are executed, the amount and character of provision made for pauper charges, as well as other factors. Mr. Cherrington broadly compares the ratio of inmates of almshouses, disregarding the fact that in many communities the old method of herding such unfortunates together in special institutions has been abandoned. How absurd and misleading are some of the statistics he produces may be shown by the fact that in 1910 there were more paupers in proportion to population in almshouses in Kansas than in South Dakota and Minnesota, and a much larger proportion in Maine and North Carolina, and in other States, for instance Tennessee. License States, such as Florida and Louisiana, show a smaller ratio of paupers than the prohibition and near-prohibition States mentioned. The official report containing the figures which Mr. Cherrington quotes makes the following observation:

"These differences between divisions (geographical) are due in part to the character and density of the population of the different sections, but the laws and the customs of the different communities in regard to the treatment of paupers are probably a more important factor in the situation. In some States the laws are strict in requiring that, except in special cases, all persons receiving public aid be cared for in almshouses; in others the authorities are given considerable discretion in furnishing temporary outdoor relief. In some States, furthermore, almshouses are frequently used as hospitals for the poor, which would increase the number of temporary inThe relative number of paupers in a State depends on so many considerations that no conclusions as to the prevalence of poverty can be drawn from the figures."

mates.

***

Mr. Cherrington is again unconvincing when he takes up the question of schools, etc. License States, such as Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Minnesota, to mention only a few, show a really smaller proportion of illiterates than any state which in 1910 was under prohibition. To argue that the percentage of illiterates depends on the method of regulating the liquor traffic is not only absurd, but works a great injustice to certain prohibition States with a preponderance of illiterate whites, which is due to causes absolutely remote from the liquor question.

Finally, as to the attempt to show that more homes are owned

free and clear in prohibition States than in license States, it must be obvious that the regions in which great industries have been established and in which tremendous cities have grown up will show a smaller proportion of such freeholds than those which are sparsely populated, and whose chief calling is agriculture. That is quite in the nature of things. But if this observation should not be well founded, Mr. Cherrington's argument can be easily upset in another way. Kansas, which has been under prohibition law for something like forty years, has a smaller proportion of owned homes, free and clear, than Nebraska, which has been under license for almost the same period. This, using Mr. Cherrington's method of deduction, would absolutely demonstrate the evil effect of prohibition.

It is possibly significant that in Anti-Saloon statistics, the grouping system is almost invariably employed, though, as is well known, but one of our States has had a really extended experience with prohibition. Maine adopted the system before the Civil War and has adhered to it consistently and persistently since, and should exemplify all the progress materially, the advancement morally, that are claimed to follow this manner of dealing with the drink problem. But the prohibitionists are singularly averse to having attention directed to Maine. Perhaps there's a reason.

"A FEW THOUGHTS AND A SUPERFLUITY OF WORDS"

(Editorial in Interstate Medical Journal, June, 1916)

Readers of medical journals and of those literary (?) journals that tamper with medical subjects in the hope of increasing the number of their subscribers, so great, indeed, is the desire on the part of the public to know enough of medicine to make modern. conversation a lugubrious affair, must have been startled, perhaps amused, by the large number of articles of all shades and meanings on the subject of alcohol and the narcotics, meaning by the latter tea, coffee and tobacco. What their inferences have been we do not know, but if they had a normal brain-as normal as is possible in this imperfect world, we are quite sure that they would agree with us that their readings have led them nowhere but into chaos—a chaos so dark and labyrinthine that only a large quantity of alcohol or one of the narcotics could bring on a complete forgetfulness of the futility of their efforts to see light where only Egyptian darkness prevails. One writer gifted with a vivid imagination, a facile pen, and a fanaticism that has been nurtured with care from weakling into a forbidding giant, pounces on coffee because coffee has once upon a time upset the intricate mechanism of his abused stomach, just as carrots or a more aristocratic vegetable might have done. Another sees destruction of the human race even from a slight indulgence in tea, a third levels his battering-ram at tobacco, a fourth is enamored of tea and coffee, even of tobacco, but pronounces alcohol the arch enemy of human happiness. They come, these articles, in avalanches; at times, when the authors are exhausted, in twos and threes; but this does not happen so often that we can say with considerable assurance that the well from which they draw their varied knowledge will soon run dry. All that they need, it would seem, is a theory, and then heigh-ho for a mad ride, a gallop, a hurdle race, a double somersault, and great is the joy of the reader if the writer falls on a soft cushion, for unbroken bones means

another article on the same lines next month and a fresh stimulus to the chaotic and lugubrious drawing-room talk!

What we have just written may strike the reader as too flippant for a medical journal that makes some pretense to seriousness, but in explanation of our attitude let us make it clear to the reader that under our frivolous exterior we are very serious indeed, in fact, almost tragical. A man has been known to laugh when his thoughts were melancholy; and while we hasten to assure the reader that melancholia is not sitting on us so unshakably that its talons cannot be loosened from our mentality, we must confess that the problem of alcohol and tea, coffee and tobacco, as presented to us in most medical journals with the masterly attempts at explanation and solution, is a very disturbing one and at times makes our thoughts so brown that in the dusk of evening they might be mistaken for black. And who in his right senses would not be affected in the same manner by the multitudinous theories and the vapid reasonings? It is not that the author has no lucid moments when he hauls the narcotic he thinks the most baleful one to the gallows to be hanged amidst his intense derision and denunciation; to say this would be carrying our prejudices too far. He undoubtedly has his lucid moments, and due credit should be given him for them; but where he errs is in letting his personal feelings dominate the sanity of what should be his thought, if he hopes to achieve results with his readers. The personal note is a good quality, if not carried too far, in articles of a purely literary nature, but in a medical article it should be suppressed and, especially, should the leashes that hold it in check be taut opposite the problem of alcohol and those narcotics which are on our table daily and which have become through custom or habit part and parcel of our existence.

That the attack on the use of alcohol and tea, coffee and tobacco. should each year have more and more enthusiastic upholders may at first seem to those who have not given the matter much thought as evidence that the deleterious qualities of these stimulating "foods" are proved beyond a doubt. That this is not the case in a scientific sense is the fact that our knowledge, based on science, is still in that embryonic stage where doubt creeps in as to whether the experiments now in progress in the laboratories are really applicable to

man. What is undoubtedly true, and this is not knowledge gleaned from any experiments effected in the laboratory, is that the injurious qualities of the stimulants which are to-day under the ban of adverse criticism are altogether due to an over-indulgence, which so long as human creatures are human, too human, will obtain in many instances. The man who can take one drink has arrived at that enviable stage in his education when he knows how to relax, and the man who can drink one cup of tea or coffee, or smoke occasionally, and then hold his desire for more in check, is the possessor of a judgment that is of benefit to him. If the stimulants we have mentioned are swarming with those death-dealing qualities with which the writers say they are, then a very limited quantity of each would be a poison. But this is not true, since in too many instances the sane use of them results in a physical and mental relaxation that has nothing objectionable about it or harmful to the system, except in the thought of some easy-chair philosopher whose mind, bathed in the turbid waters of puritanism, is unaware that modern civilization has declared that all human beings should be machines whose wheels must revolve despite considerable grating.

In the various social movements which are at present doing effective work in this country, there is a tendency, due perhaps to overenthusiasm, to preach too intensely the gospel of Uplift. Directly a member of any organization becomes aware that a number of people are not of his exalted opinion and have not lived his life, he thinks a field has been opened up for his propaganda work, and the personal note is thrust into his endeavors to so great an extent that he loses all idea of what constitutes a judgment out of which might possibly issue some benefit to mankind. He may be a good man in every conceivable sense of the word, but if obliquity warps his point of view-and obliquity is the one great danger that is a continual menace to his sane outlook-he is a bad preacher. Physicians are not exempt from this charge, for they, too, have at times been guilty of falling into the error of condemning all forms of relaxation that do not appeal to them. Not being athletes-and who by the way would employ an athletic physician?-they inveigh against athleticism: sometimes it is true for medical reasons which cannot be questioned, at other times because they think their pills