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Extracts from Correspondents' letters upon this question.

Burr. -- In cases of consumption in the intemperate, probably drunkenness was the secondary cause.

Parker. -- In all cases of tubercular consumption of the lungs in drunkards, which I can now recollect, that disease seemed to be developed secondarily to disease of the liver, or stomach, or both.

Winsor. -- When superintendent at Eainsford Quarantine Hospital I had quite a number of cases of phthisis in the wards, where the habits were drunken, and where it could not be doubted that the disease advanced faster on this account. But there was scarcely one not acted on when out of hospital, by all manner of other depressing and warping conditions, so that it would have been impossible to separate and analyze the parts played by each in developing and advancing the disease.

Barker. -- Bronchial consumption sometimes takes place when the general strength and digestive system are broken down by drinking.

Hills. -- I have a patient now, in whom I believe phthisis has been promoted by the excessive use of intoxicating drinks. This case seems to be ameliorated by the use of cod-liver oil, two parts, and Tinct. Cinchona Co., one part, (the dose being one tablespoonful,) but whether the disease will be arrested remains to be seen. An expectorant also is being used in this case, but no stimulant other than the cinchona. (4)

Wakefield. -- I had a patient several years since, a soldier in the Mexican war, very dissolute. I treated him for fractured patella and mania a potu at the same time. He was an habitual drunkard. He finally had a severe attack of haemoptysis, and died of rapid consumption. This, I think, might have been prevented by sobriety and good food.

Hunt. -- In my judgment the most potent causes are the drinking customs of the community, and the prevalent use of intoxicating liquors as beverages.

Clary. -- I cannot give an opinion respecting the influence of alcohol, except that I believe that all depressing influences, whether physical or moral, tend to its development, drunkenness amongst the rest.

Watson. -- I do not recollect an instance of consumption in an habitual drunkard.

Palmer. -- Yes; by inducing inflammation.

SIXTH QUESTION.

IS CONSUMPTION PREVENTED BY THE DRUNKENNESS OF AN INDIVIDUAL? IN OTHER WORDS, IS A DRUNKARD LESS THAN OTHERS TO CONSUMPTION?

On this question we have sufficiently curious results, tabular statement is as follows: --

Forty-six (21.90 per cent.) decline to answer; seventeen (8.09 per cent.) doubt; one hundred and thirteen (53.80 per cent.) answer in the negative; whereas twenty-seven (12.86 per cent.) answer "Yes," and seven (3.00 per cent.) say that consumption is retarded.

In the present state of public opinion in regard to the use of intoxicating drink it requires some moral courage to say anything; in favor of alcohol. To declare that it sometimes seems to save the drunkard from the consumption to which he is hereditarily predisposed, requires not only moral courage, but a sincere conviction of the truth of the assertion made. The fact, also, that only a little more than one-half (53.80 per cent.) declare that the disease is not prevented by drunkenness is a small proportion, provided the profession generally hold that the opposite opinion is the correct one.

Meanwhile there have been some very peculiar examples in certain families, which seem to indicate that intemperance, bad as it is at any time, does nevertheless in certain cases apparently have some good effect in warding off consumption, for in these instances the only persons that have escaped out of entire families were the one or two who indulged inordi- nately in the use of spirituous liquors.

Perhaps one of the most curious documents supporting the idea that intoxication with ardent spirits tends at times to prevent consumption may be found in the letter from Theodore Parker to the chairman of the Board, written in 1858, in which he gives details of his own family history. Mr. Parker had no doubts about the matter, and in that letter expresses the belief that "intemperate habits (where a man drinks a pure, though coarse and fiery liquor, like New England rum) tend to check the consumptive tendency, though the drunkard who escapes may transmit the fatal seed to his children." (5) I will add that I have no doubt that, by the wretched constitution the drunkard usually entails upon his offspring, that seed is much more likely to spring into life than in the robust begetting of the temperate and healthy.

It is evident that the question is still a debatable one, to be decided by a more careful study of more facts.