partial starvation as well as by obviating toxaemia. After a period of starvation a normal person may become heavier than before, and his general health be improved. But in the present state of our knowledge and in the light of the dangers of starvation the further investigation in man of this problem is one that demands serious hesitation. As to the bad influence of alcohol on longevity there can be no reasonable doubt. Alcohol is a protoplasmic poison causing degenerative changes in the cells and reducing the resistance to infection. A collective investigation undertaken by Sir Isambard Owen[76] showed that there were very few hard drinkers among the long-lived, and Sir George Humphry concluded that the characteristics of the aged included temperance; among 46 centenarians one, and among 73 men over 90 one confessed to taking too much occasionally, and out of 298 men between 80 and 90 years of age 45, or 15 per cent, were classified as taking much alcohol. That such exceptions occur is explicable by great inherent vitality. It has been said that “wine is the milk of old people,” but from his experience of the hygiene of the elderly Sir Hermann Weber was not in sympathy with this view, and he pointed out the weakness of the popular idea that the moderate enjoyment of alcohol was harmless; for so-called moderate drinking is in reality often immoderate indulgence for the individual, and most of us must have recognized from observation that long-continued though moderate use of alcohol is followed by premature deterioration. The proverb _vinum lac veneris_ and the tendency that alcohol has to lead to incontinence and so to venereal infection may be borne in mind in considering its influence on longevity. As a medicine alcohol has its occasional use, and though it may be a food it is an expensive one.