That dyscrasial condition induced by the abuse of alcoholic drinks, and especially of gin, occurs under two forms, differing in the course which they run - in other words, there is a chronic and also an acute drunkard's dyscrasis.

The first, namely, the chronic crasis, manifests itself as plethora, with a remarkably dark coloration, a thickness and a simultaneous fattiness of the blood. This occasions, and at the same time accounts for, the condition in which we find the solids.

The pigmented appearance of the skin, the excessive, and, at the same time, anomalous fat-formation, and blennorrhcese, are all characteristic of the crasis. The corpses of inveterate dram-drinkers present very marked appearances. The skin is tinged of a dingy brown, and this is coupled with the fact, that not unfrequently parts naturally rich in pigment - the scrotum, for example, become deprived of it. At the same time the skin is of a soft, unctuous feel, like that of the negro, and its epidermis layer is thin. Subjacent to the skin, and also in the mesentery and the omenta is deposited fat, in an excess if not absolute, at least relative to the state in which we find the muscles, and possessing a peculiar character not unlike that of mutton suet. Together with this, the muscle-flesh appears to have lost in volume, and to have become pallid. The fat-formation steals into the muscles in the shape of fatty conversion. The liver has undergone fatty degeneration. Even in the bones the fat formation has gained ground at the expense of the bony texture.

All the mucous membranes, but especially the bronchial and intestinal, are affected with chronic thickenrng and with blennorrhoea, the chronic gastric catarrh [gastric irritation] being particularly marked. A similar state of hypertrophy presents itself in the habitually congested cerebral membranes, in the form of dulness, thickening, chronic oedema.

The brain is affected with an atrophy like that met with in the aged, with or without considerable dilatation of, and serous effusion into, the ventricles.

The blood appears dark-colored, grumous, defibrinated, viscid-unctuous to the touch, often intermingled with fat in large quantity, as fat-drops. In rare instances the disease occasions a chyle-like opacity of the plasma - milky blood.

The chronic drunkard's crasis often undergoes conversion to fibrin-crases of various kinds. Amongst these are inflammations with fibrin-products, even tubercle. Pneumonia is a very frequent and very fatal disease with drunkards - pneumonia running an acute course, and possessing an eminently croupous character. Chronic hepatitis, determining organizable products, and leading eventually to liver-cirrhosis [granulation], is a very common termination.

In drunkards tuberculosis runs an eminently chronic course. The deposition of tubercle is for the most part inconsiderable; the granulations are generally of a dingy, or a greenish-gray, and do not soften as such. The yellow tubercle and resulting phthisis are more rare.

The natural issue of the drunkard's crasis is in eventual hydremia - in dropsy - which assumes a local form, especially that of ascites, the more speedily, the earlier heart-disease or liver-cirrhosis becomes established.

The acute crasis has a marked resemblance with the exanthematous, and with the crasis in nervous affections. The liquefaction with discoloration of the blood and, as a consequence thereof, the tendency to transudation of blood-serum, are for the most part more developed. The fat is wont to separate from the blood in the form of largish drops.

The corpses present extensive, very saturated death-patches; evanescent rigor of the dark red muscles; congestion of the cerebral membranes, and still more of the lungs, especially as hypostasis; scattered patches of stasis in the intestinal mucous membrane, etc. The paren-chymata are lax; those affected with hyperaemia, imbibed with a colored blood-serum. In the cavities of the serous membranes - more especially of the pleura - are dingy-red, serous [spurious hemorrhagic] effusions. The corpses emit a peculiar sweetish smell, and pass rapidly into decomposition under gas development.

The inflammatory stases developed during the progress of this crasis are, for the most part,'hypostatic pneumoniae. They determine a product dark-colored from adherent haematin, lax, soft, incompetent to hepatize the lung-texture.

This crasis never becomes developed in aged persons broken down by repeated attacks of delirium tremens, but invariably in drunkards in the early years of manhood, who are endowed with a powerful muscular system. It runs a very rapid course, leading, in a very few days to decomposition.

We are aware of no instance of this crasis passing into the fibrinous crasis, or into pyaemia. On the other hand, it often becomes exalted into decomposition, and not unfrequently issues in softening of the stomach.

It is not improbable that this crasis is, in the majority of cases, due to injury sustained by the brain during a violent or protracted fit of intoxication, and that it ought rather to have found a place in the preceding chapter. It is not in aged drunkards, with an atrophied brain, that it occurs, but in younger individuals with a brain of normal development, keenly sentient of congestion, and of an alcoholized condition of the blood.