has shortened the average longevity of the working classes by at least five years. Political economists have calculated the consequent loss of productive force, but there is another consideration which is too often overlooked. The progress of degeneration has reduced our life term so far below the normal average that the highest purposes of individual existence are generally defeated. Our lives are mostly half-told tales. Our season ends before the harvest time; before the laborer’s task is half done he is overtaken by the night when no man can work. The secret of longevity would, indeed, solve the chief riddle of existence, for the children of toil could then hope to reach the goal of the visible compensation which, on earth at least, is now reserved for the exceptional favorites of fortune. That hope is diminished by everything that tends still further to reduce our shortened span of life, and beside increasing the burdens of existence, the poison vice therefore directly decreases the possibility of its rewards. Yet that result is almost insured by the LOSS OF HEALTH which all experienced physiologists admit to be the inevitable consequence of the stimulant habit. Every known disease of the human system is aggravated by intemperance. The morbid diathesis, as physicians call a predisposition to organic disorders, finds an ally in alcohol that enables it to defy the expurgative efforts of Nature. A consumptive toper will fail to derive any benefit from a change of climate. A dram-drinking dyspeptic can not be cured by outdoor exercise. The influence of alcoholic tonics tends to aggravate nervous disorders into mental derangements. But even the soundest constitution is not proof against the bane of that influence. Before the end of the first year habitual drinkers lose that spontaneous gayety which constitutes the happiness of perfect health as well as of childhood. The system becomes dependent upon the treacherous aid of artificial stimulants, and the lack of vital vigor soon begins to tell upon every part of the organism. Alcohol counteracts the benefit of all the hygienic advantages of climate and habit, and it is doubtful if the effect of its continued influence could be equaled by the intentional introduction of contagious diseases. A medical expert might collect the most incurable patients in the leper slums of Shanghai, in the lazarettos[5] of Naples and the fever hospitals of Vera Cruz, and distribute them in the cities of another country; yet a year after the dissemination of such diseases the hygienic condition of a temperate nation would be better than that of a drunkard nation after a year of the strictest quarantine protection. In the sanitary history of the Caucasian nations alcohol has proved a worse plague than the Black Death.