With reference to the effect on the offspring of drinking parents, the medical profession had accepted the teaching of the French specialist, Dr. Jaccound, that "of the children of drinkers some of them become imbeciles and idiots; others are feeble in mind, exhibit moral perversion, and sink by degrees into complete degeneration; still others are epileptics, deaf and dumb, scrofulous, etc.," and of the English teacher, Dr. Kerr, that "long continued habitual indulgence in intoxicating drink to an extent far short of intoxication is not only sufficient to originate and hand down a morbid tendency, but is much more likely to do so than even repeated drunken outbreaks with intervals of sobriety between." Thus the men who have been of the greatest honor to the profession in every land were a unit in opposing the use of alcohol in health or disease and in holding that if people are determined to use it there is less danger in health, as then the system is in better condition to throw off its evil effects. PROGRESS DURING THE PAST YEAR. Now as to the progress made during the past year. In June, 1901, the American Medical Association met in St. Paul. The branch of it giving special study to the temperance question held several sessions, about one hundred of the most distinguished physicians in the country attending. Much time was given to considering Dr. Atwater's teaching to the effect that he had proved alcohol to be a food. During the previous year he had published the details of his experiments, and at the convention it was shown that his own experiments upset his conclusions. It had been held that except in rare instances alcohol taken into the system passed away from it as alcohol without change. Dr. Atwater's experiments strengthened somewhat the position of those who held that change is not infrequent, but he concluded that the portion broken up while in the body served as a food. A closer examination of his own experiments showed that the portion oxidized had gone to form other compounds in the system which were possibly more harmful than if it had all passed off unchanged. Dr. Max Kassowitz, professor in the University of Vienna, said, after Dr. Atwater's statement had been published: "For the animal and human organism, alcohol is not both a food and a poison, but a poison only, which like other poisons is an irritant when taken in small doses while in larger ones it produces paralysis." In connection with the fact that alcohol is simply a poison, it may be worth stating, that the original meaning of the word "intoxicated" was "poisoned." After reading Dr. Atwater, the Russian Commission for the study of alcoholism, after two years' work, said: "The claim that alcohol is a food in any proper sense of the term is not sufficiently proved." In the St. Paul convention spoken of, politics obtained a foothold, and some weak resolutions in favor of the army canteen were adopted but not even the champions