president’s ADDRESS — SECTION I. 
181 
hashish, alcohol is a stimulo-sedative, almost demanded where the 
individual is living an artificial life and with dissatisfaction, recognised 
or not, between his actualities and his possibilities. No doubt it is the 
immediate antecedent to much poverty, ill-health, and vice; but it is 
also a measure of the extent of systemic dissatisfaction, and a ready 
means of procuring a fool’s paradise, where none other is attainable. 
For a man healthy, well-housed, well-fed, living a healthy life, it is 
unnecessary, but in a large proportion of people these conditions are 
not present. And especially during maturity, mid-life, and when age is 
advancing, if used in moderation and in form suited to the individual, it 
is generally of distinct value both as an adjuvant to digestion and a 
general stimulo-sedative. But where it is used in place of attempts 
to bring the individual into better accord with himself and surround- 
ings, the end is bound to be “ physiological bankruptcy.” Something 
more radical and more sanitary than teetotal pledges, Ideal option, and 
legislative prohibition will thus be required before the evils attendant 
on drink can be abolished. 
Again, an instinct like the sexual, which is the second strongest 
in our nature, which pervades much of our literature and more of our 
thought, and which as a social factor is inferior to none, cannot be 
ignored in a paper on health. 
The fact, is that silence has too long been kept on this matter by 
competent guides, and disaster has been made complete by the policy 
of handing the matter over to inexperience or quackery of the grossest 
kind. To me it seems that there is only one sound way of meeting 
this dominant appetite under our social conditions, and that is 
marriage when practicable. But civilisation has had the twofold 
effect of increasing this, as all other sensibility, and of delaying very 
seriously its appropriate gratification. Until, therefore, statesmanship 
produces conditions which will bring marriage within a reasonable 
distance of early maturity, nothing is possible but temporary 
expedients ; and the only commendable expedient is self-restraint. 
This may be materially assisted by the removal of physical conditions 
which necessitate trouble, and by explanations which will carry- 
knowledge, even though, of themselves, they cannot promise self- 
restraint. 
In crime, again, science sees much more than the results of “the 
party’s criminal will.” It recognises inheritance as a factor, and an 
almost uncontrollable tendency to wrong-doing as frequently an 
inherited disease, it proclaims, therefore, the folly and wrong of 
continuing to breed criminals. Further, it finds in environment an 
even more exciting cause, and demands therefore, as a second essential 
in the scientific treatment of crime, a removal from contaminating 
surroundings. And how much ill-health would be averted if these 
considerations guided our penal laws? 
Similarly, to science insanity is a disease, and one which is 
increasing with the stress of civilisation. It is no wonder, therefore, 
that people said to be insane come before our courts in increasing 
numbers ; but the legal definition by which alone they are judged is, 
as the late Chief Justice of England said, “contradicted by modern 
science,” and has been shown to be wrong in theory, false in fact, 
cruel in its metaphysical conception, and unreliable in its practical 
application. Still reform, though thus eminently desirable, might be 
