ditorial article in the _American
Medical Temperance Quarterly_ for January, 1894:--

"Drs. Sidney Ringer and H. Sainsbury in a carefully executed
series of experiments on the isolated heart of the frog, found
that all the alcohol when mixed with the blood circulating
through the heart, uniformly diminished the action of that organ
in direct proportion to the quantity of alcohol used, until
complete paralysis was induced. In closing their report in
regard to the action of different alcohols, they say that 'by
their direct action on the cardiac tissue these drugs are
clearly _paralyzant_, and that this appears to be the case from
the outset, _no stage of increased force of contraction
preceding_.'

"Professor Martin, while in connection with the Johns Hopkins
University, performed an equally careful series of experiments
in regard to the action of ethylic, or ordinary alcohol,
directly on the cardiac structures of the dog, and with the same
results. He makes the following explicit statement of the
results obtained by him. 'Blood containing one-fourth per cent.
by volume, that is two and a half parts per 1000 of absolute
alcohol, almost invariably diminishes, within a minute, the work
done by the heart; blood containing one-half per cent. always
diminishes it, and may even bring the amount pumped out by the
left ventricle to so small a quantity that it is not sufficient
to supply the coronary arteries.'

"In 1883, R. Dubois, by direct experimenting upon animals, found
that the presence of alcohol in the blood much intensified the
action of chloroform and thereby rendered a much less dose
fatal.

"Prof. H. C. Wood of the University of Pennsylvania, in an
address upon Anaesthesia to the Tenth International Medical
Congress, of Berlin, in 1890, said: 'In my own experiments with
alcohol, an eighty per cent. fluid was used largely diluted with
water. The amount injected into the jugular vein varied in the
different experiments from 5 to 20 c. c.; and in no case have I
been able to detect any increase in the size of the pulse or in
the arterial pressure produced by alcohol, when the heart was
failing during advanced chloroform anaesthesia. On the other
hand, on several occasions, the larger amounts of alcohol
apparently greatly increased the rapidity of the fall of
ar