The parts which first
suffer from alcohol are those expansions of the body which the anatomists call
the membranes. "The skin is a membranous envelope. Through the whole of
the alimentary surface, from the lips downward, and through the bronchial
passages to their minutest ramifications, extends the mucous membrane. The
lungs, the heart, the liver, the kidneys are folded in delicate membranes,
which can be stripped easily from these parts. If you take a portion of bone,
you will find it easy to strip off from it a membranous sheath or covering; if
you examine a joint, you will find both the head and the socket lined with
membranes. The whole of the intestines are enveloped in a fine membrane
called peritoneum . All the muscles are
enveloped in membranes, and the fasciculi, or bundles and fibres of muscles,
have their membranous sheathing. The brain and spinal cord are enveloped in
three membranes; one nearest to themselves, a pure vascular structure, a
network of blood-vessels; another, a thin serous structure; a third, a strong
fibrous structure. The eyeball is a structure of colloidal humors and
membranes, and of nothing else. To complete the description, the minute
structures of the vital organs are enrolled in membranous matter."
These membranes are
the filters of the body. "In their absence there could be no building of
structure, no solidification of tissue, nor organic mechanism. Passive
themselves, they, nevertheless, separate all structures into their respective
positions and adaptations."
Membranous
deteriorations.
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In order to make
perfectly clear to your mind the action and use of these membranous expansions,
and the way in which alcohol deteriorates them, and obstructs their work, we
quote again from Dr. Richardson:
"The animal
receives from the vegetable world and from the earth the food and drink it
requires for its sustenance and motion. It receives colloidal food for its
muscles: combustible food for its motion; water for the solution of its various
parts; salt for constructive and other physical purposes. These have all to be
arranged in the body; and they are arranged by means of the membranous
envelopes. Through these membranes nothing can pass that is not, for the time,
in a state of aqueous solution, like water or soluble salts. Water passes
freely through them, salts pass freely through them, but the constructive
matter of the active parts that is colloidal does not pass; it is retained in
them until it is chemically decomposed into the soluble type of matter. When we
take for our food a portion of animal flesh, it is first resolved, in
digestion, into a soluble fluid before it can be absorbed; in the blood it is
resolved into the fluid colloidal condition; in the solids it is laid down
within the membranes into new structure, and when it has played its part, it is
digested again, if I may so say, into a crystalloidal soluble substance, ready
to be carried away and replaced by addition of new matter, then it is dialysed
or passed through, the membranes into the blood, and is disposed of in the
excretions.
"See, then, what
an all-important part these membranous structures play in the animal life. Upon
their integrity all the silent work of the building up of the body depends. If
these membranes are rendered too porous, and let out the colloidal fluids of
the blood the albumen, for example the body so circumstanced, dies; dies as if
it were slowly bled to death. If, on the contrary, they become condensed or
thickened, or loaded with foreign material, then they fail to allow the natural
fluids to pass through them. They fail to dialyse, and the result is, either an
accumulation of the fluid in a closed cavity, or contraction of the substance
inclosed within the membrane, or dryness of membrane in surfaces that ought to
be freely lubricated and kept apart. In old age we see the effects of
modification of membrane naturally induced; we see the fixed joint, the
shrunken and feeble muscle, the dimmed eye, the deaf ear, the enfeebled nervous
function.
"It may possibly
seem, at first sight, that I am leading immediately away from the subject of
the secondary action of alcohol. It is not so. I am leading directly to it.
Upon all these membranous structures alcohol exerts a direct perversion of
action. It produces in them a thickening, a shrinking and an inactivity that
reduces their functional power. That they may work rapidly and equally, they
require to be at all times charged with water to saturation. If, into contact
with them, any agent is brought that deprives them of water, then is their work
interfered with; they cease to separate the saline constituents properly; and,
if the evil that is thus started, be allowed to continue, they contract upon
their contained matter in whatever organ it may be situated, and condense it.
"In brief, under
the prolonged influence of alcohol those changes which take place from it in
the blood corpuscles, extend to the other organic parts, involving them in
structural deteriorations, which are always dangerous, and are often ultimately
fatal."
