In 1863 the total production of malt liquors in all the New England States, excepting Massachusetts, amounted to 49,607 barrels, a little more than double the quantity produced in 1809-10 in Massachusetts alone. Of these 49,607 barrels Connecticut produced 13,055; Maine, 2,207; New Hampshire, 25,945; Rhode Island, 7,029 and Vermont 1,371 barrels. In the same year (1863) the total production of malt liquors in Massachusetts amounted to 112,000 barrels. [Sidenote: THE COUNTER REFORMATION] At about this time a very strong current of public opinion, set in motion by official reports as to the manifest healthfulness of malt liquors as shown by sanitary inspections of the Union camps, began to weaken the indiscriminate crusades of ultra-reformers against all kinds of stimulants; and Massachusetts, then burdened by an absurd prohibitory law, again, as so often before, took the lead in this counter-reformation. Several years elapsed before the movement culminated in the now celebrated report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts, in which Dr. Bowditch, under the title of “Intemperance in the Light of Cosmic Laws,” summarized the experiences, convictions and opinions of eminent scientists, philosophers, public officials and philanthropists from all parts of the globe, and reached the conclusion, based on this vast mass of testimony, that “light beer and ale can be used even freely without any very apparent injury to the individual or without causing intoxication, and that some writers even think they do no harm, but real good, if used moderately.” The direct result of this agitation and of a comprehensive legislative inquiry into the different phases of this question, under Governor John A. Andrews in 1867, was the repeal of prohibition in Massachusetts in 1868. Connecticut, after essentially modifying the prohibitory law, totally repealed it in 1867, substituting a license law. In New Hampshire the manufacture and sale of beer, cider and native wine had not been forbidden by the so-called Prohibition Act of 1855. Rhode Island also repealed her prohibitory law in 1863. Vermont was the only New England State, excepting Maine, of course, in which the Maine law of 1852 remained then in force.