reduction was in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol taken." The most prominent physicians in Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Scandinavia and Russia reached similar conclusions shortly after this. In explorations in the Arctic regions where the cold is intense, no alcoholic drinks are permitted. Dr. Nansen, the great Norwegian, attributes the fatalities of the Greely expedition to the use of liquor, and this is the only expedition of recent years which permitted the use of alcoholic drinks. As a matter of fact it was long ago proved that "Alcohol does not warm nor cool a person, but only destroys the sensation and decreases the vitality." Superficial observers, however, have upheld the use of alcohol as a food, saying, "See how fleshy it makes people." Well, healthy fat is not always an advantage, but beer drinkers' fat is not the genuine article. Healthy fat represents a stock of body warming food laid up for a time of need and is formed only in health. The "fat" usually exhibited by beer drinkers is not a fat at all; oil is not its chief factor. It consists of particles of partly digested flesh forming food which the system required, but which it was unable to assimilate owing to the presence in the body of the alcohol which the beer contained. This sort of fat instead of indicating health points to disease. This general teaching as to the worthlessness of alcohol as a food had been set forth by the leaders in medical profession, and accepted largely by the rank and file of practitioners for about twenty-five years. An occasional cry came from the other side, however, and late in 1899 Dr. W. O. Atwater, professor in Wesleyan University, announced that he had, by an extended series of experiments, proved the truth of the claims of those experimentors who believed alcohol to have value as a food. Dr. Atwater's reports were widely published by the whiskey press, and a state of some unrest amongst thinking physicians followed, which had not been wholly quieted when this committee began work. IS IT A MEDICINE?