I therefore regard it as a happy omen for the future of society, that the physiological effects of this substance, and its absolute uselessness and positive injury to the human system, except as a medicine and under exceptional circumstances, are beginning to be more clearly recognized by the medical profession, and more generally understood by the educated portion of society. And yet I fear we are far from the realization of any millennial period, as to its use and abuse, in this or other countries. Indeed, while probably there is much less of alcohol used as a beverage among the more intelligent portion of the community at the present time than there was fifty years ago, yet I think there is more used in that way among the operative classes, and especially the young of large towns and cities. The facilities of obtaining it are so much greater, that the temptations to its use are greatly increased, and the habit of using lager beer, ale, and wine, among those from fourteen to twenty-four or twenty-six years of age, is certainly greatly increased, if the numbers of this class who frequent and assist in sustaining the large number of saloons and public-houses now so prevalent in cities, may be taken as an indication of existing facts. Granting, however, that actually less of alcohol is now consumed than formerly, per capita, it by no means follows that the amount of its evil effects is less. The conditions of life are so greatly different to-day from those existing fifty years ago; populations reside to a so much larger extent in-doors, so that alcohol would be much less freely and easily eliminated from the system, than when exercising and breathing in an out-of-door atmosphere; life is so much more intense in many of its avocations which were then unknown, necessitating very much larger drafts upon the brain and nervous system; the means with which to purchase and use alcoholic beverages by the laboring classes are so much more abundant and easily obtained now than formerly, and while living in places of larger population than would be possible if residing in the country, or in small villages,--all these conditions and others unite in rendering the probability of its use greater, and its effects upon the nervous system vastly more injurious than formerly. Under these conditions of modern civilization a small quantity goes a long way. Besides, society is to-day reaping the harvest of its abuse of this drug during a long period, in the shape of a diathesis which manifests itself in various ways and under many forms of disorder.