In his lectures on alcohol, delivered in both England and America, Dr. Richardson discusses the impact of this substance on the blood after it leaves the stomach.
"Let's say a certain amount of alcohol is put into the stomach. It will be absorbed there, but not before it is diluted with water to the right level. This is because alcohol won't pass through an animal membrane that separates it from a watery fluid like blood until it has been charged with water to a certain level of dilution." In fact, it is so insatiably thirsty for water that it will seize it from watery surfaces, depriving them of it until its saturation exhausts its capacity to receive it, at which point it will dissolve into the circulating fluid.
It is this power of absorbing water from every texture with which alcoholic spirits come into contact that creates the burning thirst of those who freely indulge in its use. Dr. Richardson describes its effect on circulation as follows:
"As it moves through the lungs' circulation, the air exposes it, and the natural heat raises a small amount of it into vapor, which expiration throws off." If the quantity is large, the loss could be significant, and one could detect the spirit's odor in the expired breath. If the quantity is small, the water in the blood will hold the spirit in solution, resulting in a relatively small loss. Once the blood passes through the lungs and the left heart propels it through the arterial circuit, it enters the minute circulation, also known as the organism's structural circulation. The arteries here branch out into minuscule vessels known as arterioles, from which the veins' equally minute radicals or roots emerge, ultimately serving as the vast rivers that return blood to the heart. In its passage through this minute circulation, the alcohol finds its way to every organ. The alcohol travels with the blood to the brain, muscles, secreting or excreting organs, and even into the bone structure itself. In certain non-excreting parts, it remains diffused for a while, and in areas with a high water content, it persists longer than in other parts. Some organs, like the liver and kidneys, which have an open tube for fluid conveyance, expel or eliminate it, ultimately removing a portion from the body. The circulation likely decomposes and carries off the remainder in new forms of matter.
If we know how alcohol passes through the body from absorption to elimination, we can better assess the physical changes it causes in the organs and structures it touches. It first reaches the blood, but, as a rule, the quantity of it that enters is insufficient to produce any material effect on that fluid. If, however, the dose taken is poisonous or semi-poisonous, then even the blood, rich as it is in water and containing seven hundred and ninety parts in a thousand, will be affected. The alcohol is diffused through this water, and there it comes in contact with the other constituent parts, with the fibrine, that plastic substance which, when blood is drawn, clots and coagulates, and which is present in the proportion of from two to three parts in a thousand; with the albumen which exists in the proportion of seventy parts; with the salts which yield about ten parts; with the fatty matters; and lastly, with those minute, round bodies which float in myriads in the blood (which were discovered by the Dutch philosopher, Leuwenhock, as one of the first results of microscopical observation, about the middle of the seventeenth century), and which are called the blood globules or corpuscles. These last-named bodies are actually cells; their natural discs have a smooth outline, a depressed center, and a red color, reflecting the color of the blood they originate from. We have discovered that the blood contains other corpuscles or cells, known as white cells, in much smaller quantities. These cells float in the bloodstream within the vessels. The red cells occupy the center of the bloodstream, while the white cells lie externally near the vessels' sides, moving at a slower pace. Our business is mainly with the Red Corps. They carry out crucial economic functions, primarily absorbing the oxygen we inhale during breathing and transporting it to the body's extreme tissues. They also absorb the carbonic acid gas produced during the body's combustion in these extreme tissues, returning it to the lungs for exchange with oxygen. In essence, they are the essential components of the circulatory system.
"When alcohol enters the blood, it comes into contact with various components such as water, fibrine, albumen, salts, fatty matter, and corpuscles. If the alcohol is present in sufficient quantities, it can cause a disturbing action." I have watched this disturbance very carefully on the blood corpuscles; for, in some animals, we can see these floating along during life, and we can also observe them in men who are under the effects of alcohol by removing a speck of blood and examining it with the microscope. When alcohol is visible, its effects vary. It could change the shape of the corpuscles so that they stick together in rolls; it could change their outline so that the smooth, well-defined edge becomes irregular, crenate, or even star-like; it could turn a round corpuscle into an oval one; or, in the worst cases, it could produce what I call a "truncated form of corpuscles," where the change is so big that we wouldn't know if the thing we were looking at was really a blood cell if we didn't know how it happened. The spirit's action on the water within the corpuscles and its ability to extract water from them are responsible for all these changes. Every stage of modification of corpuscles described impairs their ability to absorb and fix gases, and when the aggregation of cells in large masses occurs, additional challenges emerge. This is because the cells, when united, pass through the minute vessels of the lungs and the general circulation less easily than they should, obstructing the current and causing local injury.
Alcohol in excess initiates an additional action on the blood, specifically on the fibrine or plastic colloidal matter. On this, the spirit may act in two different ways, according to the degree to which it affects the water that holds the fibrine in solution. It may fix the water with the fibrine and thus destroy the power of coagulation; or it may extract the water so determinately as to produce coagulation."
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