n so fully shown in the pages of preceding numbers of the
_Medical Temperance Quarterly_, that the leading facts need not
be repeated here. That its presence does not increase the
hemoglobin, or favor oxy-hemoglobin or increased internal
distribution of oxygen, but decidedly the reverse, has been
equally well demonstrated by numerous and reliable experimental
researches in this and other countries.

"Then it must be conceded that alcohol is not capable of
fulfilling either of the important indications presented in the
treatment of typhoid fever as stated above. Nevertheless, the
advocates of its use apparently recognize but two ideas or
factors in these cases, namely, the popularly inherited
assumption that alcohol is a _stimulant_, and as the patient is
in danger from nervous and cardiac weakness, therefore the
alcohol must be given, _pro re nata_ without the slightest
regard to the existing causes of the weakness, or the _modus
operandi_ of the so-called stimulant.

"This is proved by the fact that they group together as
stimulants, and give to the same patient in alternate doses,
remedies of directly antagonistic action, as alcohol and
strychnine, or digitalis, etc.

"The accepted definition of a stimulant in medical literature,
is some agent capable of exciting or increasing _vital activity_
as a whole, or the natural activity of some one structure or
organ.

"For instance, both clinical and experimental observations show
that strychnine directly increases the functional activity of
the respiratory, cardiac and vasomotor nervous systems, and
thereby increases the internal distribution of oxygen, which is
nature's own special exciter of all vital action. Therefore it
is properly a direct respiratory, cardiac and vasomotor
stimulant and indirectly a stimulator of all vital processes.
But the same kind of clinical and experimental observations show
that alcohol directly diminishes the functional activity of all
nerve structures, pre-eminently those of respiration and
circulation, and also of all metabolic processes, whether
respirative, disintegrative or secretory. Consequently it not
only acts as directly antagonistic to strychnine, but equally so
to all true stimulants or remedies capable of increasing vital
activity. Instead, therefore, of meriting the name