Dr. Alfred Carpenter delivered a lecture last week to the
Medical Society of London, in which he laid it down that any consumption of alcohol sufficient to furnish the blood with one part of alcohol in five hundred of blood, is dangerous to health, but that more moderate indulgence in alcohol is not yet proved to be deleterious. The late Dr. Anstie put the matter in a simpler shape, when be said that the alcohol contained in a couple of glasses of ordinary sherry is quite as much as an average man or woman can take daily without injury. The habitual use of stimulants, even in a diluted form, to enable the person who used them to do more work than he could get through without them, was, said Dr. A. Carpenter, certainly injurious. Dyspepsia was the first sign of over-indulgence in alcoholic drinks, and acute neuralgia and hysteria were frequently the ultimate consequences of it, or even transmitted consequences, in the offspring of one who had over-indulged. Alcoholic drinks might, however, be good for the old, where it was im- possible otherwise to equalise the animal heat in the body. In brief, it is not certain that alcohol ever does the healthy any good, though it is not certain that in very moderate quantities it does them any harm. Might not the same be said of tea ?
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