subject some years ago, a full account of which, was laid before the Royal Society, and published in its "Transactions" in 1864, under the title of "The Action of Physical and Chemical Agents upon the Blood, with Special Reference to the Respiratory Process."
The relative effects of alcohol and opium were found to be as follows:
| IN 100 PARTS OF AIR. | Oxygen. | Carbonic acid. |
Nitrogen. | Vol. at 0° C. and 1 metre pressure. |
| Composition of employed air | 20·9 | 0·002 | 79·038 | 20·96 |
| With pure ox-blood | 10·58 | 3·330 | 86·00 | 14·91 |
| With pure ox-blood + 5 per cent of alcohol | 16·59 | 2·380 | 81·03 | 18·97 |
| With pure calf's-blood | 6·64 | 3·47 | 89·89 | 10·11 |
| With pure calf's-blood + ·005 grm. of morphia | 17·17 | 1·00 | 81·83 | 18·17 |
A glance at this table suffices to show that alcohol, even in the small proportion of five per cent, exerts a powerful chemical effect on blood, so powerful as to entirely derange one of its most important functions—namely, the function of respiration. The alcohol seems to have acted like an asphyxiant, inasmuch as it has not alone diminished the power of the red corpuscles to absorb oxygen, but to exhale carbonic acid, and that too in the same way, though to a somewhat lesser extent than morphia does. This peculiar chemical action of the alcohol on the blood nerve-pabulum may be thought to give a reasonable explanation of the paralyzing action of alcohol upon the nervous system, seeing that oxidation is the motor power of all vital action, and in direct proportion to its activity are the manifestations of life accelerated or retarded. Every breath we draw, every movement we perform, every thought . we think, is but the outcome of the transformation of matter under the influence of oxygen. If, then, it be true, as above shown, that alcohol possesses the power of preventing the constituents of the blood from being properly oxidized, and thereby fitted for the purposes of nutrition, it is easy to account for its producing a chain of more or less well-marked neurotic symptoms terminating at last in coma and death.—Abridged from the London Lancet.
