and private practice for more than fifty years, and a continuous
study of our medical literature, I am prepared to maintain the
position that the ratio of mortality from all the acute general
diseases has increased in direct proportion to the quantity of
alcoholic remedies administered during their treatment. How can
we reasonably expect any other result from the use of an agent
that so directly and uniformly diminishes the cerebral
respiratory, cardiac and metabolic functions of the living human
body?"

The _Medical Pioneer_ of January, 1896, contained a very interesting
article by Dr. J. H. Kellogg upon "The Influence of Alcohol upon Urinary
Toxicity, and its Relation to the Medical Use of Alcohol." He gives the
results of many of his own experiments to determine the effects of
alcohol in hindering the elimination of poisonous matter by the kidneys.
The subject of one experiment was a healthy man of 30 years, weighing 66
kilos. For fifty days prior to the experiment he had taken a carefully
regulated diet, and the urotoxic coefficient had remained very nearly
uniform. The urine carefully collected for the first eight hours after
the administration of 8 ounces of brandy diluted with water, showed an
enormous diminution in the urotoxic coefficient, which was, in fact,
scarcely more than half the normal coefficient for the individual in
question. The urine collected for the second period of eight hours
showed an increase of toxicity, and that for the third period of eight
hours showed still further increase of toxicity, the coefficient having
nearly returned to its normal standard.

Of this Dr. Kellogg says:--

"The bearing of this experiment upon the use of alcohol in
pneumonia, typhoid fever, erysipelas, cholera and other
infectious diseases, will be clearly seen. In all the maladies
named, and in nearly all other infectious diseases, which
include the greater number of acute maladies, the symptoms which
give the patient the greatest inconvenience, and those which
have a fatal termination, when such is the result, are directly
attributable to the influence of the toxic substances generated
within the system of the patient as the result of the specific
microbes to which the disease owes its origin. The activity of
the liver in destroying these poisons, and of the kidneys in
eliminating them, are the physiologic processes which stand