Alcohol in large doses may also have a degenerating effect on the sexual glands. Small doses can stimulate, but large doses are decidedly harmful. Temporary impotence may result in such cases, and chronic impotence in inveterate drinkers. Though alcohol in large doses is harmful, and if taken in very large quantities for many years can hasten old age, there is absolutely no reason to suppose that in small doses it has any etiological relation to senility. In fact, there are many cases on record of persons who have taken alcohol, especially wine in limited quantity, every day, and have lived to enjoy a healthy old age. One of our confrères, a surgeon of Lotharingia named Politiman, lived to be 140. As Professor Pel, whom we quote, says, the historian explains that this old age was due to the medicine this worthy doctor took every day after doing his work. He had drunk his fill every night since the age of twenty-five years. Another surgeon, Espagno, lived to be 112 with no less moderate habits! Countess K——, who died in Nicolajew in Russia, a few years ago, at the age of 111 years, took daily a cordial in the form of a good drink of cognac; and about one and a half years ago the _Daily Mail_ of London brought to public notice the case of a Mrs. Anderson living in Springfield, near Glasgow, who, in spite of her 103 years, was taking daily a tablespoonful of whiskey. A strong point against the anti-alcohol faddists is the case of Brown,[164] an Irish peasant, who, after many years of heavy beer-drinking, attained the age of 120. His tombstone exhibits the following epitaph:— Footnote 164: Quoted after Professor Pflüger. “Here lies Brown, who became 120 only through the strong beer he was drinking. He was constantly drunk, and in this condition so terrible, that even death was afraid of him. When, however, one day contrary to his habits he was sober and in a quiet mood, death got courage, seized him, and thus at last was triumphant over this incorrigible drunkard.” (See, further, Chapter XLI.) All these examples merely show what we have so often insisted upon, that everything depends upon heredity. There are many causes that produce premature senility. It seems, also, that when only a few of these causes, or only one, is acting, there is a possibility of a successful fight against it. It is a different matter when all, or several, of the causes of old age are present. As the German proverb says: “Viele Hunde sind des Hasen Tod” (“many dogs mean death for the hare”).