I have repeatedly seen very great benefit from giving wine to young children. The benefit has been particularly marked in some children struggling feebly through the period of dentition, and I can name some to whom I had made this prescription more than forty years ago, among whom not one has shown any peculiar fondness for wine in subsequent years. I exhort all young people in health not to adopt the practice of drinking wine. I deprecate everything which shall tend to intemperance, and I believe that many men suffer from the use of wine and spirits, even in a moderate way. But I love to tell the truth, even when it is unfashionable. I believe that very many persons are benefited by the juice of the grape, and I choose to say so. Moreover, I believe that persons disposed to intemperance are not to be restrained from indulging their vicious propensity, by the abstinence of their more prudent neighbors." *

Professor Gairdner, of Edinburgh-while wholly opposing the theory of retarding the metamorphosis of tissue as a desirable end, and while admitting that to the perfect ideal man, living in the enjoyment of all natural and wholesome vital stimuli, amid perfect hygienic conditions, such liquors are probably worse than superfluous-declares his desire to leave all the physiological abstractions,

*Letters to a Young Physician just entering upon Practice, by Dr. James Jackson, M. D., LL.D., Professor Emeritus of the Theory and Practice of Physic in the University of Cambridge, late Physician Massachusetts General Hospital, Honorary Member of the Medico-Chirurgical Society of London, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Medicine at Paris, &c., &c., &c.

and to take his stand on the great broad series of recognized facts, which prove their relieving, reviving and supporting power under difficulties and in emergencies; claiming the right of reason to discriminate between their use and abuse. In that spirit he quotes in his work on "Clinical Medicine " this paragraph, from the "Letters to a Young Physician," calling it "the whole matter in a nutshell."

Not content with my own unlearned reflections, nor even to leave the matter with Dr. Anstie, I called the subject as it is presented by Lallemand, to the attention of Dr. James C. White, the learned assistant-professor of chemistry in Harvard College. The report made by that gentleman, confirms the belief, in which Anstie had also concurred, that some alcohol is eliminated unchanged through the channels indicated by Lallemand and his friends; thus establishing an error in the previously held theory that, with the exception of a small amount which escaped by the lungs during expiration, this substance was entirely consumed within the organism. But he affirms that these experiments in no way prove that alcohol is eliminated in totality from the system; for the experiments on which that conclusion is based, furnish the strongest possible evidence of its unwarrantableness. The very experi

ments on which alone they rest the conclusion that all which is taken into the animal economy escapes again unchanged, fail to discover any but a very small percentage discharged through the various channels of elimination. Yet the assertion is, that all has been thus eliminated; while if anything is proved at all, it is proved that alcohol is nearly all consumed within the organism, and that a very small percentage escapes unchanged. But it should be remembered that an excessive quantity of either salt or sugar being taken into the system, the excess is disposed of in the same way.

Of the proposition that "alcohol is never transformed, never destroyed" in the organism, Dr. White reports thus:

"Former investigators had come to the conclusion that alcohol was converted into aldehyde and acetic acid, progressive products of oxygenation of alcohol, which in turn underwent further transformation, and that it finally escaped as carbonic acid and water. Lallemand, &c., examined the blood, after the use of alcohol, and failed to find either aldehyde or acetic acid, and on this negative evidence alone is based the sweeping conclusion. Even if we admit the correctness and fairness of their results which were obtained by experiments performed at too early a period to be completely satisfactory, and which are met by those of Bouchardet, they in no way invalidate the theory of the transformation of alcohol in the organism. We know too little of the many

and complex changes which organic substances undergo within the economy, to speak in such positive terms. Those conclusions may or may not be adopted as to the conversion of alcohol into aldehyde and acetic acid; they certainly in no way settle the question as to its transformation or destruction in the system."

But, besides these proofs, you have in evidence before you the testimony of Dr. White in person, of Dr. Edward H. Clarke, Professor of Materia Medica, of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Professor of Anatomy and Physiology, of Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, Professor of Surgery, of Dr. J. B. S. Jackson, Professor of Morbid Anatomy and Pathology, and of Dr. D. Humphreys Storer, Professor of Obstetrics, (all in the Medical School of Harvard College;) of Dr. Charles T. Jackson and Professor E. N. Horsford, both eminent in chemistry and other branches of natural science. Those gentlemen constitute an array of experts in the sciences of chemistry, physiology and medicine, who are recognized as authority in the other hemisphere, as well as in our own. With their testimony before the Committee, forming a part of the printed record of its investigations, I need only allude to it without recital. I hold, that the opinions of these gentlemen, aided also by that of Pro

fessor Agassiz, who testified to the fact of the use of wine, with manifestly happy effects, in the actual alimentation of European peoples, have for all the purposes of legislative inquiry established the dietetic uses of alcoholic beverages, when employed in moderation, and properly combined in the construction of diet. Their opinions again are re-inforced by the recent physiological experiments tried with ingenious variety in his own person, by Dr. Hammond, lately surgeon-general of the army of the United States, and the conclusions arrived at by that eminent physiologist.*

It does not follow, that because an old man, or an ill-fed man, or an overtasked man, or an invalid, may find alcoholic beverages useful, they are not useless or hurtful to others. It does not follow, that because they are good for some at sometimes, they are good for all or at all times. Nor, on the other hand, does it follow, because in their excess and misapplication, they are indescribably bad, that, "with bell, book and candle," they should be solemnly cursed by the General Court.

This review of the assumption that, because alcohol taken in excess is injurious, it is therefore

* See Hammond's "Physiological Memoirs," Philadelphia, 1863.