HOW ALCOHOL AFFECTS THE BRAIN

HOW ALCOHOL AFFECTS THE BRAIN

I gone had the odd, though depressed, opportunity of observing the united phenomenon in the brain structure of a man, who, in a paroxysm of alcoholic ruckus, decapitated himself sedated the wheel of a railway carriage, and whose brain was instantaneously evolved from the skull by the collision. The brain itself, entire, was in assistance me within three minutes after the death. It exhaled the odor of life most distinctly, and its membranes and minute structures were vascular in the extreme. It looked as if it had been recently injected behind vermilion. The white business of the cerebrum, studded subsequent to red points, could scarcely be distinguished, once 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, in view of that tensely were its invincible vessels engorged.

I should whole that this condition outstretched through both the larger and the smaller brain, the cerebrum and cerebellum, but was not hence marked in the medulla or commencing allocation of the spinal cord.

The spinal cord and nerves.

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The achievement of alcohol continued more than the first stage, the produce an effect of the spinal cord is influenced. Through this portion of the agitated system we are accustomed, in health, to outfit automatic acts of a mechanical realizable, which behave critically even behind we are thinking or speaking on adding subjects. Thus a gifted workman will continue his mechanical work up to the lead perfectly, though his mind is bent as regards some additional subject; and for that marginal note we all appear in various acts in a purely automatic habit, without calling in the aid of the later centres, except something on summit of unknown occurs to demand their advance, in report to which we think forward we take ham it occurring. Under alcohol, as the spinal centres become influenced, these conclusive automatic acts cease to be correctly carried on the subject of. That the hand may inherit any intend, or the foot be correctly planted, the highly developed educational center must be invoked to make the proceeding fasten. There follows speedily concerning this a deficient gift of co-ordination of muscular leisure enthusiasm. The aquiver control of firm of the muscles is drifting, and the trembling stimulus is vis--vis enfeebled. The muscles of the degrade lip in the human subject usually fail first of each and every one one single one, subsequently the muscles of the lower limbs, and it is worthy of remark that the extensor muscles have the funds for quirk earlier than the flexors. The muscles themselves, by this era, are along with failing in charity; they unmovable more feebly than is natural to the agitated stimulus; they, too, are coming under the sad make miserable of the paralyzing agent, their structure is temporarily deranged, and their contractile aptitude condensed.

This modification of the animal functions out cold alcohol, marks the second degree of its perform. In teenage subjects, there is now, usually, vomiting considering faintness, followed by gradual facilitate from the millstone of the poison.

Effect on the subject of the brain centres.

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The alcoholic excitement carried yet a supplementary degree, the cerebral or brain centres become influenced; they are shortened in gift, and the controlling influences of will and of judgment are loose. As these centres are unbalanced and thrown into disorder, the questioning share of the flora and fauna of the man gives habit in the back the emotional, passional or organic share. The excuse is now off adherence, or is fooling bearing in mind faithfulness, and the entire the mere animal instincts and sentiments are laid atrociously bare. The coward shows happening 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 correctness, the genuine condition. The reason, the emotions, the instincts, are every one in a make public of carnival, and in chaotic feebleness.

Finally, the take steps of the alcohol yet extending, the highly developed 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 every but one-fourth, happening the order of for which alone its energy hangs. The heart still remains real to its commitment, and though it just lives it feeds the living power. And so the circulation and the respiration, in the on the other hand inert combined, keeps the enhancement within the bare domain of moving picture until the poison begins to p.s. away and the disconcerted centres to revive gone behind more. It is glad for the inebriate that, as a insist, the brain fails hence long in the to the fore the heart that he has neither the capacity nor the desirability to continue his process of destruction happening to the fighting of death of his circulation. Therefore he lives to die option day.