"For instance, both clinical and experimental observations show that strychnine directly increases the functional activity of the respiratory, cardiac and vasomotor nervous systems, and thereby increases the internal distribution of oxygen, which is nature's own special exciter of all vital action. Therefore it is properly a direct respiratory, cardiac and vasomotor stimulant and indirectly a stimulator of all vital processes. But the same kind of clinical and experimental observations show that alcohol directly diminishes the functional activity of all nerve structures, pre-eminently those of respiration and circulation, and also of all metabolic processes, whether respirative, disintegrative or secretory. Consequently it not only acts as directly antagonistic to strychnine, but equally so to all true stimulants or remedies capable of increasing vital activity. Instead, therefore, of meriting the name of _stimulant_, alcohol should be designated and used only as an anaesthetic and sedative, or depressor of vital activity. "And a thorough and impartial investigation will show that its use in the treatment of typhoid and other fevers, while deceiving both physician and patient, by its anaesthetic effect in diminishing restlessness, both prolongs the duration and increases the ratio of mortality of the disease, by its impairment of vital activity in the organizable elements of both blood and tissues." Equally interesting is the following outline of treatment pursued by Dr. W. H. Riley, of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. "The purpose of the present paper is to give briefly an outline of the method of treatment of typhoid fever as used by the writer in a considerable number of cases. "A consideration of the pathology of this disease does not properly come under this head, but we wish simply to call attention to the well-known fact that typhoid fever is a germ disease. The germ which causes this fever has generally been supposed to be the bacillus of Eberth. More recent bacteriological studies rather indicate that the bacillus coli may also cause the disease. These germs are usually carried into the body in food or drink, and, lodging in the small intestines, begin to grow and multiply, and by their life produce poisonous ptomaines which are absorbed and carried by the circulation to all the organs and tissues of the body. "It is these ptomaines, thus carried to all parts of the body, that are largely the immediate cause of the pyrexia and attending symptoms. The organisms which produce these poisons for the most part remain in the intestines, although they have been found in the spleen. "The indications for treatment are:-- "1. To remove or destroy the cause (to eliminate the germs and ptomaines from the body).