In these days all mankind searches for exhilaration. The instinctive demand for it is an inevitable result of the artificial social system which we have built up. We work beyond our strength, and naturally feel the need of stimulants; we play beyond our strength, and as naturally need whips for our vitiated energies. The greatest social disaster of all the ages occurred when first alcoholic stimulation, which is only one step in advance of alcoholic intoxication and narcotization, found its place as an adjunct of good-fellowship. All humanity turns in one way or another to artificial stimulants, and while alcohol and narcotics are the worst among these, we cannot slur the fact that many who would shun these agents as they would a pestilence, turn freely to milder, but not altogether harmless, stimulants, such as tea, coffee, and tobacco. I do not purpose to go into a long dissertation upon the chemical peculiarities of alcohol; I do not purpose to discuss the value or peril of alcohol as food; there are plenty of published chapters telling exactly what alcohol is. I feel that it is my mission to do none of these things, but to endeavor to reveal to the student the most effective way of dealing with a patient who has drifted into a definite alcoholic addiction. THE MAN WHO CANNOT BE SAVED It seems impossible to arouse any enthusiasm or sympathy for the human derelict whose natural weakness is inevitably such that one taste of alcohol means a gallon, and final wreck and ruin. The human cipher, plus alcohol or minus alcohol, it matters not which, means nothing. It may be true that alcohol subtracted from nothing leaves nothing, but it is certain that alcohol added to nothing may mean a peril to society and a serious charge upon it. A man who has achieved nothing up to the point where he has become addicted to excessive alcoholism will rarely repay the trouble involved in an effort to preserve him from his folly, although of course his preservation from it might be of general social service as a means of saving the public money that otherwise might be expended in the reparation of the work of his destructive tendencies, besides the public expense involved in police, court, and prison economy that prevents him from the opportunity of indulgence. But thousands of decent men annually yield to alcohol, and are wrecked by it. The decent and potentially valuable citizen who through overwork, worry, sickness, sorrow, or even through a mistaken conception of social amenities or duties, drifts into excessive alcoholism is a victim of our imperfect social system, and repays remedial effort. Furthermore, such a man is invariably savable if he himself applies for salvation, assists with his own will in its application to his case, and pays his own money for the cure.