alcohol's impact on the blood ( alcohol effect )

                      ALCOHOL'S IMPACT ON THE BLOOD  

  ( alcohol effect )                                         

alcohol's impact

Dr. Richardson describes how alcohol affects the blood after leaving the stomach in his lectures on the subject that he has given in both England and America.

When alcohol is separated from a watery fluid like blood by an animal membrane, it has the peculiar property that it will not pass through the membrane until it has been charged, to a given point of dilution, with water. Therefore, if a certain amount of alcohol is taken into the stomach, it will be absorbed there. However, prior to absorption, it will have to undergo a proper degree of dilution with water. It actually has such a voracious appetite for water that it will steal it from watery textures and rob them of it until its power of reception is depleted due to saturation, at which point it will diffuse into the stream of circulating fluid.

The burning hunger of people who freely engage in its usage is caused by the ability of alcoholic spirits to absorb water from every texture with which they come into contact. Dr. Richardson provides the following description of its impact once it enters the circulation:

As it circulates through the lungs, it is exposed to the air, and a small amount of it is expelled during expiration after being heated by the body's inherent heat. If there is a lot of it, there may be a significant amount of loss, and the spirit may be smelled in the exhaled air. Small quantities will result in relatively little loss since the water in the blood will keep the spirit in solution. It enters what is known as the minute circulation, or structural circulation of the organism, after passing through the lungs and being propelled over the arterial circuit by the left heart. The arteries here branch out into incredibly tiny vessels known as arterioles, and from these minuscule radicals or roots of the veins, which will eventually grow into the vast rivers returning blood to the heart, spring. Alcohol makes its way to every organ throughout its transit through this little circulation. It travels with the blood to this brain, these muscles, these secreting or excreting organs, nay, even into this bone structure itself. It stays diffused for a while in some of these excreting areas, and it stays longer in some areas than others where there is a high concentration of water. It is thrown out or expelled from those organs that have an open channel for carrying fluids out, such the liver and kidneys, and in this way, a portion of it is ultimately removed from the body. The remainder, which circulates endlessly, is likely broken down and taken away in new forms of matter.

When we comprehend the course which alcohol takes, we are more equipped to determine what physical changes occur in the various organs and structures with which it comes into contact follows in its passage through the body, from the period of its absorption to that of its removal. It first enters the blood, but typically there is not enough of it to have a significant impact on that fluid. However, if the dose is deadly or semi-poisonous, even the blood, which is abundant in water and contains 790 parts per thousand, is impacted. The alcohol diffuses through this water, where it comes into contact with the other constituent parts, including the fibrine, a plastic substance that helps blood clot and coagulate when drawn, the albumen, which is present in a proportion of 70 parts to 1, the salts, which produce about ten parts, the fatty substances, and finally, those tiny, round bodies that float in my blood. These last-named bodies are actually cells; in their natural state, their discs have a smooth contour, a depression in the middle, and a red tint—the blood's color is acquired from them. The white cells, which are found in much lesser amounts in the blood and float in the bloodstream within the vessels, are another type of corpuscle or cell that is known to exist. The white lie externally close to the sides of the vessels and move more slowly while the red occupy the center of the stream. Our main area of business is with the red corpuscles. They carry out the most crucial economic tasks, absorbing a large portion of the oxygen we breathe in and delivering it to the body's most remote tissues. They also absorb a large portion of the carbonic acid gas produced during the body's combustion and return it to the lungs where it is exchanged for oxygen. To put it another way, they are the most important components of the circulatory system.

When alcohol enters the blood, it comes into touch with all of these components, including the water, fibrine, albumen, salts, fatty matter, and corpuscles. If there is enough alcohol in the blood, it might cause troubling effects. I have closely observed this change in the blood corpuscles since we can see these moving about during life in some animals, and we can also see them in males who are intoxicated by extracting a small amount of blood and looking at it under a microscope. When the effects of alcohol are visible, they vary. It may change the shape of the corpuscles, turning the smooth, outer edge of the clear-defined, round corpuscle irregular or crenate, or even starlike. In very extreme cases, it may produce what I may refer to as a truncated form of corpuscles, in which the change is so great that if we did not trace it through all its stages, we would be perplexed to know whether the object looked like what it should. All of these alterations are the result of the spirit's interaction with the water present in the corpuscles and its ability to draw water from them. Every stage of the modification of the corpuscles thus described impairs their ability to absorb and fix gases, and when the aggregation of the cells, in masses, is great, other problems arise because the cells, united together, pass through the tiny vessels of the lungs and of the general circulation less easily than they should and obstruct the current that causes local injury.

Alcohol use in excess has additional effects on the blood, including those on fibrine or plastic colloidal matter. Depending on how much the spirit affects the water that keeps the fibrine in solution, it may have one of two effects on this. It may fix the water with the fibrine, destroying the coagulation's ability, or it may withdraw the water with enough tenacity to cause coagulation.