THE evil wrought by intoxicants on the physical health can hardly be exaggerated. Alcohol is not a food, properly speaking, but a narcotic poison. Eminent medical men disagree as to whether it possesses any nutritive qualities. The results of long and careful investigation, however, show that if it contains any nutriment at all it is almost inappreciable in quantity. Its value as a remedial agent in disease is quite generally recognized; but used as a beverage in a state of health it rarely fails to work injury. It tends to impair digestion, impoverish the blood, injure the blood-vessels, affect the nerves, and deteriorate the tissue. It finds its way to every part of the body, especially to the brain, where it does its most terrible work. In short, used in excess or habitually it demoralizes the whole body, impairs its functions, diminishes its muscular force, reduces its power to resist disease, and superinduces disease. The result is that strong, able-bodied citizens, the glory of the State, become physical wrecks and lose the power as well as the purpose to contribute to the general prosperity, or even to support by their own labor their families or themselves. The old idea that alcohol preserves the system from the effects of extreme heat or extreme cold has long been exploded. It is the written testimony of General Greely, the most distinguished Arctic traveler we have among us, that in high latitudes the effect of alcohol is shown in “diminished power for work,” and in “impaired resistance to cold.” Henry M. Stanley, the great African explorer, has shown in case after case, among his own followers, that alcohol is a deadly thing in the tropics. Dr. Edson, of the Health Department of this city, says that when taken to excess in hot weather—and “people who use it invariably use it to excess”—“nothing could be used that would produce sun-stroke or heat exhaustion quicker.” Dr. Willard Parker, also an eminent medical authority, gives it as his opinion that those who drink freely in hot weather “tempt Providence.”—New York Independent.