Dietetic abuses have contributed more to the progress of human degeneration than all other causes taken together. Our infants are sickened with drastic drugs. The growth of young children is stunted with narcotic beverages; the suppression of healthier pastimes drives our young men to the rum-shop; intemperance has become the Lethe in which the victims of social abuses seek to drown their misery. The curse of the poison-habit haunts us from the cradle to the grave, and for millions of our fellow-men has made the burdens of life to outweigh its blessings. There is a doubt if the “years” of Genesis should be understood in the present meaning of the word; but historians and biologists agree that the average longevity of our race has been enormously reduced within the last twenty centuries, and intemperance is the chief cause of that decrease. Our average stature has been reduced even below that of the ancient natives of an enervating climate, like that of the lower Nile, as proved by D’Arnaud’s measurements of the Egyptian mummy-skeletons. On our own continent, outdoor life in the struggle with the perils of the wilderness has somewhat redeemed our loss of physical manhood; but what are the men of modern Europe compared with their iron-fisted ancestors, the athletic Greeks, the world-conquering Romans, the Scandinavian giants, the heroic Visigoths? Like a building collapsing under the progress of a devouring fire, the structure of the human body has shrunk under the influence of the poison-habit; and there is no doubt that the moral vigor of our race has undergone a corresponding impairment—appreciable in spite of the recent revival of intellectual activity and the constant increase of general information.