want, and such would have been our position but for the fearful drawbacks and waste of intemperance. I have shown that during the last fifty years we as a nation have sacrificed over £13,000,000,000 at the shrine of Bacchus. The measure of rationality in any transaction is in proportion to the value which is received in return for the money paid. And what has been the return we have got for the £13,000,000,000 we have sacrificed? Social demoralisation has resulted, political corruption has been engendered, disease and premature deathsoften of the most appalling character-have largely been caused, whilst morality, religion, education, and all the virtues which go to exalt humanity, have been obstructed and frequently blasted; and for these deplorable results a nation, priding itself upon its high Christian character, its intelligence and great common sense, has paid or sacrificed in one way or another £13,000,000,000. If it had paid this sum to be saved from the evils it would have been praiseworthy conduct, but to buy them and at such a price is conduct that is so irrational as to be incapable of being credited were it not manifest before our eyes. It would occupy too much time were I to attempt to dwell in detail upon the results which would have accrued from a right expenditure of our money during the last fifty years. A large portion of it would doubtless have been invested in improving the land, and thus, instead of our agricultural crops being as now valued at £370,000,000 per annum, they would have been valued at perhaps £700,000,000, thus enabling us to supply ourselves largely independent of other nations. Another sum might have gone in the sanitary improvement of our towns and villages. A further sum in sweeping away the old houses and providing better. Another would have gone in purchasing more clothing, furniture, &c. Another in providing towns and districts with educational institutes and libraries. Another in supplying additional places of worship, &c. And the best of all would have been the absence of the drunkenness, and the vices and the evils which have resulted from it. The criminal, instead of being incarcerated in gaol, would have been employed in useful labour, and so, too, would the pauper, the lunatic, the idler, and the vagrant; and all the energy which has had to be called into existence to govern and keep in check these excrescences of our civilisation would have been available for purposes of real progress; and, freed from the blighting influences of intemperance and its resulting evils, education, religion, and social and political progress, and the physical and domestic well-being of the nation, would have been accelerated beyond conception. It must have been so, if the gifts of a bountiful Providence, which have been and are now appropriated to the nation's demoralisation, had been applied, as they ought to have been, to its elevation; and further, whilst the material wealth of the nation would have increased immensely, the wealth of moral greatness and intelligence, which is far more to be valued, would have kept pace with it, and our national life would have been much more in harmony with the religion and civilisation of which we make so great a boast. THE MEDICAL TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT. BY NORMAN S. KERR, M.D., F.L.S., London. MEDICAL men have all along taken an honourable place in the ranks of temperance reform. In the earliest medical writings extant the superiority of an abstemious diet was insisted on, while any tendency to excess was sternly rebuked. Coming down the stream of time till we approach the era which gave birth to the Temperance movement of modern times, we find Dr. George Cheyne, in 1725, commending total abstinence as the most natural, healthy, and safe mode of living, and condemning moderate drinking as unhealthy and dangerous. Twenty-two years later Dr. James wrote strongly against dramı drinking, and boldly expressed his admiration of the Mohammedan prohibition of fermented liquor. Forty-seven years after this, wine (i.e. fermented wine) was stigmatised by Dr. Darwin as a pernicious luxury in common use, injuring thousands." Beddoes, in 1802, inveighed on the dangers of drinking, and the mischief from wine drank constantly in moderation in enfeebling the 66 mental and physical powers. Dr. Trotter, two years later, characterised beer as a poisonous beverage and declared that wine strengthened neither body nor mind, the true place of strong drink (to which it ought to be confined) being the apothecary's shop. In 1829, Dr. John Cheyne, Physician-General to the Forces in Ireland, exposed the fallacy of the delusion that fermented wine recruited the strength in bodily or mental exhaustion, and denounced the popular belief in the virtues of drink as one of the most fatal delusions which ever took possession of the human mind. In America, Dr. Rush, in 1795, waged a bold and telling warfare with ardent spirits, and was followed by his transatlantic confréres Dr. Reuben Mussey, of Salem; Dr. Torry; Dr. B. J. Clark; Dr. John Ware; Dr. Gamaliel Bradford; Dr. Charles A. Lee, of New York; Dr. Flint; Dr. Jewell, and many other medical men. The temperance movement began in Scotland, in 1829, with two physicians in its front ranks, Dr. Charles Ritchie, of Glasgow, and Dr. Kirk, of Greenock. Among the managers of the Hibernian Temperance Society in Dublin, in 1831, were Drs. Cheyne, Harvey, Adams, Bevan, and Pope. In the same year in England, on the committee of the British and Foreign Temperance Society, were Sir John Webb, M.D.; Sir James McGregor, M.D.; Sir Matthew Tierney, M.D.; Sir John Richardson, M.D.; Dr. Conquest; and Dr. Pidduck. In the total abstinence movement, medical men took an active part from the first. In Scotland, Dr. Daniel Richmond and Dr. Kirk were the medical pioneers in 1832. In England, at an even earlier date, Drs. Beaumout, Oxley, Grindrod, and Mr. Higgin botham, F.R.S., were avowed abstainers. Soon afterwards, these were followed by Drs. Ferrier, Menzies, and Burn, of Edinburgh; Mr. Bennett, of Winterton; Mr. Mudge, of Bodmin ; and Mr. Julius Jeffreys, F.R.S. Since the date of Mr. Jeffreys' adhesion (1837) a long succession of medical practitioners have cast in their lot with the total abstainers, notably Professor Miller, of Edinburgh; Professor Rolleston, F.R.S., of Oxford; Sir Henry Thompson; and Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S. The many important published Declarations show how great an interest the profession have taken in temperance reform. At the outset of the movement, Declarations against even the most limited use of ardent spirits were signed by the principal practitioners in many of our large cities. The leading doctors in Manchester and Bradford went so far in 1830, as to call the habitual use of intoxicating liquors "not only unnecessary, but pernicious." But there were three Declarations of unusual importance, both from their language and the standing of the physicians and surgeons who signed them. The first, in 1839, denied that wine, beer, or spirit is beneficial to health, and declared such stimulants to be unnecessary and useless in either large or small quantities, while large doses (such as many would think moderate) were injurious to everyone. The second, in 1847, set forth the compatibility of perfect health with total abstinence from all intoxicating beverages, the perfect safety with which all such drink could be given up either suddenly or gradually, and that total and universal abstinence from all intoxicating beverages would greatly add to the health, prosperity, morality, and happiness of the human race. The third, in 1871, recording the widespread belief that the inconsiderate prescription of large quantities of alcoholic liquids by medical men had given rise to intemperance, urged the need for medical practitioners to prescribe these liquors only under a sense of grave responsibility, and to order it with as much care as any powerful drug, the directions for its use being so framed as not to be interpreted as a sanction for excess or necessarily for the continuance of its use when the occasion had passed. The publication of the Cantor lectures, and other works on Alcohol, by Dr. B. W. Richardson, gave a powerful impetus to the cause, and the controversy in the Contemporary Review and other periodicals, with the medical evidence laid before the Lords' Committee, have spread much light on the true nature and effects of alcoholic drinks, while stimulating the public mind to a searching critical examination of the scientific claims of total abstinence. The medical event of 1880 was the annual meeting of the British Medical Association at Cambridge. In the brilliance of the reception, and in the attendance of men of learning and renown, the Cambridge session of this influential organisation excelled all that have preceded it. It is, therefore, all the more gratifying to Tem D perance reformers that, on an occasion of such unusual importance, our question should have come to the front and have been thoroughly considered in one of its most important phases. It has hitherto been the custom to include a charge for alcoholic drinks in the ticket of admission to the annual dinner. This is manifestly unfair, and, moreover, it involves a great moral principle. By purchasing a ticket, including a payment for strong drink, the abstainer assumes a share of the responsibility for our whole drinking system, with all the tremendous evils arising therefrom-evils which have taxed the utmost efforts of the Church and the State to cope with them. An abstaining member of the Association had for years past attempted to have this injustice remedied privately, but without success. He was thus forced to bring the matter before the first general meeting at Cambridge. The place and the audience combined to make the occasion memorable. The spacious Senate House of the University was crowded by a distinguished company, comprising, in addition to the members of the Association, the heads of the University and other guests of distinction. The question was debated with considerable warmth and at great length, and it was finally agreed to unanimously, on the motion of Dr. Norman Kerr (London), seconded by Professor McNaughton Jones (Cork), that "in the opinion of this meeting the price of the dinner ticket should not include a charge for wine, and the Committee of Council are requested to provide for this in future." Considering the novelty of the proposal, and the great weight conferred by the prescriptive right of the usages of successive years, no one could have anticipated so early a victory. The fact that nearly all those who took part in the discussion, though not abstainers, recognised the fairness of the proposed change, is a most auspicious omen. As the Editor of the British Medical Journal remarked, when commenting on the proceedings, the number of abstainers, both among the general public and the profession, is now so great, and their motive so praiseworthy, as to make their habits and wishes worthy of public recognition. We regard this unlooked-for triumph as but the earnest of better days to come, when educated men will exclude all intoxicating drinks from their social gatherings, and thus set the highest possible example of sobriety and moderation in the pleasures of the table. We look forward to the commendable |