The first active work touching the medical use of alcohol was a memorial from the National W. C. T. U. to the International Medical Congress of 1876, which met in Washington, D. C. This memorial was suggested by Miss Frances E. Willard, and co-operated in by the National Temperance Society. It asked for a deliverance from the Congress upon alcohol as a food and as a medicine. The Congress was divided into sections for the more thorough discussion of the various topics. Upon the program was a paper on "The Therapeutic Value of Alcohol as Food, and as a Medicine," by Ezra M. Hunt, M. D., delegate from the New Jersey Medical Society. This paper was read before the "Section on Medicine," and, after earnest discussion, the conclusions of the author were adopted "quite unanimously" as the sentiments of the Section on Medicine. As such they were reported for acceptance to the General Congress, and by it ordered to be transmitted as a reply to the memorialists. The report was published in full by the National Temperance Society, and may be obtained from it in paper binding for twenty-five cents. As it makes a book of 137 pages the conclusions only will be quoted here. They are as follows:-- 1. "Alcohol is not shown to have a definite food value by any of the usual methods of chemical analysis or physiological investigation. 2. "Its use as a medicine is chiefly that of a cardiac stimulant, and often admits of substitution. 3. "As a medicine it is not well fitted for self-prescription by the laity, and the medical profession is not accountable for such administration, or for the enormous evil arising therefrom. 4. "The purity of alcoholic liquors is in general not as well assured as that of articles used for medicine should be. The various mixtures when used as medicine should have definite and known composition, and should not be interchanged promiscuously." It is matter for sincere regret that this deliverance was not, in some way, brought prominently before every physician in the land. There are, doubtless, thousands of physicians who never heard of it, and, consequently have never been influenced by it to doubt the utility of the popular brandy bottle.