Some patients go on for years with no disturbance of the bowels, liver and stomach, beyond a slight catarrh and some jaundice, but these troubles are sure to come sooner or later. In many instances as the appetite for food decreases the appetite for alcoholic stimulants replaces it. A young lady, of twenty, formerly a patient of mine, after using the drug subcutaneously for three years, lost her appetite and subsisted for nearly eight months upon lager beer, a few crackers and a little toast. She would consume about one gallon of beer a day. During this time she somewhat diminished the amount of morphine used (eight grains, dropped to six grains, in twenty-four hours) and gained in weight and health. At the end of this time, however, severe gastric disturbance supervened, and she lay for months in a precarious condition. She is now cured of the habit. Alcoholic stimulants are used by some habituès to increase the effect of the morphia, which it does to a certain extent. They delude themselves into the belief that they will be enabled to thus reduce the amount of morphia used, but in the majority of cases this is a fallacy. Those who prefer laudanum and paregoric to opium or morphine often do so on account of the amount of alcohol contained in these preparations. I knew a gentleman, some years ago, now dead, an Episcopalian minister, who became addicted to the use of alcoholic stimulants. His excesses were so frequent and so degrading that it was found necessary to expel him from the church. Sobered by the blow, yet unwilling to entirely abandon his habit, he seized upon the expedient of using large quantities of laudanum, thus getting the effect of both opium and alcohol. He died some two years after, from taking an overdose, at the end of a spree, the first and last one in the two years. His tombstone is a monument to blasted hopes, unsatisfied ambition, a life ill-spent, and points a very pregnant moral to those who knew him. Let a man count well the cost before he takes service with a master who is only satisfied with a blasted life, here and hereafter. THE CUTANEOUS SURFACE.