The system being raised to a state of feverish excitement, and its healthy balance disturbed, its exhausted excitability is not restored. The individual awakes, but finds himself fatigued rather than invigorated. His muscles are relaxed, his senses obtuse, his intellect impaired, and his whole system disordered; and it is not till he is again under the influence of food and stimulus that he is fit for the occupations of life. And thus he loses the benefits of this wise provision of repose, designed for his own preservation.
Nothing, probably, tends more powerfully to produce premature old age, than disturbed and unrefreshing sleep.
It is also true, that artificial stimulus, in whatever way applied, tends constantly to exhaust the principle of excitability of the system, and this in proportion to its intensity, and the freedom with which it is applied.
But there is still another principle on which the use of ardent spirit predisposes the drunkard to disease and death. It acts on the blood, impairs its vitality, deprives it of its red color, and thereby renders it unfit to stimulate the heart and other organs through which it circulates; unfit, also, to supply the materials for the different secretions, and to renovate the different tissues of the body, as well as to sustain the energy of the brain--offices which it can perform only while it retains the vermilion color, and other arterial properties. The blood of the drunkard is several shades darker in its color than that of temperate persons, and also coagulates less readily and firmly, and is loaded with serum; appearances which indicate that it has exchanged its arterial properties for those of the venous blood. This is the cause of the livid complexion of the inebriate, which so strongly marks him in the advanced stage of intemperance. Hence, too, all the functions of his body are sluggish, irregular, and the whole system loses its tone and its energy. If ardent spirit, when taken into the system, exhausts the vital principle of the solids, it destroys the vital principle of the blood also; and if taken in large quantities, produces sudden death; in which case the blood, as in death produced by lightning, by opium, or by violent and long continued exertion, does not coagulate.