mations in the ailmentary tractus, and finally through disturbances of and interference with the normal total physiological economy. (Landois Text-Book of Physiology, Wien & Leipzig, 5th Edition, p. 445.)

Many other poisons, such as chloroform, antipyrine, antifebrine, phenacetine, digitalis and quinine diminish the temperature; alcohol does the same. The simultaneous internal administration of alcohol, when using cold bath, either of plain water, or better, salt water, helps a decrease of high temperature.

In regard to digestion, small quantities increase the secretion of the gastric juice; large doses destroy the secretion. Artificial digestion is disturbed a little by 2 per cent. of alcohol, more by 10 per cent., retarded by 20 per cent. and entirely destroyed by still larger quantities. These researches would correspond with many a man's experience. If you drink a glass of beer before dinner your appetite is all right; if you drink a glass of wine you have lost your appetite. I don't know so much in regard to brandy.

I shall leave here the general question of alcohol and turn our attention to the special use of alcohol in the practice of medicine.

I know very well that many physicians feel a horror of using alcohol. Maybe they had found bad experiences in the use of alcohol in their practice; on the other side they may see a religious duty or humanitarian duty in not administering it.

In regard to religion, no Christian, no Jew, can find an objection to the use of alcohol; I mean to the moderate and temperate use of alcohol; neither the iBble nor the gospel will carry his objections, if he makes them.

We shall, therefore, speak only from the standpoint of the physician. Many prominent and celebrated lights on the medical sky condemn alcohol; many prominent and celebrated stars do not condemn it. Who are right? Both parties are. The one doctor who couldn't find a benefit from the use of alcohol in the treatment of diseases, and rather found injury, he must regard it as his duty not to use it.

The other doctor who found, in many instances in the use of alcohol, good effects, has the right to use it.

I have never seen a case where the discriminate use of alcohol in treating an acute disease an alcohol habit originated in an otherwise healthy individual, as you will not bring about a morphine habit by its use in the right place and at the right time.

I admit that a person whose heart is strong and whose pulse is good needs no alcohol in acute diseases. But if the

heart fails and weakens. many a doctor gives stimulants of any and every kind. I should say many a doctor may have whipped, in many instances, a heart to death by the indiscriminate use of strychnine and atropia; I would rather prefer to give the heart cool and rest and alcohol, or another kind of alcohol, namely, ether and camphor. (But behold, every good drug can be converted to a nuisance and danger. To-day, alcohol; to-morrow, morphine; the next day camphor. There are already reports that the camphor injections are the newest fad with many ladies in cities; other ladies inject perfumes. Do they use these perfumed liquids on account of the perfume or for the alcohol's sake?)

I don't believe that alcohol is an absolute necessity in treatment of typhoid fever, but if the doctor will find alcohol necessary and of benefit, who would have the right to see bad practice in it, if he does use alcohol?

What we say of typhoid fever is likewise true of pneumonia and all the other infectious diseases.

We must not forget that it seems that individuals suffering from these very same infectious diseases are able to stand more alcohol than healthy persons. If I can save a woman in a case of puerperal sepsis by giving, within seven days, two quarts of French brandy and ten bottles of sherry, as Professor Runge of the University of Goettingen, Germany, does, or as other physicians do, possible with a little less or more, I shall not hesitate to do so. Runge, of course, does not regard alcohol as a specific against puerperal fever, but he believes to be able to increase the resistance of the organism against the invading infection. It is partly an over-exertion of an attempt of repulsing the infection and of eliminating the toxic substances resulting from the infection.

As a dietetic I found very often a glass of beer of great value, and more often I saw one glass of beer take the place of a narcotic or hypnotic. Good beer, made of barley and hops, contains lupulin that acts as a hypnotic, and surely I do prefer it to opium, bromides and chloral.

Professor Dr. Rossbach says: "Beer can be taken by those suffering from cerebral effects of wine."

Professor Dr. Bartholow: "Puerperal mania, delirium tremens and acute maniacal delirium, when these symptoms coexist with a condition of adynamia, are greatly benefitted by the use of beer. The effect of this remedy is to arouse the appetite, to quiet delirium and to produce sleep."

Dr. L. Emmet Holt (The Diseases of Infancy and Childhood, p. 48) writes: "In spite of the many statements to the con

trary, alcoholic stimulants are well tolerated even by very young infants. Proportionately larger doses of alcohol than of most drugs may be administered to infants; still, stimulants, and alcohol in particular, are no doubt very greatly abused in the hands of many practitioners.

"Alcoholic stimulants are contra-indicated in all acute febrile processes where there is high temperature, dry skin, flushed face and a full, strong pulse. In such conditions they are often injurious.

"The method of administering stimulants is of no little importance. Brandy and whisky are in the most cases to be preferred to the wines, but not always. Champagne may be substi tuted when spirits are not well borne by the stomach. For infants under one year old, brandy should be diluted with at least eight parts of water. It is commonly given in too concentrated a form. Altogether the best methods of administration is to determine the amount to be given in every twelve hours, have it diluted sufficiently, and then administer a small dose at short intervals. In this way vomiting is rarely produced. The addition of brandy to the water required by the thirst makes it less likely to disturb the stomach.

"The quantity of alcohol will depend very much upon circumstances. An infant one year old, for whom alcoholic stimulants are needed at all, should be given, to begin with, half an ounce of whisky or brandy during twenty-four hours, the quantity being increased for a short period to an ounce and a half, or in bad cases even to two ounces; but it is rarely, if ever, advisable to go beyond this limit.

"In children four years old, double the amount may be employed in the corresponding conditions. Larger quantities than those mentioned are of doubtful advantage. Alcohol,when used injudiciously, is capable of doing much harm."

We consider, in general, milk not only as a dietetic, but in many diseases we must regard it as a remedy-and it is so. But, unfortunately, we find so many patients who cannot take milk for a length of time; they find milk even disgusting after a while. I have found no better remedy for correcting the flavor and taste than one teaspoonful of the best brandy or whisky to a cup of milk. In other cases, again, a mixture of purest whisky with a yolk of an egg and a fruit syrup, given as a medicine proper by tablespoonfuls. Here we have medicine combined with a nourishment. But always and ever, best and purest whisky. Rather than nauseous, adulterated liquor, prepared of bad essences and coloring matters, such as nux vomica, colchicum, wormwood, aloes, grains of cockles (fish berries), cant

haridin, sulphuric acid, pepper and other acrid spices, and for coloring aniline dyes, such as fuchsin, impure, with arsenic. mixed with water and fruit juices. Milk in connection with alcohol may be made of the milk itself. Above I mentioned that Russian and Asiatic tribes make koomyss of mare's milk. A similar preparation is kephyr. The latter contains about 1 per cent. of alcohol, and we may easily make it like koomyss of cow's milk in our own household. and it is often beneficial in catarrhal affection of the alimentary system.

Some time ago I read what an immune tells of yellow fever experiences, and about recollections of the great plague year, 1878, when thousands died. I let him speak his own words:

"Once I sat up all night with a merchant, a big, husky fellow, who in health weighed over 200 pounds. He had wasted to a skeleton. The fever was gone and the man was nearly so, for his pulse had fallen to 52. He had not slept a wink, he told me, for three days and nights. The doctor brought in a fourounce vial filled with bromide of potash and chloral and instructed me to give the sick man two tablespoonfuls every hour till he should fall asleep.

"What have they been feeding you on?' I asked him, as soon as the doctor had gone. 'Champagne,' he whispered, disgustedly. They've been poking a spoonful of the stuff, mixed with cracked ice, down my throat every hour for the last four days.'

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"They have been starving you to death,' I told him. 'Now I am here to give you whatever you want. What shall it be first?'

"His eye looked thirstily toward a cupboard that stood in the corner of the room.

"I fished out a square black bottle from its hiding place and made my friend a reasonably weak toddy. He drank it without any coaxing, and fell back to the pillow with a heavenly look of satisfaction on his wan face.

"For an hour he slept like a tired child. When he awoke I made him a second toddy, much stronger than the first. This made him slumber peacefully for three hours longer. He awoke a second time after 12 o'clock and related a dream he had about his little ones. He said he felt much refreshed, but did not intend to turn his back on another potion if I should insist on concocting one: Half a glass of whisky, three lumps of sugar and one tablespoonful of cracked ice.

“At 6 o'clock the next morning the doctor called and found his patient sleeping peacefully.

"Ah! he said, proudly, that chloral and bromide has done the business. He's entirely out of danger.'

"I led the doctor gently to the open window and pointed to a four-ounce vial, uncorked, and with label upturned, roosting harmlessly among the tall grass.

"This reminds me that nearly every regular beer drinker that yellow jack attacked, as far as my limited collection of statistics extends, succumbed, while the whisky and brandy drinkers, in a majority of instances, fought him off."

That is what this immune speaks in regard to yellow fever and brandy and whisky drinkers. I have no experience at all in this direction, and I don't know if it happened just as he reports, but I shall speak a few words about the cholera epidemic. in Hamburg in 1892. More than 15,000 people took ill of the cholera in Hamburg in the said year; more than 8,000 of the patients died; that is a death rate of about 65 per cent. By the closer analysis of the terrible epidemic it became known that among all the patients, and of course among all the dead, the physicians of Hamburg could not find either one tanner nor one man who was employed in a beer brewery or beer trade. Here in Memphis we have, therefore, to a certain extent, whisky drinkers immune against yellow fever, according to the report of the immune; there in Hamburg we have beer drinkers immune against cholera.

Are these conditions only illusionary or accidental? It is hard to believe so. I cannot doubt what this immune says about yellow fever, because I don't know it, but it is a fact in regard to the cholera in Hamburg and the beer drinkers.

If in a case of emergency I meet an individual with a great loss of blood, I shall try to refill the circulatory system. If I have no syringe to apply a large quantity of salt solution by enema or hypodermically, I shall not hesitate to give by the mouth a quart of good beer, as Professor Nussbaum in Munich used to do, or even wine, quite especially because the individual will less likely throw up beer than water, and particularly I would do that when I have only bad water. I must ask your indulgence, gentlemen, when I refer more to German authors, because I am more familiar with them. One of my teachers, Professor Ludwig Thomas of the University in Freiburg, Germany, whom I would rather declare as a teetotaller, often said: "If I come to a town where I don't know the quality of the water, I should rather drink beer, even bad beer, because I know that this beer is at least boiled."

I shall not speak here about the use of alcohol as a disinfectant for hands and as dressing for wounds, as an abortive