CHAPTER VII.
MEANS OF CURE.
Is this disease, or vice, or sin, or crime of intemperance--call it by what name you will--increasing or diminishing?
Has any impression been made upon it during the half-century in which there have been such earnest and untiring efforts to limit its encroachments on the health, prosperity, happiness and life of the people?
What are the agencies of repression at work; how effective are they, and what is each doing?
These are questions full of momentous interest.

Diseases of the body, if not cured, work a steady impairment of health, and bring pains and physical disabilities.

If their assaults be upon nervous centres, or vital organs, the danger of paralysis or death becomes imminent.

Now, as to this disease of intemperance, which is a social and moral as well as a physical disease, it is not to be concealed that it has invaded the common body of the people to an alarming degree, until, using the words of Holy Writ, "the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint." Nay, until, using a still stronger form of Scriptural illustration, "From the sole of the foot even unto the head, there is no soundness in it; but wounds and bruises and putrifying sores." In this view, the inquiry as to increase or diminution, assumes the gravest importance.

If, under all the agencies of cure and reform which have been in active operation during the past fifty years, no impression has been made upon this great evil which is so cursing the people, then is the case indeed desperate, if not hopeless.