In persons of alcoholic habits the result of pneumonia is always to be dreaded. The more liberal has been the consumption of alcohol, as a rule, the less hope is there of a prompt, uncomplicated recovery. Stimulants are of the greatest importance in pneumonia, and the less the patient has taken of them before the development of his pulmonary affection the more effective are they when the crisis of the disease comes. The less the alcohol that has been taken habitually before the development of pneumonia, the more surely will it do the work expected of it during the course of the pneumonia. It must be borne in mind that cases of pneumonia that occur in institutions, asylums, hospitals, and the like, and in crowded quarters in tenement houses or lodging houses, have a distinctly worse prognosis than those treated in private houses, and the priest must accordingly be more on his guard and give the Sacraments early. In pneumonia, as in typhoid fever, so-called walking cases always have a serious prognosis. They occur in very strong patients who resist, not the invasion of the disease, but its {152} weakening influence, and keep on their feet for several days, despite the presence of symptoms that require them to be in bed. When a patient walks into a doctor's office in the third or fourth day of a pneumonia with most of one lung consolidated, exhaustion of the heart and of the nervous system, under these unfavourable conditions, will usually have made his resistive vitality very low. Such cases should be given the Sacraments early, while in the full possession of their senses. Conditions sometimes develop rather unexpectedly in which the administration of the Sacraments becomes unsatisfactory, because of the collapsed state of the patient. This same advice holds with regard to walking cases of typhoid fever. Where strong patients suffering from the disease have insisted on being around on their feet for from six to ten days at the beginning of the affection, the prognosis becomes very unfavourable. Complications, such as hemorrhage or perforation of the intestine, occur about the beginning of the third week, and often prove fatal. All typhoid fever patients should receive at least the Sacraments necessary to give a sense of security to the priest and their friends during the course of the second week, even though they may seemingly be in excellent condition. When typhoid fever is fatal the complications occur suddenly, often without much warning; and if intestinal perforation, for instance, takes place, the peritonitis which develops makes the patient's condition very unsuitable for the reception of the Sacraments in a proper state of mind.