A third cause of this increase is to be found in the greatly enhanced facility with which alcoholic drinks can now be obtained by women, not merely outside the home, but within it. So far as Great Britain is concerned we must trace disastrous consequences to the "heaven-born finance" of a former illustrious Chancellor of the Exchequer, who made a little money for the State by selling to grocers permission to sell alcoholic liquors. That was a great blow at womanhood and especially motherhood; not to mention its lamentable effect in raising the death-rate amongst grocers in that intensely obvious and inevitable manner, the increase of temptation, which nothing can persuade the enemies of temperance reform to understand. It is bad enough that women should be able to obtain alcohol as they do by means of devices which may often prevent their habits from being discovered at all until irreparable mischief has been done. Here the cunning and the greed of commercialism have set to work to fool the public and poison it by a systematic practice which is injurious to all sections of the community, but especially to women, and which cannot be too widely reprobated and exposed. All honour is due to the _British Medical Journal_, the official organ of the British Medical Association, for its recent attention to this subject. No one can challenge it when it makes the following assertion regarding meat-wines and other specifics containing alcohol, which are now so widely advertised and consumed:--"It may be pointed out that by the use of these meat-wines the alcoholic habit may be encouraged and established, and that it is a mistake to suppose that they possess any high nutritive qualities." The following are analyses to which everyone ought to be able to have reference, and further information regarding which may be found in the _British Medical Journal_ for March 27 and May 29, 1909. Let the reader first note what proportions of alcohol are contained in the accepted wines, the danger of which is admitted by all, and then let him compare those figures with the figures which follow:-- ALCOHOL IN ORDINARY WINES Port 20 per cent. or 3-1/4} Sherry 20 " " " 3-1/4}Fluid drachms Champagne 10/15 " " " 1-3/4}in a wineglassful. Hock 10 " " " 1-1/2} Claret 9 " " " 1-1/2} ALCOHOL IN MEAT WINES Bendle's 20.3 per cent. or 3-1/4} Bivo 19.2 " " " 3 } Bovril 20.15 " " " 3-1/4}Fluid drachms Glendenning's 20.8 " " " 3-1/3}in a wineglassful. Lemco 17.26 " " " 2-3/4} Vin Regno 16.05 " " " 2-1/2} Wincarnis 19.6 " " " 3 } ALCOHOL IN TONIC WINES