Notes on Required Readings in “The Chautauquan” 367 Talk About Books 369 Paragraphs from New Books 370 Special Notes 372 REQUIRED READING FOR MARCH. TEMPERANCE TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE; OR, THE POISON PROBLEM. PART VI. BY FELIX L. OSWALD, M.D. CHAPTER VI.—SUBJECTIVE REMEDIES. “Deeprooted evils can not be abolished by striking at the branches.”—_Boerhave._[1] The history of the temperance movement has demonstrated the sad futility of palliative remedies. We have seen that the malady of the poison vice is not a self-limited, but a necessarily progressive evil. The half-way measures of “restrictive” legislation have resulted only in furnishing additional proof that prevention is better, because less impossible, than control.[A] The regulation of the poison traffic, the redress of the unavoidably resulting mischief, the cure and conversion of drunkards, in order to be effectual, would impose intolerable and never ending burdens on the resources even of the wealthiest communities, while the advocates of prohibition would forestall the evils both of the remedy and the disease. But we should not overlook the truth that, in our own country at least, the poison plant of intemperance springs from a composite root. In southern Spain, under the dominion of the Saracens,[2] the poison vice was almost unknown during a series of centuries.[B] The moral code and the religion of the inhabitants discountenanced intemperance. The virtue of dietetic purity ranked with chastity and cleanliness. An abundance of harmless amusements diverted from vicious pastimes. Under such circumstances the absence of direct temptations constituted a sufficient safeguard against the vice of the poison habit; but in a country like ours the efficacy of prohibition depends on the following supplementary remedies: