Professor von Noorden's monograph on Drink Restriction is a most instructive deliverance upon a subject of the highest practical importance - one which should appeal strongly to both the medical profession and the laity. Especially in this country, where hot-water drinking and colon douching have been carried to an irrational, ridiculous, and often very harmful excess by the advice of certain irregular practitioners and cranks, will his warnings be timely. Unfortunately, not all physicians realize that not only does every mouthful of surplus food add to the burdens of all the digestive and excretory organs, instead of strengthening the body, but that every superfluous ounce of liquid ingested adds to the labor of the heart and kidneys, besides having to be for the most part forcibly extruded by the stomach into the small intestine before it can be absorbed. It is sad to think how many victims of dilated heart, dilated stomach, and of Bright's disease have been encouraged to drink themselves to death, and how many patients afflicted with obesity have shortened their lives by continuing excessively fat, with all its discomforts and dangers, to the end of the chapter, waterlogged because of unrestricted drinking.

Many persons unquestionably drink too little, of water particularly, but Professor von Noorden has clearly proved that a great many others drink too much.

B. R. 1831 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, April 25,1905.