informing us that bleeding, cupping and starvation were the
surest methods of cure!

"That the story of Evolution is true I am by no means certain,
but that 'We, Us, and Company,' are 'evoluting' with electric
speed ourselves it is useless to deny. This very hospital is the
latest mile-stone on the highway of progress in the American
temperance reform. The conditions that have made its existence
possible have developed in this country within about twelve
years.

"Public opinion, that mightiest of magicians, has within that
time been educated up to this level and has said in its
omnipotence: 'Hospital, be!' and, behold, the hospital _is_.

"When I joined the ranks of temperance workers in 1874, a
thought so adventurous as that alcoholics in relation to
medicine were a curse and not a blessing had never lodged within
my cranium. But, as in duty bound, I studied the subject from
the practical, which is the nineteenth century standpoint.

"I investigated the cause of inebriety, and found the medical
use of alcoholic stimulants a prominent factor in this horrible
result; I sought for expert testimony, and found Dr. N. S.
Davis, ex-President American Medical Association, saying 'that
in his ample clinical practice he had for over thirty years
tested the medical uses of alcoholics, and had _found no case of
disease and no emergency arising from accident that he could not
treat more successfully without any form of fermented or
distilled liquors than with_'; found Dr. James R. Nichols, of
Boston, so long editor of _The Journal of Chemistry_, declaring
as his deliberate scientific opinion that the entire banishment
of these liquors 'would not deprive us of a single one of the
indispensable agents which modern civilization demands'; found
Dr. Green, of Boston, saying before the physicians of that city
that it is upon the members of the medical profession and the
exceptional laws which it has always demanded, that the whole
liquor fraternity depends more than upon anything else to screen
it from opprobrium and just punishment for the evils it entails,
and that after thirty years of professional experience he felt
assured that alcoholic stimulants are not required as medicines,
and that many, if not a majority of the best physicians, now
believe them _to be worse than useless_.