civilization men require to take alcohol every day, in some shape or other, under penalty of breaking down prematurely in their work, it is idle to appeal to a set of imperfect chemical or physiological experiments, and to decide, on their evidence, that we ought to call alcohol a medicine or a poison, but not a food. I am obliged to declare that the chemical evidence is as yet insufficient to give any complete explanation of its exact manner of action upon the system; but that the practical facts are as striking as they could well be, and that there can be no mistake about them. And I have thought it proper that, while highly-coloured statements of the results of the new French researches are being somewhat disingenuously placed before the lay public, there should not be a total silence on the part of those members of the profession who do not see themselves called upon to yield to the mere force of agitation."[34] If this view of the case, which so strongly recommends itself to the mind of the practical physician, be the true one, we are forced to regard teetotalism, considered not in its moral but in its physiological aspects, as a dietetic heresy nearly akin to vegetarianism. Man can do without wine, as he can do without meat; but the rational course is to adopt that diet from which we can obtain the greatest amount of available vital power. [34] Brinton, _Treatise on Food and Digestion_; and _Letters on Chemistry_, Sept. 1862; cited in the pamphlet of Gov. Andrew, above-mentioned.