"It is pointed out, as most of us have from time to time had the opportunity of observing, that, taking pneumonia as an example of this class of disease, there can be no doubt that the alcoholic patient has not merely an appreciably smaller chance for recovery, but an apparently slight attack becomes one in which the chances of recovery come to be against the patient rather than in his favor. I well remember when I was House Physician in the Royal Infirmary at Edinburgh that Dr. Muirhead, who almost invariably treated his pneumonic patients without alcohol, used to say that an ordinary case of acute pneumonia should always recover under careful treatment, but that cases of pneumonia in 'alcoholics' were always most anxious cases and in every way unsatisfactory. (Slides were shown on screen to illustrate the changes taking place in pneumonia, the conditions of leucocytosis, and the very important part which leucocytes play in the process of 'clearing up' during the course of the patient's recovery). Dr. Delearde in an admirable summary gives the principal features of pneumonia in alcoholics. He describes it as running a comparatively prolonged course, as being often accompanied by a violent delirium, following which is a period of prostration or of coma; even in those who recover, abscesses frequently occur in the liver, or in other organs. He also points out that there may be a similar chain of events in other infective conditions such as erysipelas and typhoid fever, but as he insists that, until Abbott's experiments on the streptococcus,[A] staphylococcus[A] and bacterium coli,[A] in alcoholized and non-alcoholized animals, little attempt has been made to indicate the mechanism, or, at any rate, the process by which alcoholized individuals are rendered more susceptible to the invasion and action of micro-organisms. [Footnote A: Microbes or bacteria of different kinds.] "As we have already seen, Abbott's experiments prove beyond doubt that attenuated disease-producing organisms, which in healthy animals do not kill immediately, bring about a fatal result when the animal has previously been treated with alcohol. In order to determine which was the most important factor in the destruction or weakening of the resisting agents in the body, Dr. Delearde conceived the idea of experimenting with those diseases in which it has been found possible to produce, artificially, as it were, and under controlled conditions, an immunity or insusceptibility in healthy animals. He carried out a series of experiments on rabbits, immunizing against and infecting with the virus of hydrophobia, tetanus and anthrax.[B] To these rabbits he first administered a quantity of alcohol, from 6 to 8 c.c. at first, and gradually rises to 10 c.c. doses per diem.