At one time it was imagined that alcohol acts immediately upon the heart by stimulating it to increased motion; and from this idea,--false idea, I should say,--of the primary action of alcohol, many erroneous conclusions have been drawn. We have now learned that there exist many chemical bodies which act in the same manner as alcohol, and that their effect is not to stimulate the heart, but to weaken the contractile force of the extreme and minute vessels which the heart fills with blood at each of its strokes. These bodies produce, in fact, a paralysis of the organic nervous supply of the vessels which constitute the minute vascular structures. The minute vessels when paralysed offer inefficient resistance to the force of the heart, and the pulsating organ thus liberated, like the main-spring of a clock from which the resistance has been removed, quickens in action, dilating the feebly resistant vessels, and giving evidence really not of increased, but of wasted power." The continued use of alcoholic liquors in any considerable quantity produces irritation and inflammation of the stomach, and structural disease of the liver. Dr. Hammond has shown that alcohol has a special affinity for nervous matter, and is, therefore, found in greater quantity in the brain and spinal cord than elsewhere in the body. The gray matter of the brain undergoes, to a certain extent, a fatty degeneration, and there is a shrinking of the whole cerebrum, with impairment of the intellectual faculties, muscular tremor, and a shambling gait. Large doses of alcohol cause a diminution of the temperature of the body, which in fevers is more marked than in the normal state. In addition to the organic diseases enumerated above, and delirium tremens, the following diseases are frequently the result of the excessive use of alcoholic liquors: epilepsy, paralysis, insanity, diabetes, gravel, and diseases of the heart and blood-vessels. The physiological deductions of Dr. Richardson are so much in accord with our own that we quote them in full: "In the first place we gather from the physiological reading of the action of alcohol that the agent is narcotic. I have compared it throughout to chloroform, and the comparison is good in all respects save one, viz.: that alcohol is less fatal than chloroform as an instant destroyer. It kills certainly in its own way, but its method of killing is slow, indirect, and by disease.