112 FOOD AND DRINK 



said, "There is no such thing as a temperate use of spirits. 

 In any quantity they are an enemy to the human constitution. 

 Their influence upon the physical organs is unfavorable to 

 health. They produce weakness, not strength; sickness, not 

 health; death, not life." 



55. Diminished Use of Alcohol as Medicine. As a medicine, 

 alcohol is far less freely used by physicians now than formerly. 

 The dangers from its use are more generally recognized, and 

 other remedies have been discovered and brought into use that 

 are fully as efficient and active, but have not the tendency to 

 habit-forming that is so peculiar to alcohol and other narcotics. 

 There are able physicians who refuse to employ any form of 

 alcohol as stimulant or medicine, in the belief that it can be 

 safely and happily replaced by other remedies. In London 

 and some other cities, hospitals have recently been organized 

 and are now being operated on. the basis of total abstinence 

 from alcoholic treatment. In many parts of England the use 

 of alcohol has greatly declined in the alms-houses and other 

 public institutions, in which formerly the amount of stimu- 

 lants annually consumed was very great. 



56. It is well known that alcohol is an ingredient in many 

 of the "Bitters" and other so-called patent medicines that 

 have come into popular use through advertisement in the 

 newspapers. Many persons have been deluded into the use of 

 these, to them, doubly bitter substances ; for, not only have 

 they not found the curative results falsely proclaimed in. the 

 papers, but they have been beguiled into habits of drinking 

 and into a liking for alcohol that the "Bitters" soon fail to 

 satisfy. 



57. Concerning the Purity of Alcoholic Beverages. It is well 

 known that many makers and friends of wines and liquors 

 claim that when these articles are pure they are not injurious, 

 but that they become hurtful after they leave their place of 

 manufacture by reason of the impurities that are added to 

 them by unscrupulous dealers. " Pure and good liquor," they 



55. Is alcohol as highly valued in medicine now as formerly ? 



56. The effect of Bitters ? 



67. What do wine-dealers say ? What is the harmful element ? 



