The doctors who give alcohol freely to their patients in
cases of weakness are much exercised in spirit lest the cautionary address of some 250 eminent medical men, to which we referred a week or two ago, should frighten " weak-minded " patients, and prevent them from being willing to follow their doctors' directions when they prescribe wine, and accordingly these practitioners have filled some columns in the Times of this week with exhortations to their feebler patients not to be afraid to drink when they are told. Let them make their hearts easy. That is not the form weak-mindedness takes. Weakness of mind is much more apt to favour the liberal use of pleasant remedies like wine, than austerity in refraining from them,—and for a very obvious reason, that it takes some strength of mind to resist a temptation, but none to yield to it.
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