sleep for renovation. It is hard physical work, in short, to fight against alcohol; harder than rowing, walking, wrestling, carrying heavy weights, coal-heaving, or the tread-wheel itself.

While the heart is thus laboring under the action of alcoholic stimulation, a change is observable in the extreme circulation—that circulation of blood which by varying shades of color in exposed parts of the body, such as the cheek, is visible to the eye. The peripheral circulation is quickened, the vessels distended. We see this usually in persons under the influence of wine in the early stage, and we speak of it as the flush produced by wine. The authors I have already quoted report upon it in definite terms: "The peripheral circulation (during alcoholic excitement) was accelerated, and the vessels were enlarged, and the effect was so marked as to show that this is an important influence for good or for evil when alcohol is used."

By common observation the flush seen on the cheek during the first stage of alcoholic excitation is supposed to extend merely to the parts actually seen. It cannot, however, be too forcibly impressed on the mind of the reader that the condition is universal in the body. If the lungs could be seen, they, too, would be found with their vessels injected; if the brain and spinal cord could be laid open to view, they would be discovered in the same condition; if the stomach, the liver, the spleen, the kidneys, or any other vascular organs or parts could be laid open to the eye, the vascular enlargement would be equally manifest.

In course of time, in persons accustomed to alcohol, the vascular changes, temporary only in the novitiate, become confirmed and permanent. The bloom on the nose which characterizes the genial toper is the established sign of alcoholic action on vascular structure.

Recently some new physiological inquiries have served to explain the reason why, under alcohol, the heart at first beats so quickly and why the pulses rise. At one time it was imagined that the alcohol acted immediately upon the heart, stimulating it to increased action,