On Colonial. Wines. 71 
directly and ammediately caused thereby. And is it nota 
sad contemplation ? . 
Again, during eight of the above years I was constantly 
engaged with investigations, chemical and histological, some-. 
times for myself, at others for members of the medical 
faculty, and for the General Hospital; and had constant access 
to the laboratory of the late Government Analytical Chemist, 
for whom I performed for several years very nearly the whole 
of the microscopic and histological work. I thus had oppor- 
tunities which few non-medical men have had in this 
_ country, of witnessing the ravages made by ardent spirits on 
the human constitution. 
Peculiar forms of liver and kidney disease; fatty 
degeneration of the softer viscera ; molecular changes, such 
as softening of the brain; and insanity ;—these are a 
few of the more prominent rapid consequences of habitual 
spirit-drinking in this warm dry climate, as presented to the 
student of disease. When to the above catalogue, which 
affects primarily the drunkard himself, you add all the ruin 
and misery of a family, the wretched home and starving 
neglected children, you arrive at something like what used 
to be daily and hourly before the eyes of a minister of 
religion in this new country. 
Application has been made to the Sheriff of Melbourne and 
to Dr. Paley, the able head of our great Lunatic Asylum, for 
such statistics as they possess of crime and insanity caused 
by the abuse of ardent spirits, and in each case I have been 
politely promised all the information which it is in their 
power to communicate. But I regret to say I had not 
applied for it in time to allow of its being furnished for this 
aper. 
: On the whole perhaps it will be as well to make another 
short paper, by way of appendix to the present, as soon as I 
have obtained it, and also more of a like character from 
Sydney, Adelaide, and Hobart Town. . 
If a man believed in the existence of a fundamental 
remedy, cheap, easy of application, wholesome and safe, 
would he not be to blame if he did not try to apply it? I 
have tried to clear the way to give it a chance. I believe in 
the remedy myself—I have more than a theoretical belief in 
it. I am no quack. I hate quackery. Had the slightest 
suspicion of quackery attached to me, I am quite sure the 
Medical Society of Victoria would never have elected me 
one of their two honorary members. 
The following anecdote is worth placing on record. 
