On the development and retrogression of the fat-cell / by George Hoggan and Frances Elizabeth Hoggan.

Date:
[1879?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the development and retrogression of the fat-cell / by George Hoggan and Frances Elizabeth Hoggan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    quantity of blood supplied to the stomach becomes increased. It is probable also that any alcohol which has been absorbed into the blood will act directly upon these centres. The glands in the stomach which secrete gastric juice are at the same time stimulated by mere contact with alcohol, and the secretion is by this action still further increased. This illustration is only one of several which might be adduced of the results following the stimulant action of small quantities of alcohol upon the circulation. There are, no doubt, other substances which produce a stimulant action comparable with that of alcohol, but it has advantages over most of them in being rapid in action, and in being, to many persons, a substance whose taste is by no means disagreeable, especially when in the form of one of the commonly used alcoholic beverages. Large quantities of alcohol produce effects on the circulation of a totally different kind, for the action then undoubtedly becomes poisonous, and may be so violently poisonous as to produce death merely by the changes induced upon the circu- lation. In a work on Poisons, written a good many years ago by Sir Eobert Christison—which I am not the first to call one of the classical works in Toxicology—I find several cases which illustrate this poisonous action. In these cases, large quanti- ties of alcohol were swallowed by foolish persons, who perhaps had made wagers that they could drink a bottle of whisky right off; and the result has been that they have become in- sensible, and sometimes have died. Sudden deaths in these circumstances are to be explained by the violence of the irri- tation of large quantities of alcohol upon the nerves of the stomach. Some of these nerves convey impressions to a gang- lion at the base of the brain (cardio-inhibitory centre), whose function it is to slow or inhibit the contractions of the heart; and if a very strong impression is conveyed, then the inhibition is sufficient to stop the heart, and the person dies (see Fig. 21).
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