Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/234

224 from the human subject. Dr. De Marmon, of King's Bridge, New York, has specially proved this fact in some instances of poisoning by whiskey in young children. In one of these examples the temperature of the body fell from the natural standard of 98° Fahr. [sic] to 94°, in another to 93½°.

Through all the three stages noticed in the above, the decline of animal heat is a steadily-progressing phenomenon. It is true that in the first stage the heat of the flushed parts of the body is for a brief time raised, but this is due to greater distribution of blood and increased radiation, not to an actual increment of heat within the body. The mass of the body is cooling, in fact, while the surfaces are more briskly radiating, and soon, as the supply of heat-motion fails, there is fall of surface temperature also; a fall becoming more decided from hour to hour up to the occurrence of the fourth and final stage, of which I have now to treat.

The fourth degree of alcoholic intoxication is one of collapse of the volitional nervous centres, of the muscular organs under the control of those centres, and of some of the organic or mere animal centres. It is true that, while the body lies prostrate under alcohol, there are observed certain curious movements of the limbs, but these are not stimulated from the centres of volition, nor are they reflected motions derived from any external stimulus; they are strange automatic movements, as if still in the spinal cord there were some life, and they continue irregularly nearly to the end of the chapter, even when the end is death.

Through the whole of this last stage two centres remain longest true to their duty, the centre that calls into play the respiratory action, and the centre that stimulates the heart. There is then an interval during which there are no movements whatever, save these of the diaphragm and the heart, and, when these fail, the primary failure is in the breathing-muscle: to the last the heart continues in action.

The leading peculiarity of the action of alcohol is the slowness with which the two centres that supply the heart and the great respiratory muscle are affected. In this lies the comparative safety of alcohol: acting evenly and slowly, the different systems of organs die after each other, or together, gently, with the exception of those two on which the continuance of mere animal life depends. But for this provision, every deeply-intoxicated animal would inevitably die.

It happens usually, nevertheless, that under favorable circumstances the intoxicated live: the temperature of the body sinks two or three degrees lower, but the alcohol diffusing through all the tissues, and escaping by diffusion and elimination, the living centres are slowly relieved, and so there is slow return of power. If death actually occurs, the cause of it is condensation of fluid on the bronchial surfaces and arrest of respiration from this purely mechanical cause. The animal is literally drowned in his own secretion. Such are the stages