Zoonomia Volume I Part 19

SECT. XXI.

OF DRUNKENNESS.

1. _Sleep from satiety of hunger. From rocking children. From uniform sounds._ 2. _Intoxication from common food after fatigue and inanition._ 3. _From wine or of opium. Chilness after meals. Vertigo.

Why pleasure is produced by intoxication, and by swinging and rocking children. And why pain is relieved by it._ 4. _Why drunkards stagger and stammer, and are liable to weep._ 5. _And become delirious, sleepy, and stupid._ 6. _Or make pale urine and vomit._ 7. _Objects are seen double._ 8. _Attention of the mind diminishes drunkenness._ 9.

_Disordered irritative motions of all the senses._ 10. _Diseases from drunkenness._ 11. _Definition of drunkenness._

1. In the state of nature when the sense of hunger is appeased by the stimulus of agreeable food, the business of the day is over, and the human savage is at peace with the world, he then exerts little attention to external objects, pleasing reveries of imagination succeed, and at length sleep is the result: till the nourishment which he has procured, is carried over every part of the system to repair the injuries of action, and he awakens with fresh vigour, and feels a renewal of his sense of hunger.

The juices of some bitter vegetables, as of the poppy and the laurocerasus, and the ardent spirit produced in the fermentation of the sugar found in vegetable juices, are so agreeable to the nerves of the stomach, that, taken in a small quant.i.ty, they instantly pacify the sense of hunger; and the inattention to external stimuli with the reveries of imagination, and sleep, succeeds, in the same manner as when the stomach is filled with other less intoxicating food.

This inattention to the irritative motions occasioned by external stimuli is a very important circ.u.mstance in the approach of sleep, and is produced in young children by rocking their cradles: during which all visible objects become indistinct to them. An uniform soft repeated sound, as the murmurs of a gentle current, or of bees, are said to produce the same effect, by presenting indistinct ideas of inconsequential sounds, and by thus stealing our attention from other objects, whilst by their continued reiterations they become familiar themselves, and we cease gradually to attend to any thing, and sleep ensues.

2. After great fatigue or inanition, when the stomach is suddenly filled with flesh and vegetable food, the inattention to external stimuli, and the reveries of imagination, become so conspicuous as to amount to a degree of intoxication. The same is at any time produced by superadding a little wine or opium to our common meals; or by taking these separately in considerable quant.i.ty; and this more efficaciously after fatigue or inanition; because a less quant.i.ty of any stimulating material will excite an organ into energetic action, after it has lately been torpid from defect of stimulus; as objects appear more luminous, after we have been in the dark; and because the suspension of volition, which is the immediate cause of sleep, is sooner induced, after a continued voluntary exertion has in part exhausted the sensorial power of volition; in the same manner as we cannot contract a single muscle long together without intervals of inaction.

3. In the beginning of intoxication we are inclined to sleep, as mentioned above, but by the excitement of external circ.u.mstances, as of noise, light, business, or by the exertion of volition, we prevent the approaches of it, and continue to take into our stomach greater quant.i.ties of the inebriating materials. By these means the irritative movements of the stomach are excited into greater action than is natural; and in consequence all the irritative tribes and trains of motion, which are catenated with them, become susceptible of stronger action from their accustomed stimuli; because these motions are excited both by their usual irritation, and by their a.s.sociation with the increased actions of the stomach and lacteals.

Hence the skin glows, and the heat of the body is increased, by the more energetic action of the whole glandular system; and pleasure is introduced in consequence of these increased motions from internal stimulus. According to Law 5. Sect. IV. on Animal Causation.

From this great increase of irritative motions from internal stimulus, and the increased sensation introduced into the system in consequence; and secondly, from the increased sensitive motions in consequence of this additional quant.i.ty of sensation, so much sensorial power is expended, that the voluntary power becomes feebly exerted, and the irritation from the stimulus of external objects is less forcible; the external parts of the eye are not therefore voluntarily adapted to the distances of objects, whence the apparent motions of those objects either are seen double, or become too indistinct for the purpose of balancing the body, and vertigo is induced.

Hence we become acquainted with that very curious circ.u.mstance, why the drunken vertigo is attended with an increase of pleasure; for the irritative ideas and motions occasioned by internal stimulus, that were not attended to in our sober hours, are now just so much increased as to be succeeded by pleasurable sensation, in the same manner as the more violent motions of our organs are succeeded by painful sensation. And hence a greater quant.i.ty of pleasurable sensation is introduced into the const.i.tution; which is attended in some people with an increase of benevolence and good humour.

If the apparent motions of objects is much increased, as when we revolve on one foot, or are swung on a rope, the ideas of these apparent motions are also attended to, and are succeeded with pleasureable sensation, till they become familiar to us by frequent use. Hence children are at first delighted with these kinds of exercise, and with riding, and failing, and hence rocking young children inclines them to sleep. For though in the vertigo from intoxication the irritative ideas of the apparent motions of objects are indistinct from their decrease of energy: yet in the vertigo occasioned by rocking or swinging the irritative ideas of the apparent motions of objects are increased in energy, and hence they induce pleasure into the system, but are equally indistinct, and in consequence equally unfit to balance ourselves by. This addition of pleasure precludes desire or aversion, and in consequence the voluntary power is feebly exerted, and on this account rocking young children inclines them to sleep.

In what manner opium and wine act in relieving pain is another article, that well deserves our attention. There are many pains that originate from defect as well as from excess of stimulus; of these are those of the six appet.i.tes of hunger, thirst, l.u.s.t, the want of heat, of distention, and of fresh air. Thus if our cutaneous capillaries cease to act from the diminished stimulus of heat, when we are exposed to cold weather, or our stomach is uneasy for want of food; these are both pains from defect of stimulus, and in consequence opium, which stimulates all the moving system into increased action, must relieve them. But this is not the case in those pains, which arise from excess of stimulus, as in violent inflammations: in these the exhibition of opium is frequently injurious by increasing the action of the system already too great, as in inflammation of the bowels mortification is often produced by the stimulus of opium. Where, however, no such bad consequences follow; the stimulus of opium, by increasing all the motions of the system, expends so much of the sensorial power, that the actions of the whole system soon become feebler, and in consequence those which produced the pain and inflammation.

4. When intoxication proceeds a little further, the quant.i.ty of pleasurable sensation is so far increased, that all desire ceases, for there is no pain in the system to excite it. Hence the voluntary exertions are diminished, staggering and stammering succeed; and the trains of ideas become more and more inconsistent from this defect of voluntary exertion, as explained in the sections on sleep and reverie, whilst those pa.s.sions which are unmixed with volition are more vividly felt, and shewn with less reserve; hence pining love, or superst.i.tious fear, and the maudling tear dropped on the remembrance of the most trifling distress.

5. At length all these circ.u.mstances are increased; the quant.i.ty of pleasure introduced into the system by the increased irritative muscular motions of the whole sanguiferous, and glandular, and absorbent systems, becomes so great, that the organs of sense are more forcibly excited into action by this internal pleasurable sensation, than by the irritation from the stimulus of external objects. Hence the drunkard ceases to attend to external stimuli, and as volition is now also suspended, the trains of his ideas become totally inconsistent as in dreams, or delirium: and at length a stupor succeeds from the great exhaustion of sensorial power, which probably does not even admit of dreams, and in which, as in apoplexy, no motions continue but those from internal stimuli, from sensation, and from a.s.sociation.

6. In other people a paroxysm of drunkenness has another termination; the inebriate, as soon as he begins to be vertiginous, makes pale urine in great quant.i.ties and very frequently, and at length becomes sick, vomits repeatedly, or purges, or has profuse sweats, and a temporary fever ensues with a quick strong pulse. This in some hours is succeeded by sleep; but the unfortunate baccha.n.a.lian does not perfectly recover himself till about the same time of the succeeding day, when his course of inebriation began.

As shewn in Sect. XVII. 1. 7. on Catenation. The temporary fever with strong pulse is owing to the same cause as the glow on the skin mentioned in the third paragraph of this Section: the flow of urine and sickness arises from the whole system of irritative motions being thrown into confusion by their a.s.sociations with each other; as in sea-sickness, mentioned in Sect. XX. 4. on Vertigo; and which is more fully explained in Section XXIX. on Diabetes.

7. In this vertigo from internal causes we see objects double, as two candles instead of one, which is thus explained. Two lines drawn through the axes of our two eyes meet at the object we attend to: this angle of the optic axes increases or diminishes with the less or greater distances of objects. All objects before or behind the place where this angle is formed, appear double; as any one may observe by holding up a pen between his eyes and the candle; when he looks attentively at a spot on the pen, and carelessly at the candle, it will appear double; and the reverse when he looks attentively at the candle and carelessly at the pen; so that in this case the muscles of the eye, like those of the limbs, stagger and are disobedient to the expiring efforts of volition. Numerous objects are indeed sometimes seen by the inebriate, occasioned by the refractions made by the tears, which stand upon his eye-lids.

8. This vertigo also continues, when the inebriate lies in his bed, in the dark, or with his eyes closed; and this more powerfully than when he is erect, and in the light. For the irritative ideas of the apparent motions of objects are now excited by irritation from internal stimulus, or by a.s.sociation with other irritative motions; and the inebriate, like one in a dream, believes the objects of these irritative motions to be present, and feels himself vertiginous. I have observed in this situation, so long as my eyes and mind were intent upon a book, the sickness and vertigo ceased, and were renewed again the moment I discontinued this attention; as was explained in the preceding account of sea-sickness. Some drunken people have been known to become sober instantly from some accident, that has strongly excited their attention, as the pain of a broken bone, or the news of their house being on fire.

9. Sometimes the vertigo from internal causes, as from intoxication, or at the beginning of some fevers, becomes so universal, that the irritative motions which belong to other organs of sense are succeeded by sensation or attention, as well as those of the eye. The vertiginous noise in the ears has been explained in Section XX. on Vertigo. The taste of the saliva, which in general is not attended to, becomes perceptible, and the patients complain of a bad taste in their mouth.

The common smells of the surrounding air sometimes excite the attention of these patients, and bad smells are complained of, which to other people are imperceptible. The irritative motions that belong to the sense of pressure, or of touch, are attended to, and the patient conceives the bed to librate, and is fearful of falling out of it. The irritative motions belonging to the senses of distention, and of heat, like those above mentioned, become attended to at this time: hence we feel the pulsation of our arteries all over us, and complain of heat, or of cold, in parts of the body where there is no acc.u.mulation or diminution of actual heat. All which are to be explained, as in the last paragraph, by the irritative ideas belonging to the various senses being now excited by internal stimuli, or by their a.s.sociations with other irritative motions. And that the inebriate, like one in a dream, believes the external objects, which usually caused these irritative ideas, to be now present.

10. The diseases in consequence of frequent inebriety, or of daily taking much vinous spirit without inebriety, consist in the paralysis, which is liable to succeed violent stimulation. Organs, whose actions are a.s.sociated with others, are frequently more affected than the organ, which is stimulated into too violent action. See Sect. XXIV. 2. 8. Hence in drunken people it generally happens, that the secretory vessels of the liver become first paralytic, and a torpor with consequent gall-stones or schirrus of this viscus is induced with concomitant jaundice; otherwise it becomes inflamed in consequence of previous torpor, and this inflammation is frequently transferred to a more sensible part, which is a.s.sociated with it, and produces the gout, or the rosy eruption of the face, or some other leprous eruption on the head, or arms, or legs. Sometimes the stomach is first affected, and paralysis of the lacteal system is induced: whence a total abhorrence from flesh-food, and general emaciation. In others the lymphatic system is affected with paralysis, and dropsy is the consequence.

In some inebriates the torpor of the liver produces pain without apparent schirrus, or gall stones, or inflammation, or consequent gout, and in these epilepsy or insanity are often the consequence. All which will be more fully treated of in the course of the work.

I am well aware, that it is a common opinion, that the gout is as frequently owing to gluttony in eating, as to intemperance in drinking fermented or spirituous liquors. To this I answer, that I have seen no person afflicted with the gout, who has not drank freely of fermented liquor, as wine and water, or small beer; though as the disposition to all the diseases, which have originated from intoxication, is in some degree hereditary, a less quant.i.ty of spirituous potation will induce the gout in those, who inherit the disposition from their parents. To which I must add, that in young people the rheumatism is frequently mistaken for the gout.

Spice is seldom taken in such quant.i.ty as to do any material injury to the system, flesh-meats as well as vegetables are the natural diet of mankind; with these a glutton may be crammed up to the throat, and fed fat like a stalled ox; but he will not be diseased, unless he adds spirituous or fermented liquor to his food. This is well known in the distilleries, where the swine, which are fattened by the spirituous sediments of barrels, acquire diseased livers. But mark what happens to a man, who drinks a quart of wine or of ale, if he has not been habituated to it. He loses the use both of his limbs and of his understanding! He becomes a temporary idiot, and has a temporary stroke of the palsy! And though he slowly recovers after some hours, is it not reasonable to conclude, that a perpetual repet.i.tion of so powerful a poison must at length permanently affect him?--If a person accidentally becomes intoxicated by eating a few mushrooms of a peculiar kind, a general alarm is excited, and he is said to be poisoned, and emetics are exhibited; but so familiarised are we to the intoxication from vinous spirit, that it occasions laughter rather than alarm.

There is however considerable danger in too hastily discontinuing the use of so strong a stimulus, lest the torpor of the system, or paralysis, should sooner be induced by the omission than by the continuance of this habit, when unfortunately acquired. A golden rule for determining the quant.i.ty, which may with safety be discontinued, is delivered in Sect. XII.

7. 8.

11. Definition of drunkenness. Many of the irritative motions are much increased in energy by internal stimulation.

2. A great additional quant.i.ty of pleasurable sensation is occasioned by this increased exertion of the irritative motions. And many sensitive motions are produced in consequence of this increased sensation.

3. The a.s.sociated trains and tribes of motions, catenated with the increased irritative and sensitive motions, are disturbed, and proceed in confusion.

4. The faculty of volition is gradually impaired, whence proceeds the instability of locomotion, inaccuracy of perception, and inconsistency of ideas; and is at length totally suspended, and a temporary apoplexy succeeds.

SECT. XXII.

OF PROPENSITY TO MOTION, REPEt.i.tION AND IMITATION.

I. _Acc.u.mulation of sensorial power in hemiplagia, in sleep, in cold fit of fever, in the locomotive muscles, in the organs of sense.

Produces propensity to action._ II. _Repet.i.tion by three sensorial powers. In rhimes and alliterations, in music, dancing, architecture, landscape-painting, beauty._ III. 1. _Perception consists in imitation.

Four kinds of imitation._ 2. _Voluntary. Dogs taught to dance._ 3.

_Sensitive. Hence sympathy, and all our virtues. Contagious matter of venereal ulcers, of hydrophobia, of jail-fever, of small-pox, produced by imitation, and the s.e.x of the embryon._ 4. _Irritative imitation._ 5. _Imitations resolvable into a.s.sociations._

I. 1. In the hemiplagia, when the limbs on one side have lost their power of voluntary motion, the patient is for many days perpetually employed in moving those of the other. 2. When the voluntary power is suspended during sleep, there commences a ceaseless flow of sensitive motions, or ideas of imagination, which compose our dreams. 3. When in the cold fit of an intermittent fever some parts of the system have for a time continued torpid, and have thus expended less than their usual expenditure of sensorial power; a hot fit succeeds, with violent action of those vessels, which had previously been quiescent. All these are explained from an acc.u.mulation of sensorial power during the inactivity of some part of the system.

Besides the very great quant.i.ty of sensorial power perpetually produced and expended in moving the arterial, venous, and glandular systems, with the various organs or digestion, as described in Section x.x.xII. 3. 2. there is also a constant expenditure of it by the action of our locomotive muscles and organs of sense. Thus the thickness of the optic nerves, where they enter the eye, and the great expansion of the nerves of touch beneath the whole of the cuticle, evince the great consumption of sensorial power by these senses. And our perpetual muscular actions in the common offices of life, and in constantly preserving the perpendicularity of our bodies during the day, evince a considerable expenditure of the spirit of animation by our locomotive muscles. It follows, that if the exertion of these organs of sense and muscles be for a while intermitted, that some quant.i.ty of sensorial power must be acc.u.mulated, and a propensity to activity of some kind ensue from the increased excitability of the system.

Whence proceeds the irksomeness of a continued att.i.tude, and of an indolent life.

However small this hourly acc.u.mulation of the spirit of animation may be, it produces a propensity to some kind of action; but it nevertheless requires either desire or aversion, either pleasure or pain, or some external stimulus, or a previous link of a.s.sociation, to excite the system into activity; thus it frequently happens, when the mind and body are so unemployed as not to possess any of the three first kinds of stimuli, that the last takes place, and consumes the small but perpetual acc.u.mulation of sensorial power. Whence some indolent people repeat the same verse for hours together, or hum the same tune. Thus the poet:

Onward he trudged, not knowing what he sought, And whistled, as he went, for want of thought.

II. The repet.i.tions of motions may be at first produced either by volition, or by sensation, or by irritation, but they soon become easier to perform than any other kinds of action, because they soon become a.s.sociated together, according to Law the seventh, Section IV. on Animal Causation.

And because their frequency of repet.i.tion, if as much sensorial power be produced during every reiteration as is expended, adds to the facility of their production.

If a stimulus be repeated at uniform intervals of time, as described in Sect. XII. 3. 3. the action, whether of our muscles or organs of sense, is produced with still greater facility or energy; because the sensorial power of a.s.sociation, mentioned above, is combined with the sensorial power of irritation; that is, in common language, the acquired habit a.s.sists the power of the stimulus.

This not only obtains in the annual, lunar, and diurnal catenations of animal motions, as explained in Sect. x.x.xVI. which are thus performed with great facility and energy; but in every less circle of actions or ideas, as in the burthen of a song, or the reiterations of a dance. To the facility and distinctness, with which we hear sounds at repeated intervals, we owe the pleasure, which we receive from musical time, and from poetic time; as described in Botanic Garden, P. 2. Interlude 3. And to this the pleasure we receive from the rhimes and alliterations of modern verification; the source of which without this key would be difficult to discover. And to this likewise should be ascribed the beauty of the duplicature in the perfect tense of the Greek verbs, and of some Latin ones, as tango tetegi, mordeo momordi.

There is no variety of notes referable to the gamut in the beating of the drum, yet if it be performed in musical time, it is agreeable to our ears; and therefore this pleasurable sensation must be owing to the repet.i.tion of the divisions of the sounds at certain intervals of time, or musical bars.

Whether these times or bars are distinguished by a pause, or by an emphasis, or accent, certain it is, that this distinction is perpetually repeated; otherwise the ear could not determine instantly, whether the successions of sound were in common or in triple time. In common time there is a division between every two crotchets, or other notes of equivalent time; though the bar in written music is put after every fourth crotchet, or notes equivalent in time; in triple time the division or bar is after every three crotchets, or notes equivalent; so that in common time the repet.i.tion recurs more frequently than in triple time. The grave or heroic verses of the Greek and Latin poets are written in common time; the French heroic verses, and Mr. Anstie's humorous verses in his Bath Guide, are written in the same time as the Greek and Latin verses, but are one bar shorter. The English grave or heroic verses are measured by triple time, as Mr. Pope's translation of Homer.

But besides these little circles of musical time, there are the greater returning periods, and the still more distant choruses, which, like the rhimes at the ends of verses, owe their beauty to repet.i.tion; that is, to the facility and distinctness with which we perceive sounds, which we expect to perceive, or have perceived before; or in the language of this work, to the greater ease and energy with which our organ is excited by the combined sensorial powers of a.s.sociation and irritation, than by the latter singly.

A certain uniformity or repet.i.tion of parts enters the very composition of harmony. Thus two octaves nearest to each other in the scale commence their vibrations together after every second vibration of the higher one. And where the first, third, and fifth compose a chord the vibrations concur or coincide frequently, though less to than in the two octaves. It is probable that these chords bear some a.n.a.logy to a mixture of three alternate colours in the sun's spectrum separated by a prism.

The pleasure we receive from a melodious succession of notes referable to the gamut is derived from another source, viz. to the pandiculation or counteraction of antagonist fibres. See Botanic Garden, P. 2. Interlude 3.

If to these be added our early a.s.sociations of agreeable ideas with certain proportions of sound, I suppose, from these three sources springs all the delight of music, so celebrated by ancient authors, and so enthusiastically cultivated at present. See Sect. XVI. No. 10. on Instinct.

This kind of pleasure arising from repet.i.tion, that is from the facility and distinctness, with which we perceive and understand repeated sensations, enters into all the agreeable arts; and when it is carried to excess is termed formality. The art of dancing like that of music depends for a great part of the pleasure, it affords, on repet.i.tion; architecture, especially the Grecian, consists of one part being a repet.i.tion of another; and hence the beauty of the pyramidal outline in landscape-painting; where one side of the picture may be said in some measure to balance the other.