INTOXICATION. Whether induced by fermented liquors or by distilled spirits, it is through the alcohol contained in either that the effects of intoxication ensue. These may he considered under two heads: 1. As they immediately manifest themselves during a single net of intoxication; and, 2. As they gradually arise through the frequent repetition of the act. The one refers to the state of drunkenness simply, the other to the habit (intemperance).
The effects of alcohol, in a single act of intoxication, vary according to the way in which the spirit has been taken. If swallowed rapidly, in large quantities or in a con centrated form, the agency is that of a powerful narcotic poison. The mode of action here is partly through a direct impression by the alcohol on the nerves of the stomach, and partly by its absorption into the blood, and its transmission thus to the brain, which is proved to take place with great rapidity. The individual falls into a deep stupor, from which it is impossible to rouse him. The face is ordinarily livid, with a swollen aspect, but sometimes it is ghastly pale. The skin is covered with chilly damps; the pulse is feeble, or perhaps wholly imperceptible; the breathing is slow and weak, though sometimes laborious and snorting; the eyes are rolled upwards, with contracted, or occasionally, dilated pupils; the jaws are clenched, and there are frequently convulsions. Where death follows, it may ensue in a few minutes, or after a period varying from it single hour to a day. Where the quantity taken is swallowed more slowly, as in ordinary drinking, the conseqences are those which are too familiarly known as char acterizing a fit oedrunkenness, and are the product of the more gradual and less exces sive absorption. The first effect is that of a feeling of wellbeing, diffused over the body, and imparted to the mind. This gradually leads to a state of exhilaration, and thence to boisterous mirth and loquacity, attended at first by a swift transition and vivacity of the ideas, but speedily lapsing Into indistinctness and confusion. In the increasing whirl of excitement. the individual loses all sense of prudence and self-government, betrays himself by his indiscretions. provokes pity and ridicule by his follies, or incurs danger by his recklessness. Along with this mental condition, the flushed face, flashing eye, and throbbing brain show, at first, the corresponding state of excitement of the bodily functions; while, along with the subsequent confusion of thought, the reeling gait and the look of stolid incomprehension denote the inthrallment that has followed. In a further stage, the memory fails, the individual maund •rs and mumbles in his speech, and the surrounding objects, recently seen imperfectly and misapprehended, wholly cease to impress him. At length, amid other loathsome concomitants, lie sinks powerless, and stupor intervenes, front which he again awakens to consciousness after an indefinite number of hours; but then usually to suffer from qualms of sickness and other feelings of pain and depression, entailed upon hint by a natural law as the reaction from his excess, and only dispelled after a still interval. The outline of the effects may vary. With some, the progress of a fit of drunkenness is never attended by hilarity or other conspicuous excitement, and a dreamy and subdued forgetfulness seems all that is produced or that is sought for. With some, even, it leads to a state of queru
lousness or of unreasoning melancholy. With others, the condition is one of furious madness, hesitating before no extreme of violence and outrage.
It is chiefly to the after-effects of the paroxysm that we are to trace the original growth and ultimate inveteracy of the drunken habit. The uneasy sensations of depres sion, following upon the excitement of the previous debauch, are sought to he relieved by a fresh recurrence to the stimulant; and a morbid appetite is thus created which craves its relief, and finds it, in the renewed administration of spirituous drinks, just as the natural appetite of hunger develops those sharp disquietudes that are allayed by food. This morbid appetite, in so far as it is morbid, may in itself be regarded and treated as a disease. But the universal health shows ultimately signs of a more deep injury. The cheeks begin to have a bloated and flabby look, with a complexion that either wears a peculiar pallor, or verges into shades of purple. while the nose not rarely presents a sus picious tinge of crimson, The appetite for ordinary food fails. the digestion is impaired, the sleep is disturbed, and the vigor of frame and capacity for exertion sink accordingly, the limbs often aching and trembling, and the heart drooping with a miserable feeling of nervous exhaustion. Even prior to this, the drunkard is often liable to those minor illusions which end in the full development of what is kuowu a.s.the drunkard's delirium, or delirium tremens, a form of temporary insanity characterized by a state of abject terror, with shaking of the limbs, the sufferer fancying that lie is surrounded with mon strous phantasms, or that he is devoted otherwise to horrors, disasters, or crimes. One effect, and a leading one, of the customary presence of alcohol in the blood of the drinker, is to reduce the vitality of that fluid, so that it tends to sustain only the lowest forms of nutrition and animalization, and deposits, in great part, merely an inert fat within those organs where it should minister to the growth and maintenance of a delicate construction, destined for uses essential to life. Thus we have fatty deposits, or changes of higher structures into fat, in the heart, the liver, and in the blood-vessels, the coats of the lust becoming easily ruptured. Hence, liability to diseases of the heart and of the liver often followed by dropsies, or to affections of the other intestines, or to attacks of apoplexy and palsy. If not cut off abruptly in his career, the life of the drunkard becomes one long malady towards its close, the final condition being usually one of imbecility of mind and body, yet with throes of suffering to the last. It has been authoritntively shown that, while the average expectation of future life to the temperate man at 50 may be reckoned at 20 years, that of the drunkard at the same age is only four years. Again, between the ages of 21 and 30, the deaths among drunkards have been found to be more that five times, and between 31 and 50, more than four times what occur among the general community at the like ages. See DirsoniANIA and DELIRIUM TREMENS.