As we have shown in our address at a special meeting of the Philadelphia Medical Jurisprudence Society, insanity and crime stand in very close relationship, and, in fact, crime may be regarded as a nervous disease. We should, therefore, not be surprised to find so many criminals among alcoholics. According to statistics prepared in Germany, some 63 per cent. of cases of injury to the person, 69 per cent. of robbery and murder, and 77 per cent. of sexual crimes were committed by persons under the influence of alcohol; and according to Dr. Scharffenberg, of Christiania, if there were no alcoholics crime would be diminished by one-half. A person committing a crime while under the influence of alcohol is no more responsible than a person who does the same thing while in a state of delirium caused by some infectious disease, or while under the influence of such a poison as muscarin or atropin, which produces an intoxication similar to that of alcohol. Of the other organs which are injured by alcohol we must put in the front rank the various ductless glands, which are of special importance to us. The frequency of impotency in chronic alcoholism proves how injurious to the sexual glands are large quantities of alcohol. The same applies to the adrenals, as shown by the frequency of arteriosclerosis in alcoholics. From one dose of alcohol we can often see an increase in blood-pressure. It has been shown by Dr. Sajous that alcohol acts in a very deleterious way upon the pituitary body when taken in anything but small quantities or well diluted as in beer or light wines; he illustrates this fact in a very instructive microscopic specimen.[311] Footnote 311: Sajous: “Internal Secretions,” vol. ii, p. 1332, 1907. In the same way the bad effects of alcohol on the kidneys and liver are amply demonstrated in the handbooks of clinical medicine and pathological anatomy, with which we are all well acquainted; and the constant occurrence of cirrhosis of the liver and interstitial nephritis in alcoholics plainly show this. A matter of grave importance to us is also the degeneration of the thyroid in alcoholics, as found by the researches of de Quervain[312] and Sarbach[313] and the clinical observations of Hertoghe.[314] Footnote 312: de Quervain: Semaine Méd., 1895. Footnote 313: Sarbach: Mitth. Grenzgebiete Med. u. Chir., 1906, p. 213. Footnote 314: Hertoghe: Loc. cit.