e
same purpose without alcohol's dangerous effects. In my
practice, which is confined to surgery, I find very, very little
use for it. During the past year, in extreme cases, I used it in
hypodermic injections, and afterwards felt that ether, or
ammonia would have answered the same purpose. I think, in
general practice, physicians are dispensing with alcohol more
and more, but perhaps unconsciously."--D. W. B. DE GARMO,
Professor of surgery in Post-Graduate Hospital, New York City.

"Medicine, to-day, would be in a more satisfactory condition if
the use of alcohol as a medicine had been interdicted a hundred
years ago, and the interdict had remained to the present day.
The benefits derived from its use are so small (even when they
can be proved, which is much more rarely the case than most
people imagine), and the advantages gained are so slight, that
they are completely outweighed when we set against them the evil
that has been wrought by the abuse of alcohol, and that has
arisen out of the loose methods of prescription that have
obtained, and even still obtain, in regard to this drug."--DR.
G. SIMS WOODHEAD, F. R. C. P., F. R. S., Director of the
Research Laboratories of the Royal College of Physicians and
Surgeons, London.

"The effect of continually dosing with this drug is too apparent
wherever it is used, benumbing the senses, and rendering more
difficult every natural function. Alcohol never sustains the
powers of life. It sometimes changes the symptoms of disease,
but at the expense of the vitality of the body. What is called
its supporting action, is a fever induced by the poison, which
finally prostrates the patient. The secret of its action is
found in the laws of vitality. The man who takes alcohol to
help digest his food, must first throw off the alcohol, before
his stomach can act healthfully.

"There is one encouraging fact to be noted in this connection,
that the use of alcohol in medicine has very much diminished
during the past twenty-five years, and the present tendency is
constantly in that direction. Right here is an important point
which I wish to make: When the physician ceases to prescribe
alcohol as a medicine, the drink problem will have reached the
final stage of its solution. Mankind will eventually learn that
safety lies not so m