Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why by Martha Meir Allen (warren buffett book recommendations txt) 📕

“The effect of alcohol upon nearly all the organs of the body has been carefully investigated. But, strange to say, literature contains only a few straggling hints upon the action of alcohol on the pulmonary tissue. It has long been known that the abuse of alcohol is a predisposing cause of death when the drinker is attacked with pneumonia. No experimental evidence has been published of the action of alcohol in producing pathological conditions in the lungs. In order to determine this action, a series of experiments was made upon dogs in the winters of 1890-1891 and 1892-1893. The dogs were a mixed lot of mongrels gathered in by the city dog catchers. They varied in weight from fifteen to twenty-five pounds, and were apparently in good health. In all, thirty animals were experimented on.

“The experiments were performed as follows:—A carefully etherized animal had injected into his trachea just below the larynx a quantity of commercial alcohol varying from one dram to one ounce in amount. The effects of equal amounts of alcohol upon animals of the same weight varies greatly. Two dogs, weighing twenty-five pounds each, were injected with two drams of alcohol. One died in one hour, and the other in six hours after the injection. Four other dogs, two weighing twenty-four pounds each, another eighteen pounds, and the fourth fifteen pounds, were all injected with the same amount, two drams. All four survived, and were as well as usual in four weeks. Another dog of eighteen pounds died five minutes after an injection of two drams, while another of fifteen pounds took one ounce and recovered.

“The symptoms in the dogs were all alike, dyspnea, increasing as the inflammation increased, until the accessory muscles of respiration were called into play. The stethoscope showed that air had great difficulty in entering the bronchi and air vesicles, and showed also the tumultuous beating of the heart in pumping blood through the lung. It was impossible to take the temperatures. Post-mortem examinations showed the lungs dark, congested and solid in some places. The air passages were filled with frothy, bloody mucus, even in the dog that died in five minutes. On section, the lungs were dark, congested, and full of bloody mucus. This shows how acutely sensitive the respiratory passages are to the action of alcohol. On microscopic examination of the lungs, the air tubes and vesicles were found filled with immense numbers of red and white corpuscles and much mucus. The same picture was presented as in a slide from the lungs of a broncho-pneumonic child.

“The striking similarity between the two is enough to prove that the pathological condition is the same, and that alcohol has produced a lesion very closely resembling, if not absolutely like, that of broncho-pneumonia in the human subject. This to some extent explains why drunkards attacked by pneumonia succumb more readily than the temperate. The sensitive lung tissue is enveloped in alcohol—flowing through the capillaries of the lung on one side, and exhaled, filling the air vesicles and tubes on the other. The condition must create a state of semi-engorgement or of mild inflammation, similar to the drunkard’s red nose, or his engorged gastric mucous membrane. Such a state will reduce the vitality of the pulmonary tissue, and its power of resistance to external influences. Add to this an inflammation such as a pneumonia, and the lungs find themselves unable to stand the pressure.”

As previous chapters contain much showing the reasons why alcohol is dangerous in pneumonia, space need not be taken here to do more than indicate briefly some points of non-alcoholic treatment.

Pneumonia is generally supposed to result from a cold; it is ushered in by the symptoms of a chill, followed by fever, headache, shortness of breath, pain in chest, etc. It sometimes occurs as a complication of typhoid fever and other acute diseases.