desire to confine myself more narrowly to my precise subject.

The problem of legislation, as I have before said, concerns itself only with the sale of intoxicants as ordinary beverages. That (to put it mildly, and yet for our purpose effectively,) there is no occasion for the State to make any provision for this on sanitary grounds is the general judgment of the medical profession. Indeed, I suppose that but few thoughtful persons would dissent from the negative part of this statement in the Quarterly Review, of England (Oct., 1875):

"The common-sense and experience of educated minds bear witness that only a comparatively small number-the feeble and the sick-actually require stimulating drinks."

Whether the feeble and the sick do require these, and if at all, what and when, are questions to be settled by physicians and not by legislators; and if prescribed, they are to be procured as medicines and not as drams.

As to the general inutility of these beverages, we are not left without an impressive mass of medical testimony, and we propose to introduce it simply in masses.

Dr. Carpenter, of England, the distinguished physiologist and scientist, appends to his essay

"On the Use of Alcoholic Liquors," the following certificate, which he says had been signed by "upwards of two thousand physicians in all grades and degrees, from the court physicians and leading metropolitan surgeons to the humble country practitioner: "

"We, the undersigned, are of opinion

"1. That a very large proportion of human misery, including poverty, disease, and crime, is induced by the use of alcoholic or fermented liquors as beverages.

"2. That the most perfect health is compatible with total abstinence from all such intoxicating beverages, whether in the form of ardent spirits or as wine, beer, ale, porter, cider, etc.

"3. That persons accustomed to such drinks may, with the most perfect safety, discontinue them entirely, either at once or gradually after a short time.

"4. That total and universal abstinence from alcoholic beverages of all sorts would greatly contribute to the health, the prosperity, and happiness of the human race."

In Feb., 1873, ninety-six physicians of Montreal, Canada, twenty-four of whom were professors or demonstrators in the medical schools there situate, united in a similar declaration; averring "that total abstinence from intoxicating liquors, whether fermented or distilled, is consistent with, and conducive to, the highest degree of physical and mental health

and vigor;" and "that abstinence from intoxi cating liquors would greatly promote the health, morality, and happiness of the people."

The National Medical Association of the United States, at their convention at Detroit in June, 1874, which was attended by over four hundred physicians, resolved:

"That in view of the alarming prevalence and ill effects of intemperance, with which none are so familiar as members of the medical profession, and which have called forth from English physicians the voice of warning to the people of Great Britain concerning the use of alcoholic beverages, we, as members of the medical profession of the United States, unite in the declaration that we believe that alcohol should be classed with other powerful drugs; that when prescribed medicinally, it should be done with conscientious caution and a sense of great responsibility."

"That we would welcome any change in public sentiment that would confine the use of intoxicating liquors to the uses of science, art, and medicine."

And lately, under the lead of Dr. Willard Parker, one hundred and twenty-four physicians of New York city and vicinity, including among them such men as Alonzo Clark, Prof. E. R. Peaslee, Prof. Alfred C. Post, Dr. Edward Delafield; John M. Cuyler, Medical Director in the United States Army; Stephen Smith, President, and Elisha Harris, Secretary, of the Amer

ican Health Association, declared their views in almost the same language as above cited, closing thus:

"We would welcome any judicious and effective legislation, State and national, which should seek to confine the traffic in alcohol to the legitimate purposes of medical and other sciences, art, and mechanism."

And as the last voice of the medical profession, I give the report of the Section on Medicine in the International Medical Congress, held at Philadelphia in September last (1876), on the paper of Dr. Hunt on "Alcohol in its therapeutic relations as a food and a medicine:

"First. Alcohol is not shown to have a definite food-value by any of the usual methods of chemical analysis or physiological investigation.

"Second. Its use as a medicine is chiefly as a cardiac stimulant, and often admits of substitution.

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Third. As a medicine it is not well fitted for selfprescription by the laity, and the medical profession is not accountable for such administration or for the enormous evils resulting therefrom.

"Fourth. The purity of alcoholic liquors is, in general, not as well-assured as that of articles used for medicine should be. The various mixtures when used as medicine should have definite and known composition, and should not be interchanged promiscuously."

CHAPTER X.

A CASE FOR INTERVENTION.

"There are some cases in which the power of injuring may be taken away by excluding what Tacitus calls irritamenta malorum, as the prohibition of the sale and fabrication of dies for coining, of poisonous drugs, of concealed arms, of dice, and other instruments of prohibited games."-BENTHAM.

HERE let us pause a moment for retrospection. We have seen that intemperance antedates the very birth of its innocent victim with curses; that it is the enemy of the human race itself by giving us humanity under enfeebled, diseased, and depraved conditions; that it follows as the most prolific source of disease and vice, culminating so frequently in so frequently in insanity, and still more frequently in premature death, infecting the whole social atmosphere with physical and moral malaria; that it wastes our resources, increases our taxes, and diminishes our productive capacity; that it degrades labor and destroys home; that it fills our almshouses with paupers and our prisons with criminals; and that it is the strongest antagonist of every educating agency which tends to make good citizens, and the unfailing ally of every vice that