was only a short time ago a dutiful wife of a
respectable man, and the mother of three beautiful children. Her
father, who is said to be living in a village in New York State,
is a highly respected minister of the Methodist Episcopal
Church. Her children are in an asylum, and her husband is a
wanderer in the West. The cause of her ruin was beer, prescribed
for her by the family physician as a tonic. At first she refused
to take it, having always been a teetotaler, but persuaded to
obey the physician, she soon acquired a taste for the drink that
speedily developed into the overmastering appetite, which has
brought her and hers to this sad condition."

ALCOHOL AS A SEDATIVE.

Dr. J. J. Ridge says in the _Medical Pioneer_, April, 1893:--

"Alcohol, chiefly in the form of spirits, is often given to
procure sleep and to relieve pain, such as that of neuralgia,
dyspepsia, colic and diarrhoea. It is as a sedative that
alcohol is so insidious and seductive in cases of chronic
disease, as, if frequently resorted to, the drink craving is
almost certainly developed. Hence the importance in many cases
of rather bearing the ills we have than of flying to others that
we know not of. It is clear that other narcotics, such as opium,
morphia, chorodyne, chloral, are open to the same objection, and
the victims of these drugs are terribly numerous. * * * * * In
many instances some form of dyspepsia is the cause of the
sleeplessness, palpitation or other uneasy feeling for which a
sedative is desired, and when this is cured the symptoms
vanish."

A prominent minister in a large American city was afflicted with
insomnia a few years ago, and, after trying various remedies, was
advised by a physician to try whisky "night-caps." He became a hopeless
drunkard. A young medical student in New York appealed to one of his
professors for aid in overcoming aggravated insomnia. The professor
advised whisky and morphine! The advice led to the ruin of the young
man.

ALCOHOL AS AN ANTIPYRETIC.

"By the power of alcohol to retard the evolution of heat in
retarding molecular changes in the tissues, the liquids
containing it may be used as antipyretics when the temperature
is too high, and to retard the processes of waste when these are
too rapid. But the antipyretic influence of alcohol is so feeble
in comparison with the p