Another physician, also resident in Massachusetts, says, “I have had a very large practice among the Germans for twenty years, and my observation has been that they are remarkably free from consumption and chronic diseases. I have attributed it to their free use of lager beer, and do conscientiously believe that the moderate use of this beverage is beneficial.” A letter from the consulate general of the United States at Frankfort-on-the-Main, reads thus: “Twenty years ago the state of affairs in reference to temperance was different. By the improvement in making beer and the selling of it to the people at large, at low prices, things have changed wonderfully. Drunkards have disappeared. A great deal less of cider and wine is consumed. Everybody now generally drinks beer. Intoxication has decreased. It cannot be said that the general health of the people suffers in this part of Germany. In the city of Frankfort, with a population of over one hundred thousand, and an average annual mortality of fifteen hundred, hardly five persons on an average have died of delirium tremens, which all the eminent, physicians here attribute to the free use of lager beer.” Mr. John Jay of the United States Legation at Vienna says: “I am advised by those in whose judgment I have full confidence, that the chief drinks in Austria are wine but particularly beer, the latter of which is drunk by all classes of society at home and at places of amusement, and that but comparatively a small amount of spirituous liquors is consumed except in Galicia. Touching the relative amount of intoxication in the country where I am residing, and that seen all over the United States, I do say that I have seen more intoxicated persons in the streets of New York in one day than I have chanced to see in Vienna during the past year.” Baron Liebig, the eminent chemist, makes the following statements: “Beer unites in its composition a number of constituents whose action is such as to more or less completely neutralize the alcohol whose tendency is to exalt the function of the brain and nervous system.” “Fermented juices, in general, differ from spirits in containing alkalies, organic acids and certain other substances.” “Pure lager beer when taken with lean flesh and little bread yields a diet approaching to milk, and with fat meat, approaching to rice or potatoes.” And in another place, “In beer-drinking countries, it is the universal medicine for the healthy as well as for the sick, and it is milk to the aged.” Dr. Schlaeger of Vienna, also a distinguished chemist, says: