essels,
and giving evidence really not of increased, but of wasted power."

The continued use of alcoholic liquors in any considerable quantity
produces irritation and inflammation of the stomach, and structural
disease of the liver. Dr. Hammond has shown that alcohol has a special
affinity for nervous matter, and is, therefore, found in greater
quantity in the brain and spinal cord than elsewhere in the body. The
gray matter of the brain undergoes, to a certain extent, a fatty
degeneration, and there is a shrinking of the whole cerebrum, with
impairment of the intellectual faculties, muscular tremor, and a
shambling gait.

Large doses of alcohol cause a diminution of the temperature of the
body, which in fevers is more marked than in the normal state.

In addition to the organic diseases enumerated above, and delirium
tremens, the following diseases are frequently the result of the
excessive use of alcoholic liquors: epilepsy, paralysis, insanity,
diabetes, gravel, and diseases of the heart and blood-vessels.

The physiological deductions of Dr. Richardson are so much in accord
with our own that we quote them in full:

"In the first place we gather from the physiological reading of the
action of alcohol that the agent is narcotic. I have compared it
throughout to chloroform, and the comparison is good in all respects
save one, viz.: that alcohol is less fatal than chloroform as an instant
destroyer. It kills certainly in its own way, but its method of killing
is slow, indirect, and by disease.

The well-proven fact that alcohol, when it is taken into the body,
reduces the animal temperature, is full of the most important
suggestions. The fact shows that alcohol does not in any sense act as a
supplier of vital heat as is commonly supposed, and that it does not
prevent the loss of heat as those imagine 'who take just a drop to keep
out the cold,' It shows, on the contrary, that cold and alcohol, in
their effects on the body, run closely together, an opinion confirmed by
the experience of those who live or travel in cold regions of the earth.
The experiences of the Arctic voyagers, of the leaders of the great
Napoleonic campaigns in Russia, of the good monks of St. Bernard, all
testify that death from cold is accelerated by its ally alcohol.
Experiments with alcohol in extreme cold tell the like story, while the
chilliness of the body which succeeds upon even a moderate excess of
alcoholic indulgence leads directly