372Section IV.Magnan and
Fillassier.
These clinical facts, already so eloquent of themselves, are corroborated by
physiological experiment (i.) The intoxication from alcohol comes to extend
over a gradually longer period, and a new element enters; the condition of the
subject is modified (2). In the end, we see no longer merely functional
troubles, transient disturbances which leave after them only a
slight malaise; a more profound action has set in; the nutrition is altered in
every organ, every system, every tissue. The alcoholic intoxication has
become chronic; his memory weakened, his judgment impaired, his imagina
tion ruined, his association of ideas reduced, his moral sense lowered,
apathetic, indifferent, and blunted, the victim is handed over defenceless to
the caprice of his instinctive appetites. From the physical point of view,
presently medullary mischief becomes prominent; pins-and-needles, numb
ness, formication, abnormal sensations of cold and heat, cramps, super
ficial or deep hyperassthesia, cutaneous or muscular ansesthesia, weakness,
trembling of the legs and arms, excretory paresis; in a word, all the
phenomena which attach to diffuse myelitis, to which Hallopeau has drawn
attention (3). Soon appear little apoplectic or epileptiform strokes, accom
panied perhaps by a transient paresis of arm or leg, perhaps with a thickness
and embarassment of speech, which may resemble word-hesitation; and
sometimes one sees inequality of the pupils. Some of them look like
general paralytics, but when the acute symptoms due to the alcoholic bout
have faded, there reappears the common chronic alcoholic; the others,
less in number, pass on into general paralysis (4). Sometimes also, as a
result of too copious libations, of a traumatism, of an infectious disease,
or indeed any other cause, there bursts! upon the chronic alcoholic an attack
of delirium tremens.
Of these various forms of simple alcoholic intoxication we have prepared
the following table :—
We may note that the patients for alcoholic delirium show a diminution,
while the chronic alcoholics are on the increase. We have already indicated
that to-day the first class of these are admitted to hospital; but besides this,
clinical progress now enables us better to pick out, among the noisy com
pany of alcoholic delirium, the manifestations of chronic alcoholism; and
these are very frequent.
From the racial point of view, this poisoned population is not, unfor
tunately, sterile, and, as is often repeated, “ The drunkard begets nothing
that is any good.” Bourneville has given to this effect statistics which
have become classical (5).
Among 3,271 children on his list, this author noted that in 1,156 cases
the father had been an excessive drinker, in 100 excess was attributed to
(1) Magnan—Rapport sur le service centrale, 1906.
(2) Magnan—De VAlcoolisme.
(3) Hallopeau—General Archives of Medicine.
(4) Magnan—The -place of alcoholism in the etiology of general paralysis.
Congress of Lyons, 1891.
(5) Bourneville—Clinical and therapeutic researches on hysteria, epilepsy,
and idiotism.
