William A. Hammond

The Physiological Effects of Alcohol and Tobacco upon the Human System

were performed upon myself, and were conducted with all the care and accuracy which my limited facilities permitted. Those only who are familiar with investigations of this character can appreciate the time and labor necessary to conduct them properly, and but for the improved and extended system of volumetric analysis now so much employed in physiological chemistry, I should probably have been compelled to refrain from inquiries necessarily tedious at the best, but incomparably more so when the older methods of quantitative analysis are observed. Yet, when we reflect, however tiresome and even disgusting physiological investigations often are, that it is only by actual experiments we can ever hope to lay the foundations of true physiological science, we can well afford, for the sake of accomplishing so noble an end, to labor cheerfully on, even though the way be not so nice as we might desire. The day of extravagant theories, unsupported by observation, has gone by, and he who has nothing better to offer than the unsustained creation