Literary Notices. v 



its equivalent, milk. The tissues must have water, the blood must 

 have it, the emunctories and the skin must have it. 



The third and concomitant essential is rest. Normal nature tired 

 prescribes it for every bodily or mental overtax. Exhausted abnormal 

 nature always needs it and demands it often. The machinery of the 

 the human organism in all its parts — psychical or physical — must be 

 put at rest for the best repair. 



The chief essential for rest is a new and proper environment, and 

 subsidiary to this are the chemical restraints therapeutics may place on 

 over-acting cells : chloral, sulphonal, the bromides, the vegetable nar- 

 cotics, old and new, the valerianates, the opiates, cephalic galvaniza- 

 tion, and soothing music and the bath. 



The fourth essential is the removal of the debris of the last and 

 previous drunks and of the interim of organic torpidity and depressed 

 vitality. The scavenger cells, diminished in number or absent as they 

 are in toto from the blood, and the emunctories have failed in their 

 physiologically appointed work ; the congested brain, liver, stomach, 

 intestinal tract, mucous membranes generally, torpid liver, bowels and 

 skin, are to be relieved and set at their proper work again. 



Here, water, saline laxative water without stint, is the remedy 

 par excellence. It flushes the intestinal tract and the excreting organs. 

 Nature suggests it first of all after the rest she enforces after a pros- 

 trating spree. 



I need not here dwell on the proper therapeutic blendings for this 

 hydrotherapy to give more special direction to liver, kidneys, skin or 

 bowels. 



My preference is for an effervescent saline that clears out the ali- 

 mentary tract and tranquillizes the brain and nerves at the same time 

 (though mercurials are often not amiss), and then to properly start all 

 the pumps of the system that may not be acting well and maintain 

 them in moderate activity till there remains no pathological clogging 

 of the wheels of physiological activity, but I do not approve of over- 

 active catharsis. Moderation and not violence in this regard is my 

 motto. 



The fifth and concomitant essential is reconstruction of the un- 

 doubtedly damaged cerebro-spinal centers and the several affected or- 

 gans of vegetative life. A drunkard is more or less damaged in many 

 parts of his anatomy at the same time. He comes more nearly to 

 being affected all over in spots than most patients we have to treat. 



We begin reconstruction with the beginning of treatment. It 

 begins with rest and sleep and food and change of surroundings, when 



