fessor Gréhant states that after injecting a quantity of alcohol into the venous circulation of a dog equal to one twenty-fifth, or four per cent., of the estimated weight of the blood of the animal, he found by several analyses at different times that it required "a little over twenty-three hours for complete elimination of the alcohol from the blood." If we consider these results obtained by Viala, Charrin, Daremberg and Gérhant, with those obtained by Dr. A. C. Abbott, showing the direct effect of alcohol in diminishing the normal vital resistance of the living body to infection, we see excellent reasons why the liberal use of alcohol in the treatment of such infectious diseases as diphtheria, typhoid fever and pneumonia, under the supposition that it was a cardiac tonic, has resulted in so great a mortality as from thirty to sixty per cent.
Dr. A. Pearce Gould, a London hospital surgeon of the first rank, has made special study of the surgery of the blood-vessels, and of the chest. He was one of the earliest to practice and advocate the careful removal of the axillary glands in all operations for cancer of the breast.
He is a strong believer in the value of total abstinence as promoting robust health of body and mind. He regards the value of alcohol in disease as exceedingly small, and prescribes it only very rarely. He thinks that alcohol increases the activity of cancer and other malignant growths, an opinion which is of great importance from one with
