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ALCOHOL AND THE HUMAN BRAIN.

BY

REV. JOSEPH COOK.

NEW YORK:

National Temperance Society and Publication House,
58 READE STREET.

1879.




ALCOHOL AND THE HUMAN BRAIN.

BY REV. JOSEPH COOK.


Cassio's language in Othello is to-day adopted by cool physiological
science: "O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal
away their brains! That we should, with joy, revel, pleasure and
applause, transform ourselves into beasts! To be now a sensible man, by
and by a fool, and presently a beast! O strange! Every inordinate cup is
unbless'd, and the ingredient is the devil."--Shakespeare, _Othello_,
Act II., Scene iii.

Central in all the discussion of the influence of intoxicating drink
upon the human brain is the fact that albuminous substances are hardened
by alcohol. I take the white of an egg, and, as you see, turn it out in
a fluid condition into a goblet. The liquid is a viscous, glue-like
substance, largely composed of albumen. It is made up of pretty nearly
the same chemical ingredients that constitute a large part of the brain
and the nervous system, and of many other tissues of the body. Forty per
cent of the matter in the corpuscles of the blood is albumen. I am about
to drench this white of an egg with alcohol. I have never performed this
experiment before, and it may not succeed, but so certain am I that it
will, that I purpose never to put the bottle to my lips and introduce
into my system a fiend to steal away my brain. Edmund Burke, when he
heard William Pitt say in Parliament that England would stand till the
day of judgment, rose and replied; "What I fear is the day of _no_
judgment." When Booth was about to assassinate Lincoln, his courage
failed him, and he rushed away from the theater for an instant into the
nearest restaurant and called for brandy. Harden the brain by drenching
it in alcohol and you harden the moral nature.

If you will fasten your attention on the single fact, that alcohol
hardens this albuminous substance with which I place it in contact, you
will have in that single strategic circumstance an explanation of most
of its ravages upon the blood and nerves and brain. I beg you to notice
that the white of an egg in the goblet does not become hardened by
exposure to the air. I have allowed it to remain exposed for a time, in
order that you may see that there is no legerdemain in this experiment.
[Laughter.] I now pour alcohol upon this albuminous fluid, and if the
result here is what it has been in other cases, I shall pretty soon be
able to show you a very good example of what coagulated albumen is in
the nervous system and blood corpuscles. You will find this white of an
egg gradually so hardened that you can take it out without a fork. I
notice already that a mysterious change in it has begun. A strange
thickening shoots through the fluid mass. This is your moderate
drunkard that I am stirring up now. There is your tippler, a piece of
him, [holding up a portion of the coagulated mass upon the glass
pestle]. The coagulation of the substance of the brain and of the
nervous system goes on. I am stirring up a hard drinker now. The
infinitely subtle laws of chemistry take their course. Here is a man
[holding up a part of the coagulated mass] whose brain is so leathery
that he is a beast, and kicks his wife to death. I am stirring up in
this goblet now the brain of a hardened sot. On this prongless glass
rod, I hold up the large part of the white of an egg which you saw
poured into this glass as a fluid. Here is your man [holding up a larger
mass] who has benumbed his conscience and his reason both, and has begun
to be dangerous to society from the effects of a diseased brain.
Wherever alcohol touches this albuminous substance, it hardens it, and
it does so by absorbing and fixing the water it contains. I dip out of
the goblet now your man in delirium tremens. Here is what was once a
fluid, rolling easily to right and left, and now you have the leathery
brain and the hard heart.

Distortions of blood discs taken from the veins of drunkards have been
shown to you here by the stereopticon and the best microscope in the
United States. All the amazing alterations you saw in the shape, color,
and contents of the blood discs are produced by the affinity of alcohol
for the water in the albuminous portion of the globules.

I am speaking here in the presence of expert chemists. You say I have no
business to know anything about these topics.