sumes to speak authoritatively upon this subject shall know it, and the next is that however dear a certain side of the question may be to him, he should speak about it not with the mere desire to succeed, not with the desire to triumph, but with a loving, reverent, solemn desire to state the truth about it and nothing but the truth.

Now I venture to say in your presence that I know something about this question. For twenty-five years at least I have been physician to one of the largest hospitals in this country. It has been a part of the daily business of my life to ascertain the influence which alcoholic drinks exert upon health, and I have taken a personal interest in this part of my duty, and not only through this professional channel I have mentioned to you, but often through personal experiment I have endeavoured most earnestly to get at the truth on this subject, and certainly I think I am justified in saying to you that after these twenty-five years I know something about it. In the next place I wish to speak, and I am determined to speak, nothing but the truth. It would be very pleasant-it is very attractive in one who has a cause to advocate-not to be too particular in his statements which will advance it. I do not mean to say that a man who has a cause at heart, any good man, will be disloyal to the truth-far from it; but I do mean to say that sometimes in our earnest advocacy of a good cause we forget what is to be said upon the other side. Now, I do not mean to forget to-night what is to be said upon the other side, and I begin therefore the first statement which I have to make to you as a statement with a qualification, I am going to speak about the influence of what I call the excessive use of alcoholic drinks. Alcohol is a poison. So is strychnine. So is arsenic. So is opium. It ranks with these agents, but of these agents arsenic, strychnine, opium, and many others there is this to be said, that in certain small doses they are useful in certain circumstances, and in certain very minute doses they can be habitually used without any obvious-mark what I say—pre

judicial effect, without any obvious, any sensibly prejudicial effect upon health. Therefore when I speak of alcohol, you will remember that I am speaking of it with this reservation, that as far as human knowledge has gone, as far as the most earnest and unprejudiced inquiry has led us, there are certain doses of alcohol-they are very minute, depend upon that, exceedingly minute-in which this poison can be habitually taken without any obvious, without any sensibly prejudicial influence upon the human frame. What these minute doses are-I repeat to you they are very minute-I am not going to stay to discuss to-night, but for the truth's sake, to which I choose, as I told you to-night, to appeal on this occasion, I must mention it, and I must remind you that when I am speaking of the effects of alcohol I am speaking of the effects of alcohol in these very minute doses. And now having thus far cleared the way, let me proceed to say in a word what my experiences with respect to the influence of alcohol are upon health. I dare say people would like to know what health is, and I should like exceedingly to be able to tell you, but though I have been twenty-five years a doctor I do not know to this day what health is, but I will try to indicate it to you. I cannot define it because it is indefinable. Health is that state of body in which all the functions of it go on without notice or observation, and in which existence is felt to be a pleasure, in which it is a kind of joy to see, to hear, to touch, to live. That is health. Now that is a state which cannot be benefited by alcohol in any degree. Nay, it is a state which in nine times out of ten is injured by alcohol. It is a state which often bears alcohol without sensible injury, but I repeat to you, as the result of long-continued and careful thought, it is not one which can in any sense be benefited by alcohol. It can bear it sometimes without obvious injury, but be benefited by it, never. I further go than that. I do not pretend to speak to you as a total abstainer, but I hope all the rising generation will be total abstainers. I venture to say to you that there is a certain state of joy

--

of existence-for I cannot call it anything else a sense in which one feels what a pleasure it is to look out, for instance, upon the green fields, to hear pleasant sounds, to touch pleasant hands, to know that life is a satisfaction; this, I say, is a state which in my experience is always in some way or other injured by alcohol. This is a state in which, sooner or later, the music goes out of tune under the continuous influence of alcohol. This is an ideal life which rarely in this age, and to us dwellers in towns, comes to us. From the sins of our forefathers, or from the unsuitable surroundings in which we dwell, or from our own doings, somehow or other this ideal life seldom or never comes to any one of us, and there is therefore a secondary sort of health, not like the one described, which is the health of most of us, and the question is, what of it? What does alcohol do to it?

I have two answers. The first is that sometimes this sort of health bears better with the alcohol apparently than the other, and the next answer is that sometimes this state of health seems for a time to be benefited by alcohol, and this is exactly the sort of health which forms the great debating ground of the experience of different people with respect to the use of alcohol. There are some nervous people — people who are born into the world to be always ailing and yet never ill. There are people of this stamp who always feel a relief from taking a little alcohol, and they come to the conclusion that they could not live without it, and that they ought not to live without it. Now I have a profound sympathy for all people of this sort. Health of this sort is a heavy burden to bear in life. It is always oppressive, and is that sort of burden which makes people say, "I could always be happy, but myself is always coming between me and my happiness." This is the sort of health in which alcohol seems sometimes to do good, and this is the sort of health with which I have such a sympathy that if the alcohol (and here you will see my first and only heresy) from which these people get

an immense degree of comfort be taken in the minute doses described I have allowed it, and have not observed that they have suffered from it. This, I say, is a class of people for whom I have such a profound sympathy that I say sometimes, "Take your little drop of beer, but take care you never go beyond it." I do not defend it as right, but show you simply what I think. Now, as regards the influence upon health, I would sum it up in this-first, that perfectly good health will in my opinion always be injured even by small doses of alcohol-injured in the sense of its perfection of loveliness. I call perfect health the loveliest thing in all this world. Now, alcohol even in small doses will take the bloom off, will injure the perfection of loveliness of health both mental and moral. Therefore seeing that there are some people born into this world with very feeble health, particularly nervous people, who are not really benefited by the use of alcohol, but who do feel a certain comfort from the use of it, and who because they do feel that comfort, imagine themselves better fitted to do their duty, aud this little help being within the minute quantity of a poison which I think safe to take, I forgive them, and I say, “Well, you have got into a habit of it; go on, but take care that you don't get your children into the habit with you."

I will ask your attention next to the question of work. There are two ways in which this question of the influence of alcohol upon work can be determined. One way is by appealing to personal experience, and the other and perhaps the better way is by appealing to a carefully conducted experiment with bodies of men. Now, I will try both questions. First, what is the average result of an experimental inquiry into the effects of alcohol upon individuals as regards their work? Now, here I must draw your attention to a fallacy which is very apt to arise in performing an experiment of this kind. I should say to a man, "If you want to determine this question about the influence of alcohol upon your work, do perform your experiment fairly. You will please go for a month with alcohol,

and see how you get on, and then cut it off altogether and see how you get on then." People are of different constitutions, and there are some of such nervous types of constitution that mere habit is such a force with them that they think if they do not have their daily allowance of alcohol they must be ill. The first difficulty in the way of experimenting with such people is that when they try the experiment of doing their work without alcohol they say they think they must be ill, and when the accustomed time of taking the alcohol comes round they think it is evidence that the plan is not going to answer well because they miss their accustomed beverage, and they begin to be on the side of expecting failure. They are sure to tell some of their friends, who, of course, condemn the "mad experiment," and say, "Beer is necessary; you are not looking so well already, and if you go on you will see where you'll land." The poor man is in the position of an army going up to battle with the consciousness that it is going to be defeated, and you know the chances of success in such a case. I have no hesitation in saying that if a man has the courage to cast aside the imaginative difficulties which surround an experiment of this kind, and say "None of your nonsense, I mean to try this fairly; I'm not a coward, and I will try it honestly," he will succeed. People always look a little paler or thinner under such an experiment, but bulk is not measure of power, nor colour the measure of health. Now I venture to say, as a working man myself (I take it that I work as hard as most, for I have eighteen hours a day at my work, working in a hurry and very anxious subjects to work upon, and if that is not hard work, when it goes over Saturday and Sunday as well, I know not what is), that I have my personal experience to speak of, and I have the experience of the enormous number of people who pass before me every year. That does not go for nothing after ten years. If I don't know something about the subject now I must be a bigger fool than I imagine myself to be. If there is any honest man who really wants to get

at the truth, and will not be set from his purpose by people condoling with him about his appearance and the result of his experiment, and will try the effect of alcohol upon work, I would tell him fearlessly, and I would risk all that I possess upon the back of the statement, that as certainly as he does try that experiment for a month or six weeks, so certainly will he come to the conclusion that, however pleasant alcohol is for the moment, it is not a helper of work. It is not only not a helper of work, but it is a certain hinderer of work, and every man who comes to the front of a profession in London is marked by this one characteristic, that the more busy he gets the less in the shape of alcohol he takes, and his excuse is

"I am very sorry, but I cannot take it and do my work." The most loyal, careful, faithful, and truthful of observers whom ever it was my good fortune to know-the late Dr. Parkes, of Netley-began life as a physician in London, and would have risen, I have no doubt, had he remained there, to be one of the first physicians of this metropolis, but his health was not good, and he went down to Netley. He was an earnest lover of truth, and this question of alcohol exercised his mind continually, and he tried in various shapes and ways to bring the question to such a test that even the most sceptical might be convinced by the result of his experiments. He performed this one among others. He got a number of soldiers of the same age, of the same type of constitution, living under the same circumstances, eating the same food, breathing the same atmosphere, and he did this that the experiment might be fair, he divided the soldiers into two gangs-an alcoholic gang and a non-alcoholic gang -and he engaged these two gangs in certain works, for which they were to be paid extra. He watched these gangs and took the result of their work; and it turned out that the alcoholic gang went far ahead at first. They had buckets of beer by their side, and as they got a little tired they took beer, and the non-alcoholic gang were in an hour or two left nowhere; but he waited and watched,

as I told you, and as the experiment went on, the energies of the beerdrinkers speedily began to flag, and, do what they would, before the end of the day the non-alcoholic gang had left them far behind. When this had gone on for some days the alcoholic gang begged that they might get into the non-alcoholic gang, that they might earn a little more money, but Dr. Parkes, in order to make the experiment clenching and conclusive, transposed the gangs. He made the alcoholic gang the non-alcoholic gang, and vice versa, the men being very willing to lend themselves to the experiment, and the results were exactly the same. The alcoholic gang beat the non-alcoholic gang at the starting, and failed utterly towards the end of the day. This is the most conclusive, and I think by far the most crucial experiment that I know of upon the question of the relation of alcohol to work. With that I will set aside this question by saying from personal experience, and from experiments most carefully conducted over large bodies of men, it is capable of proof beyond all possibility of question that alcohol, in ordinary circumstances, not only does not help work, but is a serions hinderer of work. Now, as to the effect of the use of alcoholic drinks upon disease. I went to my hospital to-day thinking that I should have this terrible ordeal to go through tonight, and not knowing, indeed, how I should go through it. Well, thinking of my lecture, I walked through my wards, and I asked myself this question-How many of these cases are due to natural and unavoidable causes, and how many are due to alcohol? Now, remember what I said at the beginning of these informal remarks-I do not desire to make out a strong case, I desire to make out a true case. I am speaking solemnly and carefully in the presence of truth, and I tell you I am considerably within the mark when I say to you that going the round of my hospital wards to-day seven out of every ten there owed their ill-health to alcohol. Now, what does that mean? That out of every hundred patients which I have charge of at the London Hospital 70 per cent of them directly

owe their ill-health to alcohol-to the abuse-I do not say these 70 per cent. were drunkards-but to the excessive use. I do not know that one of them was what you call a drunkard. Nay, I must here put in a curious word which will shock your rector in the chair very much, that on the whole it is not the drunkards that suffer so much from alcohol. There are a number of men that we know to be drunkards. They get drunk and they get sober, and they are so much ashamed of themselves that they won't touch the accursed thing for months to come, until somebody tempts them. These are not the men who suffer most from alcohol. These are the men who, conscious of their infirmity, and horribly ashamed of themselves when they recover, will remain virtuous for months and months. No, the men to whom I allude are the men who are habitually taking a little too much. The curse of this is that they feel so jolly and comfortable and full of jokes and fun that other short-sighted people almost envy them their condition. These are the men who go into company, who are full of life, who are always begging you to have another glass, and all that sort of thing. They are very good fellows, do their work well, but they are always drinking just a little more than the physiological quantity I mentioned at the beginning. Now these are the men who, taking a little more than they require or can use, looking well, yea, often feeling well, are yet being sapped and undermined by this excess. Day by day, just as the grass grows and you can't see it-day by day this little excess, often a little one, is doing its work. It upsets the stomach, the stomach upsets the other organs, and bit by bit, under this fair and genial and jovial outside, the constitution is being sapped, and suddenly some fine day this hale, hearty man, whose steps seemed to make the earth resound again, and the rafters re-echo with his tread, tumbles down in a fit! That is the way in which alcohol saps the constitution. As I looked at the hospital wards to-day, and saw seven out of ten who owed their diseases to alcohol, I could not but