e central point for a new
demonstration of the danger of the use of alcohol in medicine.
Doctor Hirschfeld was acquitted on the testimony of a large
number of leading physicians from the large hospitals and
universities of Europe. It was proved that alcohol was not a
remedy which was specifically required in any disease; also that
its value was most seriously questioned as a general remedy by
many able men, and its substitution was practical and literal in
most cases. Statistics were presented proving that alcohol was
dangerous, and never a safe remedy, and laboratory
investigations confirming and explaining its action were given.
Since then a sharp reaction has been going on in Europe, and
alcohol is rapidly declining and passing away as a common
remedy.

"Doctor Frick, an eminent teacher of medicine in Zurich,
Switzerland, and Doctor von Speyer, of the University of Berne,
have made statistical studies of cases treated with and without
alcohol, and have analyzed the effects of spirits as medicinal
agents to check and antagonize disease, and assert very
positively, that alcohol is a dangerous and exceedingly doubtful
remedy. Doctor Meyer, of the University of Gottenburg, Doctor
Moebius, of Leipsic, and Doctor Wehberg, of Dusseldorf, are
equally prominent physicians who have taken the same position,
and are equally emphatic in their denunciations of the current
beliefs concerning alcohol in medicine."--_Journal A. M. A._,
January 6, 1900.

Dr. H. D. Didama, Dean of the Medical College of Syracuse University,
Syracuse, N. Y., said in January, 1898, in the _Voice_:--

"For many years after my graduation at Albany, in 1846, I
prescribed alcohol, and for twenty years, while occupying the
chair of professor of the science and art of medicine in the
College of Medicine of Syracuse University. I followed in my
lectures--often reluctantly and usually afar off, but still I
followed--the almost unanimous teaching of authors, ancient and
modern, and the professors in the medical schools.

"Convinced that a great number of the diseases I was called to
treat owed their existence or aggravation to the use, in alleged
moderation, of alcoholic beverages, and that not in a few
instances this use was commenced and even continued by the
advice of the medical attendants; convinced also by