y years, and it had not injured him; but of his
twelve children, six died in infancy, one was imbecile, one was
insane, the rest were hysterical invalids.

And alcohol is not the only substance that inebriates. Opium,
morphine, chloral, cocaine, and all drugs of a similar nature, are
dangerous, and each not only inflicts its injury on the individual,
but transmits its results to posterity in that nerve degeneration
which renders the sufferer an easy victim to all forms of
intoxication, and intoxication is nothing more nor less than
poisoning. Opium and morphine are often prescribed by physicians, and
the patient, experiencing the sudden relief from pain, and perhaps not
knowing the danger of indulgence, resorts next time to the delightful
pain-quieter on his own responsibility, and almost before he knows it
the habit is formed, and the weak will that made the easy victim now
makes the unwilling slave, loathing his chains, yet unable to break
them; and these evil habits are, in their effects, transmitted.

Dr. Robertson says: "The part that heredity plays in all functional
diseases or states of the nervous system is not to be misunderstood.
It is safe to assert that no idiopathic case of insanity, chorea,
hysteria, megrim, dipsomania, or moral insanity, can occur except by
reason of inherited predisposition."

The evils of morphinism are even greater than those of alcoholism, and
their transmission no less sure. Especially is there loss of moral
power. Dr. Robertson says: "No matter how honorable, upright and
conscientious a man's past life may have been, let him become
thoroughly addicted to morphine, and I would not believe any statement
he might make, either with reference to the use of the drug or on any
other subject that concerned his habit. This extends further, and
clouds his moral perceptions in all relations of life."

Dr. Brush says: "Cocaine is the only drug the effects of which are
more dangerous and more slavish than the inhalation of the fumes of
opium."

The danger in the fast life of this age is that we try to find
something that will enable us to do our excessive undertakings with
less feeling of fatigue. We fail to see in this that we are exhausting
our reserve force, instead of adding to our store of force.

The _Popular Science News_ says that kola, cocoa, chocolate, coffee,
tea, and similar substances make nervous work seem lighter, because
they call out the reserve fund which should be most