"The author does not claim a phenomenally low mortality, nor does he claim specially brilliant results. He has to contend with unreasoning fear on the part of the patients for hospital surgeons, and also most of his cases had been in the hands of quacks, and had subjected themselves to remedies prescribed by old women. Many cases came after the family physician had exhausted his resources. He thinks his results are considerably better than the average in hospitals and in country districts. Alcohol medication was dispensed with entirely after the patients came under his care, and to this he attributes much of his success. He does not believe that alcohol is a stimulant, or a tonic. On the contrary, he believes that it retards digestion, arrests secretion, and hinders excretion. The courage and fortitude of his patients were lessened instead of increased by the use of alcoholic medication. "Pain is better borne, endured longer and more patiently when alcohol is not used. "He urges the practical surgeon to carefully weigh the subject of alcohol, and verify for himself the expediency of its use." Dr. B. W. Richardson in the report of his practice for 1895 in the London Temperance Hospital refers to non-alcoholic treatment of rheumatism. He said:-- "Out of seventy-one cases of acute or subacute rheumatism--the large majority acute, and attended with temperatures moving up to 104 deg. F.--sixty-nine recovered, and two, although they were discharged without being put on the recovery list, were so far relieved that a few days' change in country air seemed all that was required to induce full restoration. Comparing the experience of the treatment of acute rheumatic disease without alcohol with that which I have previously observed with alcohol, I can have no hesitation in declaring that it is of the greatest advantage to follow total abstinence absolutely in this disease. The pain and swelling of joints is more quickly relieved under abstinence, the fever falls more rapidly, there is less frequent relapse, and there is quicker recovery. In brief, the experience of treatment of rheumatic fever minus alcohol, presents to me as much novelty as it does pleasure, and I am convinced that if any candid member of the profession could have witnessed what I have witnessed in this matter, he would agree with me that alcohol in rheumatic fever, however acute, is altogether out of place. I am also under the conviction, though I express it with great reserve, that in acute rheumatism, treated without alcohol, the cardiac complications, endocardial and pericardial, are much less frequently developed than where alcohol is supplied." Dr. Pechuman in _Alcohol--Is It a Medicine_, published in 1891, says:--