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.

          Isit A medicine?

At the time we began work, however, it had been demonstrated that alcohol is not a medicine.  Many years ago Dr. Nottinghham, a great English physician, said:  “Alcohol is neither food nor physic.”  Dr. Nicols, editor Boston Journal of Chemistry, long ago wrote, “The banishment of alcohol would not deprive us of a single one of the indispensable agents which modern civilization demands.  In no instance of disease in any form, is it a medicine which might not be dispensed with.”  Dr. Bunge, professor of physical chemistry in the University of Basle, Switzerland, said:  “In general let it be understood that all the workings of alcohol in the system which usually are considered as excitement or stimulation are only indications of paralysis.  It is a deep-rooted error sense of fatigue is the safety value of the human organism.  Whoever dulls this sense in order to work harder or longer may be likened to an engineer who sits down on his safety valve in order to make better speed with his engine.”  Dr. F. H. Hammond of the U. S. army said:  “Alcohol strengthens no one.  It only deadens the feeling of fatigue.”  Dr. Sims Woodhead, professor in Cambridge University, England, had given the following list of conditions in which alcohol should not be used:  In those (1) who have any family history of drunkenness, insanity or nervous disease. (2) Who have used alcohol to excess in childhood or youth. (3) Who are nervous, irritable or badly nourished. (4) Who suffer from injuries to the head, gross disease of the brain and sunstroke. (5) Who suffer from great bodily weakness, particularly during convalescence from exhausting disease. (6) Who are engaged in exciting or exhausting employment, in bad air and surroundings, in work shops and mines. (7) Who are solitary or lonely or require amusement. (8) Who have little self-control either hereditary or acquired. (9) Who suffer from weakness, the result of senile degeneration. (10) Who suffer from organic or functional diseases of the stomach, liver, kidney or heart. (11) Who are young.