HOW ALCOHOL AFFECTS THE BRAIN.

February 12th, 2010 by author

I once had the uncommon, though sad, opportunity of observing the identical phenomenon in the brain structure of a person, who, during 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 at intervals 3 minutes once the death. It exhaled the odor of spirit most distinctly, and its membranes and minute structures were vascular within the extreme. It looked as if it had been recently injected with vermilion. The white matter of the cerebrum, studded with red points, may scarcely be distinguished, when it had been incised, by its natural whiteness; and therefore the pia-mater, or internal vascular membrane covering the brain, resembled a fragile web of coagulated red blood, therefore tensely were its fine vessels engorged.

I should add that this condition extended through each the larger and the smaller brain, the cerebrum and cerebellum, but wasn’t therefore marked within the medulla or commencing portion of the spinal cord.

The spinal twine and nerves.
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The action of alcohol continued beyond the primary stage, the operate of the spinal cord is influenced. Through this half of the nervous system we are accustomed, in health, to perform automatic acts of a mechanical kind, that proceed systematically even after we are thinking or speaking on different subjects. Therefore a skilled workman can continue his mechanical work perfectly, whereas his mind is bent on another subject; and thus we all perform numerous acts in a purely automatic manner, while not calling in the help of the upper centres, except one thing additional than normal occurs to demand their service, upon which we tend to assume before we have a tendency to perform. Underneath alcohol, because the spinal centres become influenced, these pure automatic acts stop to be correctly carried on. {That the} hand might reach any object, or the foot be properly planted, the higher intellectual centre must be invoked to form the proceeding secure. There follows quickly upon this a deficient power of co-ordination of muscular movement. The nervous management of bound of the muscles is lost, and also the nervous stimulus is a lot of 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 merit remark {that the} extensor muscles provide means before the flexors. The muscles themselves, by this point, are also failing in power; they respond more feebly than is natural to the nervous stimulus; they, too, are returning underneath the depressing influence of the paralyzing agent, their structure is temporarily deranged, and their contractile power reduced.

This modification of the animal functions beneath alcohol, marks the second degree of its action. In young subjects, there is now, sometimes, 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 more degree, the cerebral or brain centres become influenced; they are reduced in power, and the controlling influences of can and of judgment are lost. As these centres are unbalanced and thrown into chaos, the rational part of the character of the person offers manner before the emotional, passional or organic part. The reason is now off duty, or is fooling with duty, and all the mere natural instincts and sentiments are laid atrociously bare. The coward shows up additional craven, the braggart more boastful, the cruel more merciless, the untruthful more false, the carnal a lot of degraded. ‘ In vino veritas ‘ expresses, even, indeed, to physiological accuracy, the true condition. The reason, the emotions, the instincts, are all in an exceedingly state of carnival, and in 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 still remains true to its duty, and whereas it simply lives it feeds the respiratory power. And thus the circulation and therefore the respiration, in the otherwise inert mass, keeps the mass among the blank domain of life till the poison begins to pass away and the nervous centres to revive again. It’s happy for the inebriate that, normally, the brain fails thus long before the guts that he has neither the power nor the sense to continue his method of destruction up to the act of death of his circulation. Therefore he lives to die another day.

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