In reply to your enquiry, I have to inform you that I have never felt the need of alcoholic stimulants as a help in intellectual efforts; on the contrary, I have found them decidedly injurious in that respect, except when used with the strictest moderation. For about eleven years of the hardest-working period of my life, that in which I produced my large treatises on Physiology, edited the Medical Quarterly Review, and did a great deal of other literary work, besides lecturing, I was practically a total abstainer, though I never took any pledge. I undoubtedly injured myself by over-work during that period, as I have more than once done since under the pressure of official duty; but the injury has shown itself in the failure of appetite and digestive power. After many trials, I have come to the practical conclusion that I get on best, while in London, by taking with my dinner a couple of glasses of very light Claret, and simply as an aid in the digestion of the food which is required to keep up my mental and bodily power. But when "on holiday" in Scotland, or elsewhere, I do not find the need of this. I have never smoked tobacco, or used it in any form. I need scarcely say that I have never used any other "nervine stimulants." You are at perfect liberty to make use of this communication.

WM. B. CARPENTER.
Feb. 17, 1882.