alcohol in 1885 for the Michigan State Medical Society in which he cited
experiments showing that the opinion that alcohol stimulates the heart
by an increase of real force, is an error. It creates a flutter, but
decreases power.

"Increased frequency of pulsation is often the strongest
evidence of diminished power--as the fluttering pulse of extreme
weakness."

He classes alcohol with chloroform.

"If chloroform is a narcotic, alcohol is a narcotic. If
chloroform is an anaesthetic, alcohol is an anaesthetic. If one is
essentially a depressing agent, so is the other. Their strong
resemblance no one can question. The chief difference is that
the alcoholic narcosis is longer continued, and its secondary
effects are more severe."

In closing his summary of the changes in scientific knowledge of this
drug he says:--

"We said it was a direct heart exciter. We now know it is a
direct heart depressor. We said, and nearly all the text-books
still say, it is a direct cardiac stimulant. We know from most
conclusive experiments it is a direct _cardiac paralyzant_."

The following is taken from one of the many excellent papers upon
alcohol written by that Nestor among physicians, Dr. N. S. Davis:--

"Alcoholics are very generally prescribed in that weakness of
the heart sometimes met with in low forms of fever and in the
advanced stage of other acute diseases. It is claimed that these
agents are capable of strengthening and sustaining the action of
the heart under the circumstances just named, and also under the
first depressing influence of severe shock.

"There is nothing in the ascertained physiological action of
alcohol on the human system, as developed by a wide range of
experimental investigation, to sustain this claim. I have used
the sphygmograph and every other available means for testing
experimentally the effects of alcohol upon the action of the
heart and blood-vessels generally, but have failed in every
instance to get proof of any increased force of cardiac action.

"The first and very transient effect is generally increased
frequency of beat, followed immediately by dilatation of the
peripheral vessels from impaired vasomotor sensibility, and the
same unsteady or wavy sphygmographic tracing as is given in
typhoid fever, and which is usually regarded as evidence of
cardiac debil