ve brought about a great change. There are many American
physicians now willing to admit that they have very little or no use for
alcoholic liquors as remedial agents, and now, instead of recommending
whisky for consumption anti-tuberculosis literature almost everywhere
warns against the use of intoxicating drinks. The use of anti-toxin in
diphtheria has driven out whisky treatment in that disease with markedly
favorable results. Under the whisky treatment death-rates ran up to
fifty-five and sixty per cent.; now the diphtheria death-rate is very
low. Ten years ago many good authorities still ranked alcohol as a
stimulant; now, almost all rank it as a depressant. In England, leading
physicians and surgeons have spoken so strongly against alcohol in the
last few years that the London _Times_, England's leading newspaper,
said: "According to recent developments of scientific opinion, it is not
impossible that a belief in the strengthening and supporting qualities
of alcohol will eventually become as obsolete as a belief in
witchcraft."

So far as the writer can learn from replies sent to her inquiries by
teachers of medicine, and by study of text-books on medicine, and
articles in good medical journals, alcohol now has only a very limited
use in medicine with the great majority of successful physicians. Some
recommend wine in _diabetes mellitus_, saying that it acts less like a
poison and more like a food in that disease than in any other. Some use
alcoholic liquors in fevers as a food "to save the burning of tissue,"
but an article on "Therapeutics" in the _Journal of the American Medical
Association_, for November 6, 1909, page 1564, says that sugar would
probably have equal value in such case. The same article says that hot
baths, with hot lemonade, and a quickly acting cathartic, will abort a
cold without any need of recourse to alcohol.

The writer wishes here to make grateful acknowledgment of courtesies
received from busy physicians who have aided materially in her work by
answering personal letters of inquiry, also letters published in the
_Journal of the American Medical Association_, by kindness of the
editor. Especially would she thank those professors of medicine and
superintendents of large hospitals, who so courteously aided her in
preparing a paper for the International Congress on Alcoholism, held in
London, July, 1909, to which she was a delegate, representing the United
States government. A few of the r