lity while it professes to
infuse new life."

A medical writer in the Toledo, O., _Blade_ holds up in clear light the
relation of the _materia medica_ and alcohol, and the opportunity of the
physician to become a benefactor, and active temperance worker. His
remarks follow:--

"One of the signs of the times in the temperance movement is the
steady growth among physicians of a sentiment against the
administration of liquor of any kind as a medicine. The accepted
scientific view of alcohol is that it is a poison, and its
administration should be as guarded as that of any other poison
used as a medicine. Perhaps the hardest thing a physician finds
in his effort to restore his patients to health without the use
of liquors is the common, but erroneous, belief that they are
'strengthening,' and that the convalescent, by their use,
reaches recovery more quickly. The error is in supposing that
any alcoholic liquor is nourishing, or strengthening. They are
neither. Alcohol does not nourish, but it pulls down; it does
not strengthen, but excites and exhausts, for every stimulation
is necessarily followed by a period of depression, and this is
inevitably unfavorable to the patient.

"There is a grave responsibility resting on the physician who
prescribes alcoholic liquor. It may arouse in a susceptible
patient a dormant, inherited tendency to drink. He may, by
authorizing its use during the period of convalescence, fix a
habit upon a patient of feeble will, which the latter will never
be able to shake off. No physician who realizes this great moral
responsibility will be willing to accept it habitually. He
certainly knows that the best medical authorities agree that
alcoholic intoxicants are rarely useful as a medicine; that at
best they are dangerous remedies, and that the less they are
resorted to, the better for both brain and body.

"In point of fact the physician who does his duty to his patient
teaches him the error of the prevalent belief in the virtues of
liquor in restoring the sick to health. He becomes an active
temperance worker in effect. And he can do a noble and useful
work in the rescue of those who are under the control of the
drink habit. * * * * *

"Furthermore, every physician owes it to his profession to teach
his patients the utter fallacy of the common belief that