l the rousement that is necessary and that can avail
will be called into action by the need of oxygen. There are cases of
disease in which breathing goes on hour after hour, when the soul seems
to have departed and with it every life sense. The patient has become
dead beyond reviving, and yet breathes hour after hour. Now can one for
one moment think that an alcoholic can add to the power of the
respiratory centres of the brain to respond to the calls for oxygen and
so prolong life? Shock in its gravest degree is to be considered the
extreme of the tired-out condition, with rest the only restorative
means; and rest may be permitted with the certainty that for mere
breathing purposes alcoholics are dangerous in proportion to the gravity
of the shock.

In health the alcoholic only adds discomfort, because there are no
complaints to soothe; hence it is the duty of every mother so to train
her sons in health-habits that those first drinks will be discouraging
because they bring no cheer of contrast, but rather sensations that are
not suggestive of a better physical condition.

Alcoholics have a corroding effect upon the mucous membrane of the
stomach, a congestive effect by which the glands are subjected to
starving pressure; hence their use always disables the mere mechanics
and the chemistry involved in digestion, and so prolongs disease, and
this applies to all medicines that corrode. This corroding power of the
alcoholics upon the walls of the stomach and its paralyzing effect upon
the brain-centres, with the additional fact that there is nothing in it
that adds force to any life power or that can be converted into living
atoms, should make its use in the stomach of the sick a crime scarcely
to be excused by ignorance.

The evolution of the drunkard is a process of culture, and involves
something of a constitutional tendency as in other diseases. I conceive
that there is an alcoholic temperament, or a temperament in which the
inability to bear with patience the various mental and physical woes of
life is marked even from childhood. Indigestion and every cause that
lowers vital power only add to the importance of such a nervous system.

The first step in the evolution of the drunkard is the first untimely
meal drawn from the breast of the mother. By irregular nursings and the
nursings merely to stop crying the nervous system is continually
overtaxed. There are the untimely meals to prevent gluttony; there are
the bet