THE INFLUENCE OF ALCOHOL ON GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT BY C. F. HODGE, PH. D. PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, CLARK UNIVERSITY THE INFLUENCE OF ALCOHOL ON GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT THE following experiments were undertaken for the purpose of studying the influence of alcohol upon the more general physiological processes, such as growth, vigor, and resistance to disease, health, activity and development of intelligence, normality and viability of offspring. In all four series of investigations have been made: 1. Upon the influence of minute percentages of alcohol on the growth of yeast. 2. The influence of moderate doses of alcohol upon the growth of kittens. 3. The influence of alcohol upon the growth, intelligence, activity, and offspring of dogs. 4. Influence of alcohol on the daily activity of rats. The work was begun in the fall of 1895, and reports of these experiments up to dates of publication have been printed in various journals.1 It is proposed here to give a brief summary of these publications and of additional results up to the present date. The point of view from which the work was undertaken was that most of the apparent contradictions in the results of attempts at the solution of the alcohol problem are due to the great complexity of the human organism. Of all animals man is the most adaptable to all sorts of conditions of life. Some men fail with alcohol, others fail as completely without it, and 1 "Experiments on the Physiology of Alcohol made under the Auspices of the Committee of Fifty," Appleton's Popular Science Monthly, March and April, 1897. "Influence of Alcohol on the Viability of Offspring of Dogs and on their Susceptibility and Resistance to Distemper," Journal of the Boston Society of Medical Sciences, December, 1897. "Variations in Daily Activity produced by Alcohol, and by Changes in Barometric Pressure and Diet, with Description of Recording Methods," Colin C Stewart, American Journal of Physiology, vol. i. 1898. the same is true of success. This has made the definite interpretation of the human experiment impossible. The method of physiological science is to reduce the problem to simplest terms in every way possible. A unicellular organism is millions of times simpler than a human body; still all fundamental functions and processes, such as nutrition, growth, reproduction, excretion, appear similar in both. Hence by studying the influence of alcohol upon these functions in simpler organisms, evidence may be gained by which more clearly to interpret the human experiment. The lower animals, complex as they are, are much simpler in all their physiological adaptations than man, and yet approach him more closely in the details of physiological processes, and thus render closer comparison possible. Their conditions of life, moreover, may be made more nearly comparable than it would ever be possible to find or procure with men. In man, even after death, microscopical investigation of the tis sues to demonstrate the influence of alcohol upon them is so complicated by all manner of disease and by post-mortem changes that no wholly trustworthy evidence is obtainable. Animals, on the other hand, may be killed in known conditions of health, and their tissues may be immediately prepared for microscopical examination. In this way important results have been obtained by Berkley,1 Dehio,2 Stewart, and others, that have materially aided the interpretation of findings in human tissues. Four types of physiological influence that alcohol may exert on a vital function are represented to the eye in the left hand diagram of Fig. 1. It may have no effect, as represented by the line marked "normal." It may stimulate activity, dotted line Y, or it may depress, or decrease activity, dotted line X, or, finally, small amounts may exert a proportionally greater influence than larger quantities, heavy line N. This last was found to be the influence of minute percentages of alcohol on 1 Henry J. Berkley, "Studies of the Lesions produced by the Action of Certain Poisons on the Cortical Nerve Cell," Alcohol, Brain, 1895, p. 473. 2 Heinrich Dehio, "Experimentelle Untersuchungen über die Veränderungen der Ganglienzellen bei der acuten Alkoholvergiftung," Centralbl. für Nervenheilkunde und Psychiatrie, 1895, p. 113. 3 Colin C. Stewart, "Influence of Acute Alcohol Poisoning on Nerve Cells," Journal of Experimental Medicine, vol. i. No. 4, 1896. |