ients,
varied in ounces from 37,531 in one establishment to 300,094 in
another during the year 1878. I also found, from the same
author, that the whole cost in St. George's Union Infirmary for
the year 1878 was L8. 3s. 6d., amongst 2,496 patients, while the
cost of the same number at the average of the twelve hospitals
was L124. About this same time I also remarked that in many of
the public institutions of England there was a reduction
something similar in kind, if not to the same extent, and that
the number of persons who suffered seemed to make better
recoveries than those who were taking the free amount of
stimulant. The effect of these observations chimed in very
remarkably with the physiological experiments it had been my
duty to carry out, and which tended to show in a most striking
manner that the action of alcohol in the body very much differed
from the ordinary opinion that had been held upon it, and
thereupon, in my own practice, I abandoned the use of alcohol,
and began to give instead small quantities of simple,
nourishing, dietic food, a course I pursued up to the present
time with the most satisfactory results, results I have never
felt any occasion to regret. By these steps, learned in the
first place from the study of alcohol in its action on man, I
was led to become a believer that alcohol is of no more service
in disease than it is in health, and a lengthened experience in
this matter has really confirmed the correctness of the idea."

In his last report as physician to the Temperance Hospital Dr.
Richardson made some remarkable statements upon the fallacy of the
general ideas of stimulation. So interesting are his views that they are
incorporated here:--

"Sir B. W. Richardson, M. D., who was unable to be present,
communicated (through the secretary) his annual report as
physician to the hospital. After twelve months further trial of
the treatment of all kinds of disease in this institution
without the assistance of alcohol, either as a diet or a
medicine, he (Sir B. W. Richardson) was fully sustained in the
belief that the plan pursued had been attended with every
possible advantage. About 500 cases had come under his
observation and treatment as in previous years, and these cases
had been of the most varied kind, including all patients who
were not directly