on the contrary, it is the most fertile producer of disease. It is destitute of any medicinal principle implanted by the Creator in genuine medicines ;" and, quoting from a medical writer, he says: "The diseases occasioned by alcohol have been by far more destructive than any plague that ever raged in Christendom, more malignant than any other epidemic pestilence that ever desolated our suffering race; whether in the shape of the contagious and burning smallpox, the cholera of the East, or the yellow fever of the West-diseases by far more loathsome, infectious, and destructive than all of them put together, with all their dreadful array of suffering and death, united in one ghastly assemblage of horrific and appalling misery." Dr. L. M. Bennett says: "I for one believe that there is no curable disease but may be treated and cured better without alcohol than with it." Dr. R. L. Barclay, of Stonebridge, writes: "I have banished them from my practice since 1841. During these twenty-one years I have not made fewer than one hundred and eighty thousand visits, and I am free to say that the recoveries have been more numerous and more rapid than they were during the five years I followed the usual practice and gave brandy, wine, and beer. Of these numerous patients, many were laboring under the most aggravated forms of typhus and other malignant fevers, smallpox, cholera, mania-à-potu, large exhausting abscesses, and many other diseases in which alcoholic stimulants are usually administered and thought to be essen I have attended, likewise, the patients of two large hospitals for many years-one in town, the other in the country; the paupers of a populous parish for sixteen years; the members of nine benefitclubs for many years, some of them numbering three hundred members-and in all these different cases and under all those different circumstances, I have not found it once necessary to prescribe either spirituous, vinous, or malt liquors." Says Dr. Henry Mudge: "Having published short notices of over forty forms of disease, including accouchements by the hundred, hemorrhages, shock, typhus fever, consumption, purulent discharges, large burns, and indigestions, cured without alcoholics, I have some right to claim equal explicitness from those who prescribe them." Dr. W. W. Townsend, of the Chester County Almshouse, in a letter to the Chairman of this Committee, says: "There has not been a pint of alcoholic liquors in the form of brandy, wine, whiskey, beer, or ale, used in this house as an internal remedy for twenty months; and very little since I have had charge of it, and the little that was used, I am certain did harm. My patients got well sooner and better when none was used. I have treated mania-à-potu, typhoid fever, dysentery, pneumonia, and surgical cases, and I appeal to the record for the evidence of the success of my practice. There have been fewer deaths than in any period of the same length of time for twenty years-I have examined the records no furtherand I am so well satisfied of the correctness of the practice, that I shall never resort to those kinds of stimulants in the treatment of any kind of disease that may come under my care." Dr. T. W. Gairdner, in a late number of the Glasgow Medical Journal, in an able article on Alcoholic Stimulation, says: "It is an error to conceive of alcoholic stimulation as a proper substitute in febrile diseases for ordinary food. Even beef-tea (so much favored by Dr. Todd in conjunction with alcohol) is of very inferior nutritive value to milk, and of secondary importance. To give brandy and beef-tea every hour or half hour for days and nights together, even waking up the patient (as is recommended by Dr. Todd) in order to give him his food and stimulants, is the surest of all ways to destroy what remains of natural appetite. It is an error to suppose that patients affected with very severe symptoms of acute disease are capable of tolerating indefinitely greater amounts of alcoholic liquors than can be given in health. "It is almost certain from facts already observed that in young persons the mortality of fevers is greatly increased by the continuous administration of alcoholic stimulants; and, it may be confidently anticipated, as a result of improved consideration given to the subject, that the profuse and continuous administration of alcoholic stimulants with a view to alimentation in acute disease, will ere long be abandoned as inconsistent with an enlightened physiology and a sound practice. A subordinate, though very important consideration, bearing on this profuse and continuous stimulation is, that such liberal doses of wine and spirits given habitually under medical advice tend to give a wrong bias to public opinion, and (even apart from the grave moral consequences arising from the abuses of alcoholic liquors) to involve the whole medical practice of the country in a system of unnecessary and, therefore, wasteful expenditure. It is as nearly as possible a demonstrated fact, that much of what is spent in wines and spirits for the sick in hospitals, (and probably also in private practice) is unnecessarily, if not injuriously spent. Typhus fever, as it occurs in Glasgow, almost always among the poor, and often among the most ill-nourished, debilitated and dissipated classes, is the very type of a disease which would appear to require the highest doses, and the most fre quent and liberal administration of alcoholic stimulants. Yet it has been clearly shown that typhus fever in Glasgow may be so treated as to have a diminished mortality with the aid simply of milk diet and careful nursing." In confirmation of the above, allow me to quote again from the lecture of Dr. Wilkes. "To my mind, the most important question in therapeutics is the value of alcohol in disease. You are as thoroughly to consider the propriety of it, as you would any drug in the pharmacopoeia. You have witnessed that fevers will do well without them. Young persons with typhus and typhoid do far better, I believe, without them. That they make good recoveries on simple milk diet is a fact which my hospital cases prove, and which no argument can gainsay. It is also a fact, that in bronchitis I have often seen improvement after stimulants have been omitted; and as regards heart disease, the amount of mischief done by stimulation is immense." Such are the testimonies of some of the first medical men in Europe. It is but a few years ago, that almost the only treatment for mania-à-potu, delirum tremens, and all the tortures of chronic alcoholism, was more rum; now scarcely any really enlightened physician thinks it necessary. Dr. Day, Physician and Superintendent of the Inebriate Asylum of New York State, does not use it in the treatment of those diseases. Dr. John Curwen, Physician of the Pennsylvania State Asylum for the Insane at Harrisburg, informed a member of this Committee, that he has found it necessary only in a single form of fierce insanity, and then not as a means of cure, but for procuring quiet, by means, we suppose, of the deep intoxication which it produces. But again we are met by the almost universal demand for whiskey as a cure and preventive of consumption. There is scarcely a single person in the whole country, threatened with or suffering from that disease, who is not dosed daily with either brandy or whiskey, in large doses, by advice of the physician, who conscientiously regards them as the great remedies to increase vital force, and thus avert the disposition to tubercle. We have, for several years, had occasion to deplore this system of treatment, and from most careful observations made in a large region of country, where the history of every case of phthisis, which occurred, could be ascertained from week to week, we have failed to discover the least benefit derived from the use of alcohol, either as a preventive or remedy in that affection. In 1859, the Rhode Island Medical Society offered a prize of two hundred dollars for the best essay on "The effect of the use of Alcoholic Liquors in tubercular disease or in constitutions predisposed to that disease, to be shown as far as possible by statistics." The prize was awarded to John Bell, M. D., of New York. Seldom have observations been more thoroughly made; more carefully conducted through a long period of time, and embracing every condition and circumstance which could conduct to reliable conclusions; and what are the results? First. That the opinion prevalent as to the use of alcoholic liquors having a marked effect in preventing consumption, is without any solid foundation. Second. Their use on the contrary appears rather to predispose to tubercular deposition. Third. Where tubercle already exists, alcohol has no obvious effect in modifying its usual course. Fourth. Neither does it mitigate in any considerable degree the morbid effects of tubercle upon the system at large. Such are the conclusions of an extended investigation of the subject by the man to whom the Medical Society of Rhode Island joyfully awarded the meed of merit; and we are happy to oppose it to the alcoholic practice of Anstie, Bennett, Todd, Chambers, and others, who have placed alcohol at the head of the list of remedial agents. They have sung praises to the healing virtues of alcohol. Their songs have been heard in every family, and now throughout the length and breadth of the land, in palace and in hovel, the word has passed that the young child, the delicate school girl, the slender apprentice, the studious youth, the nursing mother, the anxious merchant, the girls in the store, the tailor on the bench, all who take exercise, and those who take none, can have immunity from consumption only by the daily use of whiskey. To oppose this popular practice is to call down on our heads the anathemas of those who are ever ready to stifle free discussion. We have conscientiously and prayerfully desired to make a just report on the resolution, and are constrained in view of the facts bearing on the subject, to declare that there exists a terrible practice of stimulation which "sends its victims daily, by thousands, prematurely to the grave, and fills the land with drunkenness and crime;" that a modified, regenerated practice, based on common sense and a sound clinical observation, should take its place to bring healing and blessings on its wings to the nations of the earth. All of which is respectfully submitted, HIRAM CORSON, Committee DESCRIPTION OF A NEW INSTRUMENT FOR THE TREATMENT OF LATERAL BY BENJAMIN LEE, M.D., OF PHILADELPHIA. THE instrument which I have the honor to present for the inspection of the Society is an attempt to embody two ideas, one of which has never been generally recognized, and neither of which has been intelligently acted upon, in the construction of apparatus for remedying that deformity of the spine known as Lateral Curva ture. The failure of all efforts, heretofore, to correct this distortion by means of apparatus worn upon the person-sufficiently attested by the fact that many very intelligent observers who have devoted much time to the study of this problem as well indeed as the great mass of the profession, have arrived at the conclusion that all attempt at mechanical support is useless, if not injurious-this failure, I say, is to be attributed to the fact that these two most important elements in the solution of the problem have been disregarded. Success, I believe, cannot be obtained without recognizing and acting upon them. Whether or not the mechanism which I now have the honor to bring before you will do so, in as efficient and practical a manner as possible, can only be proven by the test of experience. I can say, however, that while I have not as yet employed it in a sufficient number of cases to consider that it has fairly stood that test, those in which I have tried it have given encouraging evidence of improvement. The two pathological facts to which I refer are: 1st. That in every case of true lateral curvature there is also posterior curvature, not in the sense in which this term is ordinarily used, as synonymous with angular curvature, but a general yielding of the spinal |