boys and men visiting the confectioners' shops." In commenting on the above, Dr. Lees says, I have come to the conclusion that the belief in alcohol as food or as medicine, is a superstition, one and indivisible, and I venture to affirm, after thirty years of close observation and experience, that unless the delusion be dispelled, it will stand as a most powerful obstacle in the path of practical reform and permanent progress. I am ready to concede that so long as the belief remains, however latent, that alcohol has the capacity to strengthen, so long will the world continue to resort to such a pleasure inspiring agent of restoration from weakness and low spirits. Doubtless, that which gives strength must be good, and were the doctor's oft repeated and agreeable prescription anything but a fabie and a fallacy, I should be the last person to

Will anyone calculate how many out of our fifty millions of people, go to their beds perfectly sober every night in the year?

object to their practice. But alcohol has no such power for food; it neither is food, nor can help in the remotest degree to the deposit and assimilation of food. And let men call it what they please-stimulant, tonic, narcotic-everything by turns, and nothing long-unless it can become assimilated by the normal blood-the natural and exclusive source of power-its DIETETIC USE must remain a delusion, an imposture and a snare. Even in disease it can only contribute to aggravate and perpetuate the natural waste of constitutional vitality, which is displaying itself in the increased complexity of disease, and the progress of idiotcy and insanity, and which is apparent enough even to the more intellectual conductors of the public press in their lucid intervals.

Dr. Pye Smith more than thirty years ago the prescription of some medical men,

said "

Are men fit to make laws, fit to pass judgment, who are so drunk they can scarcely command their feet, much less their speech?

too careless of physical and moral results, had given great impulse to spirit drinking, and had caused an estimate to be attached to spiritous liquors beyond their value as a medicinal drug. A few weeks ago I revisited a little town after an interval of several years, and on inquiring after an old teetotaler of thirty years standing-the postmaster in the place the answer was, "For a trifling ailment the doctor insisted that he should drink alcoholics; he did, and never gave up until he had killed himself."

Sir Henry Holland, in his medical notes, thus speaks of wine: "We have not less assurance that it is in numerous other cases habitually injurious in relation both to the digestive organs, and to the functions of the brain. The medical practitioner is greatly too indulgent on this point to the weakness of those with whom he deals."

The ocean is made of drops. So is the great whirlpool of poverty made by a multitude of drinks, a drɛm

at a time.

Mr. Maguire, in his "Life of Father Matthew" says, "Father Matthew, in the very prime of his work, when I first induced him to visit England, often and bitterly condemned the reckless prescription of whiskey as causing relapses amongst his converts.

The Rev. Franklin Spencer, L. D. D., once said: "It is with much sorrow I observe that MEDICAL MEN ARE THE GREAT PROMOTERS OF

DRUNKENNESS in this land; they are always recommending strong ales, porter, and brandy to invalids.'

The Rev. J. H. Irwin says: "The number of men, in other respects intelligent, who have been turned out of the good way. by the doctors, is astounding. I have had to resist steadfast in the faith that under no conceivable circumstances is alcohol indispensable, or I too, should long ago have

If every man will do the little he can with the man who is always buttoned up under his vest, we shall soon have better times everywhere and a restricted appetite for strong drink

gone after my brethren in the ministry, who were once as enthusiastic teetotalers as myself. I have been again and again told, that in my case alcohol was NECESSARY-but I have lived without it."

At the Temperance convention held in Saratoga in which forty-two states were represented, a report was adopted which contained the following statement:

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In view of the evil effects often known to follow the use of alcoholic medicines, this convention respectfully but earnestly requests all engaged in this honored and influential profession, to substitute other articles in the place of alcohol, so far as in their judgment it can be wisely done.

The venerable E. C. Delavan, in commenting on this report, said that "the Physicians, by their practice of prescribing alcoholics,

Look at the masses, the wronged victims of the license law! It should be a dreaded thought to those engaged in the vending of strong drink, to contemplate the human wrecks they have created.