EFFECT ON THE BRAIN.

"I once had the unusual, though unhappy, opportunity of observing the
same phenomenon in the brain structure of a man, who, in a paroxysm of
alcoholic excitement, decapitated himself under the wheel of a railway
carriage, and whose brain was instantaneously evolved from the skull by
the crash. The brain itself, entire, was before me within three minutes
after the death. It exhaled the odor of spirit most distinctly, and its
membranes and minute structures were vascular in the extreme. It looked
as if it had been recently injected with vermilion. The white matter of
the cerebrum, studded with red points, could scarcely be distinguished,
when it was incised, by its natural whiteness; and the pia-mater, or
internal vascular membrane covering the brain, resembled a delicate web
of coagulated red blood, so tensely were its fine vessels engorged.

"I should add that this condition extended through both the larger and
the smaller brain, the cerebrum and cerebellum, but was not so marked in
the medulla or commencing portion of the spinal cord."


THE SPINAL CORD AND NERVES.

"The action of alcohol continued beyond the first stage, the function of
the spinal cord is influenced. Through this part of the nervous system
we are accustomed, in health, to perform automatic acts of a mechanical
kind, which proceed systematically even when we are thinking or speaking
on other subjects. Thus a skilled workman will continue his mechanical
work perfectly, while his mind is bent on some other subject; and thus
we all perform various acts in a purely automatic way, without calling