At or before middle age the results of habits begin to show themselves, and the result of one habit, that of drinking alcoholic liquors, begins to show itself sometimes in a very marked manner. It is at this time that those persons who have been accustomed to drink small quantities of spirits during the day begin to find that they have something the matter with the liver; a man begins to find out that he has a liver, in fact. The fibrous structures of the liver are increased, they grow at the expense of the proper liver structure, and they compress it, and so press upon the small branches of the portal vein which brings the blood to the liver, and the blood is prevented from circulating through the liver in the way in which it ought to be circulated; it is resisted by the structure of the liver, and so the liquid part gets through the walls of the capillary vessels into the peritoneal sac - that sac which is folded in and about the organs of the abdomen - and the result is dropsy of the abdomen. Now, this particular kind of liver is quite easily distinguished, and is so thoroughly well recognised as being caused by drinking alcohol, that it goes among physicians by the name of the gin drinker's liver. The result of this disease is death, which is caused in several ways, sometimes by the fluid 'becoming so great in amount that it presses upon the diaphragm, impedes the action of the lungs and heart, and causes death, you may almost say, by suffocation. The habit of drinking spirituous liquors during life does not always result in this, but it often results in a bad form of indigestion. There are various reasons why the drinking of alcohol causes indigestion. I shall speak more about them when I come to speak about foods and drinks; but I want to point out here that we pay much too little attention to indigestion, and the drinking of alcoholic liquors is certainly the first cause of indigestion. If our food be not properly digested it cannot be absorbed, the tissues of the body cannot be nourished, and they degenerate, so that alcohol causes degeneration of the tissues indirectly by causing indigestion, and causes degeneration directly by reason of its presence in the blood, and so spirit-drinkers, whether they have this liver disease or not, have degeneration of the various tissues of the body, and so they have other diseases of the internal organs.

Another thing that it is extremely important to attend to during this period of life is the action of the excretory organs of the body; the action of these organs tends to become languid, and the most important ones to attend to are the skin and the intestinal canal The action of the skin should be attended to by frequent washing, because if the surface of the skin is not properly cleansed its action will be impeded; and the other excretory organs - the lungs and the kidneys - will have to do the work of the skin, and these organs will be liable to become diseased, so there is no doubt whatever that a large number of the diseases of the lungs and kidneys during manhood, and during the later periods of life, is to a great extent due to insufficient action of the skin.

During this period of life such diseases as diabetes, kidney disease, gout, and chronic lung diseases, are very common, and some of the causes of them are those I have just mentioned.

We pass on to green old age and decrepit old age, and in these periods the diseases are chronic.

There are diseases that especially belong to this time of life, such as cancer, a disease for which no prevention and no remedy has yet been discovered. Gout, too, belongs more particularly to this time of life.

In old age, however, the first great thing is to avoid the cold. Cold which is so destructives young children is destructive also to old people, and the old proverb, "A green winter a full churchyard," is like a good many other old proverbs, a total mistake. It is during cold winters that the highest death rates are observed, and this is because so many old people die from cold.

Old people cannot stand the cold, and they require to be warmly clad, and not to be exposed too much to the cold air in winter. But the reason that old people cannot stand the cold is because they cannot manufacture sufficient heat to resist it, the actions of the various organs are going on slower, respiration goes on slower, the capacity of the lungs is smaller, the elasticity of the air-sacs of the lungs is impaired, so that they do not recoil and drive out the air in the way they did when young. The respiration is enfeebled, the beats of the heart are slower, the arteries do not recoil as well upon the blood, that is, they do not force it along as well, and so there is a weakened respiration, and weakened circulation, less oxygen taken into the blood, slower circulation of the blood, less oxidisation going on in the blood, and less animal heat produced; and so old persons do not produce sufficient animal heat to allow them to expose cold in the way they were able to do younger, and that is why so many de are caused by the cold; the circulation skin is impeded, and the blood is thrown upon the internal organs, some of which, being perhaps already diseased, fall readily into a state of severe disease, which ends in death through lung disease, kidney disease, and so on. The action of the skin tends to become extremely languid, and as cold cannot be borne by old people, they should stimulate the action of the skin by frequent washing with tepid water.