"The discovery of the germ origin of diphtheria and of the typhoid forms of fever, has led to great changes in thousands of households. Our houses are constructed with far more attention to ventilation and proper heating. We shall finally get rid of drunkenness and intemperance of other sorts, on sanitary grounds mainly. Alcohol has been considered as at least valuable in moderation. It has been looked upon as a medicine. That its value as a stimulant hangs on the previous abuse of health is now understood, and its value purely as a very temporary bridging of weakness alone is conceded. That the drink habit is in any sense, however moderate, of sanitary value, is disproved. Few doctors prescribe any form of alcohol for habitual use. The saloon is unsanitary in all its effects. The temperance issue rests at that point. Animals to which spirits have been given in their food digest nearly one-half less than other animals of the kind. The nutrition of the human body demands the abolition of stimulants and narcotics. The saloon will go ultimately as a nuisance to health. We have not yet reached a condition when public morals can rest on any other basis than health. It is doubtful if there can be a higher basis. What is unwholesome is wrong; what is promotive of health and completeness for the individual and for the community is right. "Sanity is dependent on sanitary living. They both are derived etymologically from _sanitus_, and that from _sanus_, the Latin for sound or whole. Insanity has come to have the limited meaning of unsoundness of brain. * * * Insanity is on the increase in the United States, but not more so than nervous disorders in general. This indicates a tendency to a break-down of the national type of organism, and cannot be considered with indifference. The fact exists as a consequence of the overwork and high pressure of modern life, but in this country is at its maximum, because, for several generations, we have been at white heat, subjecting a continent to our domestic purposes.