EFFECT OF ALCOHOL ON THE MEMBRANES

The elements that initial suffer from alcohol area unit those expansions of the body that the anatomists decision the membranes. "The skin could be a membranous envelope. Through the complete of the nutrient surface, from the lips downward, and thru the cartilaginous tube passages to their minutest ramifications, extends the mucosa. The lungs, the heart, the liver, the kidneys area unit plicate in delicate membranes, which may be stripped simply from these elements. If you are taking a little of bone, you'll realize it straightforward to strip aloof from it a membranous sheath or covering; if you examine a joint, you'll realize each the top and also the socket lined with membranes. the complete of the intestines area unit engulfed in a very fine membrane referred to as serosa . All the muscles area unit engulfed in membranes, and also the fasciculi, or bundles and fibres of muscles, have their membranous protective covering. The brain and funiculus area unit engulfed in 3 membranes; one nearest to themselves, a pure body structure, a network of blood-vessels; another, a skinny bodily fluid structure; a 3rd, a powerful fibrous structure. The eyeball could be a structure of mixture humors and membranes, and of nothing else. to complete the outline, the minute structures of the important organs area unit registered in membranous matter." These membranes area unit the filters of the body. "In their absence there may be no building of structure, no hardening of tissue, nor organic mechanism. Passive themselves, they, withal, separate all structures into their various positions and diversifications." Membranous deteriorations. ------------------------- In order to form utterly clear to your mind the action and use of those membranous expansions, and also the approach during which alcohol deteriorates them, and obstructs their work, we have a tendency to quote once more from Dr. Richardson: "The animal receives from the vegetable world and from the world the food and drink it needs for its sustenance and motion. It receives mixture food for its muscles: flamable food for its motion; water for the answer of its varied parts; salt for constructive and alternative physical functions. These have all to be organized within the body; and that they area unit organized by means that of the membranous envelopes. Through these membranes nothing will pass that's not, for the time, in a very state of solution, like water or soluble salts. Water passes freely through them, salts pass freely through them, however the constructive matter of the active elements that's mixture doesn't pass; it's maintained in them till it's with chemicals rotten into the soluble variety of matter. once we regard our food a little of animal flesh, it's initial resolved, in digestion, into a soluble fluid before it will be absorbed; within the blood it's resolved into the fluid mixture condition; within the solids it's arranged down among the membranes into new structure, and once it's compete its half, it's digestible once more, if i'll therefore say, into a crystalloidal soluble substance, able to be frantic and replaced by addition of latest matter, then it's dialysed or skillful, the membranes into the blood, and is disposed of within the excretions. "See, then, what associate all-important half these membranous structures play within the animal life. Upon their integrity all the silent work of the build up of the body depends. If these membranes area unit rendered too porous, and unfettered the mixture fluids of the blood the albumen, as an example the body therefore 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 permit the natural fluids to go through them. They fail to separate, and also the result's, either associate accumulation of the fluid in a very closed cavity, or contraction of the substance inclosed among the membrane, or condition of membrane in surfaces that got to be freely greased and unbroken apart. In maturity we have a tendency to see the results of modification of membrane naturally induced; we have a tendency to see the fastened joint, the shrunken and feeble muscle, the dim eye, the deaf ear, the debilitated nervous perform. "It could appear, initially sight, that i'm leading right away aloof from the topic of the secondary action of alcohol. it's not therefore. i'm leading on to it. Upon of these membranous structures alcohol exerts an immediate perversion of action. It produces in them a thickening, a shrinking associated an inactivity that reduces their practical power. That they'll work apace and equally, they need to be the least bit 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 stop to separate the saline constituents properly; and, if the evil that's therefore started, be allowed to continue, they contract upon their contained matter in no matter organ it's going to be placed, and condense it. "In brief, below the prolonged influence of alcohol those changes that happen from it within the blood corpuscles, reach the opposite organic elements, involving them in structural deteriorations, that area unit continuously dangerous, and area unit usually ultimately fatal."