April, 1925
INDUSTRIAL A N D ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
427
Pharmacology of Alcohol’ By Reid Hunt HAXVAED MBDICAL SCHOOL, BOSTON, MASS.
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I T H I N the last forty years there has been a considerable change in the views of the medical profession concerning the pharmacology of alcohol. Formerly regarded as a stimulant, alcohol is now classed as a depressant along with ether and chloroform. This change has resulted from improved methods of study and from new viewpoints in physiology and pharmacology. Among the most important of the latter is the recognition that the animal body makes extensive use of inhibitory processes; numerous physiological activities are normally kept slowed down by higher controlling centers. When the latter are depressed by alcohol, ether, etc., the lower mechanisms are “released” with the resultant signs of stimulation such as increased activity, a more rapid heart action, etc. In other words, alcohol takes off the “brakes” and allows parts of the machinery to run faster; the result in some respects is the same as that of true stimulation, but there is this important difference: taking off the brakes will not help the machine to go up a hill as will a true stimulant. This newer view of the action of alcohol has little bearing upon the possible usefulness of the drug in health or disease, for a depressant drug may be as valuable as a stimulant; it simply shows that proper discrimination must be employed in its use. Nature of Poison in “Bootleg” Liquor There is little accurate information as to just what,“bootleg” liquors contain aside from ordinary ethyl alcohol. Many very poisonous substances are contained in the various agents used to denature alcohol, but these have seldom been reported as present in bootleg liquor. The chemists of the Prohibition Office reported analyses of 75,000 samples of illicit liquor, and the chief ingredient found, which is not present to the same extent in genuine whisky, was acetaldehyde; they were inclined to attribute the deleterious effects of the spurious liquor to this substance. This explanation is not very satisfactory, however, for acetaldehyde is only seven or eight times as poisonous as ethyl alcohol itself, and in the samples analyzed there was on an average about fifteen hundred times as much alcohol as acetaldehyde. An individual would have to consume almost his own weight of the liquor in order to get a fatal dose of acetaldehyde; of course he would die of alcohol I Abstracted from a paper read before the Intersectional Meeting of the Northeastern, Rhode Island, and Connecticut Valley Sections of the American Chemical Society, Boston, Mass., January 10, 1925.
poisoning long before he could get a dangerous dose of the aldehyde. The writer has tested a few samples of illicit liquor which were alleged to have caused death in man and found their toxicity for animals to be fully accounted for by the ethyl alcohol they contained; he is inclined to think that, unless the victims of such poisoning had taken something besides the liquor analyzed, the results were due to the quantity of alcohol drunk or the manner in which it was taken rather than to its quality. The depth of intoxication and the danger to life depend upon the concentration of alcohol in the blood and this is determined not only by the amount of alcohol taken but by its concentration. There is a rather small margin between the amount of alcohol necessary to cause deep intoxication and that sufficient to cause death; hence if an individual takes a large amount of strong alcohol within a short time he may get enough to cause not only intoxication but death. Deaths of this nature have frequently resulted from the taking of genuine whisky upon a wager that a given quantity could be drunk within a short period. Methyl Alcohol Poisoning The view that methyl alcohol poisoning is due to impurities rather than to the methyl alcohol itself is considered to be untenable, although it seems to be true that some samples of wood alcohol contain allyl alcohol, which is much more poisonous than methyl alcohol itself, in amounts sufficient to distinctly increase the toxicity of the wood alcohol. Pure methyl alcohol, however, is much more poisonous than ethyl alcohol. The cause of this difference is obvious when the pharmacological action of the two alcohols is considered: although there are certain limitations to its use, ethyl alcohol is a food-in fact, as much as 40 per cent of the food requirements of a m’an can for a time be met by ethyl alcohol-whereas methyl alcohol has, for practical purposes, no value whatever as a food. The body can quickly and almost completely oxidize (and utilize) moderate amounts of ethyl alcohol, but it has great difficulty in either destroying or excreting methyl alcohol. The latter remains in the body for long periods and, probably with its oxidation products (formic acid and probably formaldehyde), has a very injurious action, especially upon the eyes. Methyl alcohol is more volatile than ethyl alcohol and the inhalation of its vapors by painters and others has frequently caused death or blindness; one author reported sixty-eight such cases.
Calendar of Meetings American Chemical Society-69th Meeting, Baltimore, Md., April 6 to 11, 1925. 70th Meeting, Los Angeles, Calif., August 3 to 8, 1925. American Electrochemical Society-spring Meeting, Niagara Falls, N. Y., April 23 to 25, 1925. Fall Meeting, Chattanooga, Tenn., September 24 to 26, 1925. American Oil Chemists’ Society-16th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, La., May 11 and 12, 1925. National Lime Association-7th Annual Meeting, Briarcliff Manor, Westchester County, N. Y., May 26 to 29, 1!?25. American Association of Cereal Chemists-Annual Meeting, St. Louis, Mo., June 1 to 5, 1925.
Third National Colloid Symposium-University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn., June 17 to 19, 1925. American Society for Testing Materials-28th Annual Meeting, Atlantic City, N. J., J~~~22 to 26, 1925, American Institute of Chemical Engineers-Providence, R. I., June 22 to 27, 1925. Joint meeting with British Institution of Chemical Engineers, Leeds, England, July 13 to 23, 1925. National Chemical Equipment Association-Providence, R. I., June 22 to 27, 1925. National Exposition of Chemical Industries-New York, N. Y., September 28 to October 3, 1925.
