It is as yet too early to analyse the results of the Russian system. It closely resembles the South Carolina plan, with the important additional feature of the allocation of a portion of the profits to the support of tea houses, amusements and counter attractions to the drinking places. The number of drinking places has been greatly reduced. At first there was an apparent reduction in the consumption of spirits, but in a recent report of the Russian Minister of Finance the statement is made that the people are becoming accustomed to the new régime and that the consumption tends to revert to the former figures. Referring to the financial achievements of the new plan, the Minister says:

"To estimate the financial results of the reform, we may base our calculations upon the experience gained during the years 1895--7 in the Eastern provinces. In 1893, the year before the reform, the amount of excise duty in these four provinces had been 11,600,000 roubles, and the revenue from the licence duty 754,000 roubles, or a total of 12,354,000 roubles. If we take this last figure as the annual average of the revenue from drink, the triennial period 1895--7 should have given the provinces in the East an income in round numbers of about 37,000,000 roubles. At the same time we must consider that the application of the new system has brought with it under the head of control of indirect taxes an increase of disbursements of about 694,000 roubles for the three years, and that this sum must be put to the debit of the monopoly. In consequence, in order that the passage from the old system to the new administration might be effected without injury to the exchequer, it was necessary that the income from the drink revenue should reach for the three years 1895--7, taken together, a total of 37,700,000 roubles. As a matter of fact, the revenue under the head of licences, and as the net result of the

work of the monopoly, making deduction for all expenses of purchase, of rectification and of sale generally (except the allowance to the local distillers), amounted in 1895 to 16,844,000 roubles; in 1896 to 19,018,000 roubles, and in 1897 to 20,237,000 roubles; making a total of 56,099,000 roubles.

Thus after the establishment of the monopoly the drink revenue in the East, from the commencement of the first triennial period, exceeded by 18,500,000 roubles the income that could have been obtained under the excise system."

The minister states also, in a general way, that drunkenness and crime have been reduced under the monopoly. It appears that the Russian custom of extending credit to drinkers and of exchanging liquors for agricultural produce and clothes has been dispensed with where the government control has been put in force. But as has been the experience in Scandinavia and in South Carolina, it has been found difficult to secure the proper persons to take charge of the liquor shops. In the spring of 1901, the Russian Minister of Finance issued a circular to the excise officers calling attention to the unreliable character of those employed in the dispensaries, from which the business suffers and by which the success of the trade is greatly hindered. As a remedy, the

Minister advises the payment of better salaries and an endeavour to attract women into the business. People who have known the character of the average European bar-maid will readily see how the proposed venture will stimulate the sale of liquor, but will scarcely comprehend how it will serve to promote temperance and morality.*

* See Appendix B, Chap. XVIII.

CHAPTER XIX.

TEMPERANCE AND MEDICINE.

THE theories of the chemist of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries regarding the composition of alcohol appear ludicrous to the modern student. The chemist of to-day says that alcohol is composed of carbon, 52.67 per cent.; hydrogen, 12.90 per cent.; and oxygen, 34,43 per cent.-a combination for which his formula is C,H,O.

In the seventeenth century, the greatest chemist of his time Jean J. Becher, evolved the notion that a certain principle was common to all combustible materials, which principle was given up in the process of combustion. This common element he called phlogiston. For more than a hundred years this theory was fundamental to all chemical teaching. The eighteenth century also had its greatest chemist in George Ernest Stahl, professor of medicine, anatomy, and chemistry in the University of Halle, and physician to the King of Prussia. Herr Stahl perfected and developed the theory of Becher. Chemists of those times are said to have demonstrated the nature of alcohol by setting fire to a glass of spirit of wine and inverting over it a cucurbit (a globe-shaped glass vessel), into which the flames would ascend. They would then point to the vapour which formed in the cucurbit and condensed into dripping water, and assert that spirit of wine was made up from the two elements, fire and water.*

* Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, On Alcohol (Cantor Lectures), p. 41.

Shortly before the French revolution, fifty years after the death of Stahl, Antoine L. Lavoisier, the French chemist, overthrew this theory, and eliminated phlogiston from the chemical vocabulary. The downfall of the phylogistic theory of chemistry was celebrated in Paris by a funeral ceremony, in which a woman, robed as a priestess, committed the doctrine to the flames, while a choir chanted a solemn requiem.*

Thus, in the latter part of the eighteenth century the chemical composition of alcohol was regarded from the same scientific point of view as it is to-day. The theories and practice of the medical profession, regarding alcohol, however, were vastly different a hundred years ago from what they are at the present time. This change is, indeed, only a part of the general improvement of medical science and practice; for in his exploration of the dark continent of physical affliction the physician has progressed immeasurable distances from the point where he stood when he bled George Washington to death in 1799.

Pliny tells us that Roman physicians placed great reliance on the efficacy of burnt hairs from the tail of a dog as a remedy for the bite of that animal. Two conditions must be observed in applying the cure: (1) the hairs must be taken from the dog which had inflicted the wound, and (2) they must be swallowed with a bumper of good wine. On the * Von Liebig, Letters on Chemistry, Letter III., p. 25. Professor Alexander Johnston, in his article on Washington in the Encyclopedia Britannica, says of his last illness : "Washington's disorder was an oedematous affection of the windpipe, contracted by careless exposure during a ride in a snowstorm, and aggravated by neglect afterwards, and by such contemporary remedies as excessive bleeding, gargles of 'molasses, vinegar and butter, tea,' which almost suffocated him, and a blister of cantharides on the throat."

eve of the nineteenth century the capillary element of this remedy seems to have fallen into disuse, although not only popular opinion but the most authoritative scientific doctrine prescribed that the alcoholic element should enter into the treatment of dog bites and of almost every other known malady. But if the former element had still survived to keep the latter company, it would not have been out of harmony with much of the medical practice of the time.

In 1780, Dr. John Brown of Scotland published his Elementa Medicine, embodying therein the system of medicine-known as the Brunonian systemwhich ruled a great part of the medical profession for some unhappy decades following. According to this system, all diseases were of two classes, sthenic and asthenic. Of the former, the cause was too much excitement and the remedy was to debilitate; of the latter, the cause was insufficient excitement and the remedy was to stimulate, usually with wine or spirits. Doctor Brown died, in 1788, of apoplexy caused by a large dose of opium which he had taken in accordance with his system.

The Brunonian system might well have been called the alcoholic system. Alcoholic liquors were prescribed not merely for the sthenic diseases, for, as Doctor Richardson says, "when the fury of the phlogistic attack had been subdued and the sick man by bleeding, tartar emetic, and purgatives, had been reduced to death's door, then it was the thing to bring him up again by gently pouring in wine or other stimulants with an improved dietary." *

The universal use of alcoholic drink as medicine which prevailed until the nineteenth century was *Address on The Medical Profession and Alcohol.