outh, if a dose of alcohol has
been previously administered. It has been the general testimony
of observers in cholera epidemics that those addicted to much
alcohol are far more liable to fatal attacks. But while large
doses of alcohol are, of course, more obviously injurious, it
would be absurd to imagine that lesser quantities are entirely
without influence in the same direction. It has, indeed, been
shown by Dr. Ridge, that even infinitesimal quantities of
alcohol, such as one part in 5,000, cause a more rapid
multiplication of the _bacillus subtilis_ and other bacilli of
decomposition, while, by the same quantities, the growth of both
animal and vegetable protoplasm is retarded. Hence there can be
no longer any question that alcohol renders the body more liable
to conquest by invading microbes, less able to resist and
destroy them. Alcohol, a toxine injurious to living cells, is
destroyed or removed from the body as fast as nature can effect
it, but while it remains, and while able to affect the cells at
all, its action is detrimental to healthy growth and healthy
life, and the less we take of such an agent the better for us.
This is a dictum which it becomes the profession to enunciate
far and wide. 'The less, the better' is a watchword which all
may use, and the wise will interpret it in a way which will
infallibly preserve them altogether from all possible danger
from such a source."

On the sixteenth of December, 1897, Dr. Sims Woodhead, president of the
British Medical Temperance Association, gave a masterly address in
London upon "Recent Researches on the Action of Alcohol." The lecture
was illustrated by lantern slides. From the report given in _The Medical
Temperance Review_ of Jan., 1898, the following is culled:--

"In a series of drawings of kidney you will notice first that
there is a condition known as cloudy swelling; this is one of
the first changes that can be observed. Notice the
characteristic features of this cloudy swelling in the cells of
all these specimens. The large swollen cells are granular, and
very frequently there is a granular mass in the lumen of the
tubule. In some cases the cells are so much swollen that the
lumen of the tubule is represented merely by a 'star-shaped'
radiating chink. The nucleus is usually somewhat obscured, that
this alcoholic cloud