There is no surer way to retard and often prevent recovery than to give patients drinks or even remedies which contain an appreciable quantity of alcohol. Where the tendency to recovery is strong they will recover sooner or later in spite of the treatment; but in some cases the physician may keep a delicate, nervous patient sick as long as he gives alcohol in any form; and in the most critical stage of typhoid fever, pneumonia, and other diseases where the patient needs nourishment, and that impurities should be removed, there is no more dangerous treatment than to give alcohol in any form, which interferes with these processes by paralyzing and congesting the capillary vessels. Hot water and nourishment, cautiously supplied, are what such patients require, not alcoholic stimulants. The habit of taking either opium or morphine in our country has very generally resulted from the prescriptions of physicians. The patient may obtain palliative relief from its use, but suffers when he attempts to leave it off; consequently, without fully realizing the danger which he incurs, he continues the remedy until he is enslaved. With the exception of alcohol, I know of no more dangerous medicine to give during the critical stages of inflammatory, febrile, and other diseases than Allopathic doses of opium in any form. This anodyne, by its retarding, benumbing, and stupefying effects upon the body, often destroys the power of reaction at the critical stage of the disease when the vital forces should be left free to act, and consequently in many cases patients die who would not die if they were not under the influence of this drug. Patients will often go very near to the border line and yet rally if kept free from the so-called "stimulants" and narcotics, and simple, plain nourishment is cautiously given and the body kept warm. Physicians are sometimes responsible for the habit of using tobacco among their patrons. It is generally in chronic cases of disease where tobacco is prescribed, and, as a rule, when it is once prescribed by a physician the patient never thinks of giving up the use of the remedy; nor, so far as I have known, are physicians who prescribe tobacco often, if ever, careful to direct patients to discontinue using the remedy as soon as the symptoms of the disease from which they are suffering are relieved. Of course, a physician who neglects to do this seriously neglects his duty. It is safe to say that few physicians ever prescribe the smoking or chewing of tobacco as a remedy for diseases who do not use the weed themselves, for they can generally find much better and safer remedies.