consumptives had been general in the city. With no observed or alleged change in the climate or other external conditions which might seriously affect the health of the city, I found that the yearly number of deaths by consumption had increased very regularly with the increase of population. The deaths from that disease were as many in 1865 in proportion to the population, when the whiskey treatment was most general, as in 1845, before that treatment had been introduced.

I took my minutes with me to the next meeting, and at the close of the lecture, before a great congregation of listeners, I called attention to them, and asked a significant question: If my professional brethren here are curing consumptives by the alcoholic or by any other treatment, how comes it that so many are reported as dead by that disease, as many, in fact, according to your population, as there were in 1845, when no one claimed that such cases were curable? The discussion of that subject was not, to my knowledge, renewed while I remained in the city.

The prescription of milk-punch or ale to nursing women betrays so much ignorance, or recklessness, or both, on the part of the attending physician, that I hardly dare attempt any proper characterization of the practice. The folly and danger of such a course have been so thoroughly set before the world by the voice and pen of that eminent physician and genuine reformer, Dr. James Edmunds of London, that all that now seems needful is to give his views on the subject the widest possible circulation. The National Temperance Society and Publication House can supply all demands for his writings, as they have wisely republished those printed in England, and given to the public a report corrected by himself of his lectures in New York, in connection with his late visit to this country. It is such an outrage in every point of view to habituate the brain and nervous system of babes to the narcotic power of alcohol for weeks, sometimes for months, by its administration to the nursing mother, that any physician should be expelled the profession in disgrace who should be convicted of such a prescription.

I am unwilling to conclude this article without adding

here my solemn protest against the practice, quite too common, of drugging, with some variety of alcoholic liquors, persons fatally diseased, and evidently drawing near the end of their earthly existence. In many cases the drugging is continued to the very last hour of life. I know well what reasons are given for this most objectionable practice: "The patient is very low, the pulse is weak, and the extremities are growing cold." Well, and what then? Do you expect men to die with a full pulse and warm feet when death comes as the result of disease? If a weak pulse and cooling extremities are sufficient reason for dosing with wine or brandy, then nine-tenths of the people of this country must be thus dosed before they go hence: old or young, Christian or infidel, worn-out debauchee or life-long friend of temperance--all alike must be dosed, for more than ninetenths of the people die in their beds. Not one-tenth are cut off suddenly, as by lightning-stroke, drowning, apoplexy, or those forms of heart-disease which have a sudden termination, often ending in instant death. Not one-tenth thus die if you add to the causes of death already stated fatal casualties by land and sea.

So, as nine-tenths of us will probably die in our beds, we shall, at some future time, exhibit the symptoms which are thought to demand the use of alcoholic liquors, and be compelled to swallow them, though to thousands it will be the first time that those articles have ever passed their lips. The feeble heart must be goaded to increased action by the presence of alcohol in the blood, only to send an increased flow to the feeble brain and lungs, already perhaps congested, for a congested state of one or both those organs occurs in a vast number of cases for many hours before the cessation of life. What desirable end is anticipated by the drugging in such cases? When the patient was suffering severe pain during the active stage of the disease, you could give, perhaps, a respectable reason for narcotizing the patienti.e., to lessen his sufferings. That stage has passed, and, in a majority of cases, no acute suffering attends the descent into the dark valley. Why, then, dose with narcotics? Perhaps it may be with the expectation of adding some

what to the vital forces which are manifestly declining; but that old notion has been thoroughly exploded. No medical man who is abreast with the times, and has kept himself informed as to the advance of the profession in physiological knowledge, will talk about alcohol giving strength to a patient.

If he had a fund of vitality in reserve, alcohol might call it into activity for the time, but it cannot add to his stock on hand, and, then, more or less of narcotic influence will follow. In very many cases where life is failing the patient is narcotized already by the imperfectly decarbonized blood which is reaching the brain, for the failing lungs and imperfect respiration do not clear the blood of carbon. Why, then, pour down in continuous doses another active narcotic? It is a lamentable blunder, as seen from a physiological stand-point, to dose a sinking man with narcotics when their use is not called for by acute suffering.

And how unwise it is for other reasons! Perhaps the failing man may have been, during a long and valuable life, an active friend of temperance, and in the hearing of the people he has very many times denounced the liquortraffic as a scourge and curse to society; and now (how Satan must exult over the turn which things have taken!) his son, brother, or dear friend, perhaps, like himself, a temperance man, a teetotaler, must be posted off to the wine-cellar or liquor-store for a supply of medicine! Anxious friends and neighbors who visit the chamber of the sinking man find the air of it redolent of brandy, and see the bottle or decanter upon the table.

I am compelled to believe, from many facts that have come to my knowledge, that of the active friends of the temperance reform, those who had acquired a national reputation as such, who have passed away, more than half-I think, more than three-fourths-were, during their last sickness, drugged with alcohol. Oh! it is a blunder, a shame, a scandal, an outrage. Brethren, let us reform it altogether.

Our blessed Lord, in the direst conceivable extremity, refused the drugged potion presented to his lips. Let us follow his example while reason remains, and lay on our

friends a solemn injunction not to permit us to be drugged when, from increasing weakness or the absence of reason, we are no longer able to protect ourselves from a great

wrong.

SHOULD NOT UNFERMENTED WINE BE USED AT

THE COMMUNION ?

BY REV. A. B. RICH, D.D., OF MASSACHUSETTS.

I HAVE been asked to discuss the following question: "Should not unfermented wine be used at the Lord's Supper?" In doing so, I shall assume what every Hebrew scholar knows to be true-that the Old Testament employs thirteen different terms to designate the varieties of wine and other beverages in use among the ancients, almost all of which are rendered in our English version by the one term wine. I shall assume what is rendered apparent, as I think, by the derivation of these terms, and the references made to their effects, and by the language of God respecting their use, that some of these liquors were unfermented, or retained in only a slightly fermented state, by the various processes then in use to destroy or eliminate the agent of fermentation; that they were therefore characteristically saccharine beverages, and used for their nourishing properties, according to the design of God in the gift of the wine, and therefore with his approbation; that others of them had fermented, and were characteristically alcoholic beverages, and used for their stimulating properties—these properties being greatly increased, in some instances, by the addition of various stimulating and harmful drugs. These were used by drunkards, and by all who desired to produce an artificial excitement-used with the unmistakable, the oft-repeated, tokens of God's displeasure. I shall assume, therefore, that in this difference in the nature of these beverages we have the ground of the discrimination which is made when they are referred to, their use being sometimes unequivocally reprobated, at other times as heartily commended.

Some of you may not agree with me in these postulates, but to me they are as incontrovertible as the axioms of