first year, 13.45 per cent; of moderates, 23.17 per cent.; of harder drinkers, 32.02 per cent. Other tables show that abstainers' children gain in weight more steadily in the first year than drinkers' children, and have their teeth earlier, as a rule.
At the International Medical Congress of 1909, held in Budapest, Professor Laitinen lectured again upon his researches, and summarized his conclusions thus:
"1. The importance of alcohol as an article of food is rendered very questionable by recent researches. 2. These researches prove that alcohol diminishes the natural power of the tissues to resist injury, promotes degeneration, and has a disastrous effect on future generations. 3. The questions of relation of alcoholic liquor to crime and of the manufacture and sale of such beverages deserve the serious consideration of the legislature. 4. It is the duty of medical men to direct more attention than formerly to the alcohol question, and by careful study to decide whether recent researches are justified or not in regarding alcohol and alcoholic beverages as a poison and one of the principal causes of degeneration in the human family; they ought also to consider whether it would not be advisable in medical practice, and especially in hospitals, either to banish it altogether or at least to prescribe it with the same care as other poisonous drugs. In this matter the attitude taken by medical men as representatives of public hygiene was of quite exceptional importance."
Metchnikoff, the illustrious Russian scientist, who has for some years been connected with the Pasteur Institute in Paris, was the discoverer of the work assigned by nature to the white corpuscles of the blood. These blood-cells are the "guardian-cells" of the body, and their duty is to destroy disease germs which may gain an entrance. They actually devour
