From our present standpoint it is particularly worthy of remark that Professor Woodhead states that this calcification of the blood-vessels is likely to occur in persons who have never been either habitual or occasional drunkards, but who have taken only "what they are pleased to call 'moderate' quantities of alcohol." Similarly, Dr. Welch declares that "alcoholic diseases are certainly not limited to persons recognized as drunkards. Instances have been recorded in increasing number in recent years of the occurrence of diseases of the circulatory, renal, and nervous systems, reasonably or positively attributable to the use of alcoholic liquors, in persons who never became really intoxicated and were regarded by themselves and by others as 'moderate drinkers.'" "It is well established," adds Dr. Welch, "that the general mortality from diseases of the liver, kidney, heart, blood-vessels, and nervous system is much higher in those following occupations which expose them to the temptation of drinking than in others." Strumpell declares that chronic inflammation of the stomach and bowels is almost exclusively of alcoholic origin; and that when a man in the prime of life dies of certain chronic kidney affections, one may safely infer that he has been a lover of beer and other alcoholic drinks. Similarly, cirrhosis of the liver is universally recognized as being, nine times in ten, of alcoholic origin. The nervous affections of like origin are numerous and important, implicating both brain cells and peripheral fibres. _How the Poison Works_ Without going into further details as to the precise changes that alcohol may effect in the various organs of the body, we may note that these pathological changes are everywhere of the same general type. There is an ever-present tendency to destroy the higher form of cells--those that are directly concerned with the vital processes--and to replace them with useless or harmful connective tissue. "Whether this scar tissue formation goes on in the heart, in the kidneys, in the liver, in the blood-vessels, or in the nerves," says Woodhead, "the process is essentially the same, and it must be associated with the accumulation of poisonous or waste products in the lymph spaces through which the nutrient fluids pass to the tissues. The contracting scar tissue of a wound has its exact homologue in the contracting scar tissue that is met with in the liver, in the kidney, and in the brain." It is not altogether pleasant to think that one's bodily tissues--from the brain to the remotest nerve fibril, from the heart to the minutest arteriole--may perhaps be undergoing day by day such changes as these. Yet that is the possibility which every habitual drinker of alcoholic beverages--"moderate drinker" though he be--must face. This is an added toll that does not appear in the first price of the glass of beer or bottle of wine, but it is a toll that may refuse to be overlooked in the final accounting.