for its presence. Dr. Lees, of England, maintains that if alcohol does undergo such transformation, there would undoubtedly be aldehyde in the blood. As this is never found it creates a strong presumption that no such change takes place. "No ashes, no fire! No shells, no eggs! Dr. Anstie and others," he says, "quietly ignore this important fact."

Dr. Henry Munroe, F. L. S., Lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence and Histology at the Hull and East Riding School of Medicine, etc., who wrote in 1865, speaking of the French physicians and chemists, says:

"These physiologists completely vindicate the old definitions of food and poison given by temperance teachers. They show most lucidly, for example, that moderate excitement is simply a lower degree of the same kind of abnormal stimulation which is known as inebriation, and that alcohol never gives force, but merely wastes it."

Proceeding to give the conclusions to which these chemists, Dr. Lees, who also wrote in 1865, and others, have arrived, he says:

"1. Alcohol is not food.

"2. Alcohol is a special modifier of the nervous system. It acts, in a feeble dose, as an excitant; in a larger, as a stupefiant.

"3. Alcohol is never transformed, never destroyed, in the organism.

"4. Alcohol accumulates by a sort of elective affinity in the brain and in the liver.

"5. Alcohol is eliminated from the organism in totality and in nature. The channels of elimination are, the lungs, the skin, and above all, the kidneys.

"6. Alcohol has a pathogenetic influence, material and direct, upon the development of many functional disturbances and organic alterations of brain, liver and kidneys.

"7. Spirituous drinks owe to the alcohol they contain their common properties and the specialty of their effects. The use of fermented and distilled liquids is often (always?) noxious; it should always be restrained; it should never be tolerated save in exceptional circumstances."

During the last few years, the "British Medical Journal" has liberally opened its pages for the discussion of the question, "Is alcohol food or physic?" The distinguished editor, Dr. Markham, thus sums up the discussion, as far as it goes:

"We have no wish hastily to speak on this important matter, but we are in conscience bound boldly to declare the logical and inevitable conclusions, as they seem to us, to which a scientific view of the subject forces us."

The grand practical conclusions are these:

"1. That alcohol is not food; and that, being simply a stimulant of the nervous system, its use is hurtful to the body of a healthy man.

"2. That if its imbibition be of service, it is so only to man in an abnormal condition; and that our duty, as men

of medicine, is to endeavor to define what those particular abnormal states are in which alcohol is serviceable.

"3. That ordinary social indulgence in alcoholic drinks for society's sake, is, medically speaking, a very unphysiological and prejudicial proceeding."

I have dwelt upon this subject because of the importance that has been given to it in this investigation. The latest authorities, except Prof. Horsford, of our neighboring University, and Dr. Charles T. Jackson, whose opinions upon this subject wait to be confirmed, if they are not already overthrown, are against the proposition that alcohol is transformed in the human economy. No matter how many testimonies to the contrary of twenty or even ten years ago. They cannot be conversant with the experiments upon which the true doctrine rests. Nor does Prof. Dalton, I think, countenance the error.

The question, then, comes back to us: Are alcoholic preparations food? Are they respiratory food? Are they assimilative? Do physiological experiments indicate transformation of alcohol in any way? I think not. But there remains the fact that a certain Italian nobleman did live on a certain amount of bread and wine for a very long period. It is urged, therefore, that wine is nutritious. But the

alcohol of the wine is not nutritious. It is the body of the grape juice that is nutritious. Dr. Munroe distinctly says, whatever there may be of nutrition in the lighter alcoholic drinks, it could be better supplied, in all normal conditions, by solid food itself. But, gentlemen, I feel that it will be time enough to resort to this at least questionable kind of food, when we find ourselves on short allowance of the more reasonable food. A physician, in a recent letter, alluding to the testimony concerning the individual abroad so many times seen intoxicated, expressed the opinion that it must have been the Wandering Jew become dissipated. Was he simply over-fed? What shall be said of the delirium tremens? What shall be said of the intoxication of the hundred persons, mostly young men, who, Deacon Stoddard testified, were seen, some years ago, in the space of two hours, on a Saturday night, between twelve and two o'clock, between Washington and Cambridge Streets? Are these states of surfeit from alcoholic food?

On the general inutility of alcoholic beverages, Carpenter is probably the highest authority we now have. A physician of eminence, a Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the Geological Society,

Examiner in Physiology in the University of London, and Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in University College, his reputation had been established on both sides of the Atlantic, by his most valuable works on Human Physiology, and by various other writings. When it became known that Dr. Carpenter was one of the fifteen competitors for a prize of one hundred guineas for the "best essay on the use of alcoholic liquors in health and disease," the highest expectations were cherished in regard to his success. The prize was awarded to him by a committee no less distinguished than Dr. John Forbes, F. R. S., Physician to the Queen's Household, Prince Albert, and the Duke of Cambridge; Dr. G. L. Roupell, F. R. S., Physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital; and Dr. W. A. Guy, M. B., Cantab., Professor of Forensic Medicine, King's College, London. No sooner did the work appear than it was republished in this city, under the auspices of the late distinguished Dr. John C. Warren, President of the Massachusetts Temperance Society. In this work, making a volume of about 250 pages, Dr. Carpenter maintains:

"That the capacity of the healthy human system to sustain as much bodily or mental labor as it can be legitimately