a few years later it would have excited notice, and derogatory comment, in all the city outside of my own attached families.

Other experiences occurred less marked, with sufficient frequency to keep me in a measure from the evil of over-confidence. But these are met by all physicians as well. What did I gain by eleven years' attendance upon the acutely sick, whereof no case was ever neglected, not even a visit missed because of disability myself?

1. A great deal of experience, including that derived from nine years of service as physician to the county Infirmary, and something of that intellectual growth that must come where one mind comes into habitual contact with other minds of every shade of culture and power excited to vigorous action through fear or apprehension.

2. Only the reputation of being a painstaking, attentive physician, and a business created amply for the needs of professional culture, large enough to exceed the needs of daily living, but less, perhaps very much less, than would have been but for a presumed defect in dosage. 1. It was too strong, apparently, to attract business from homeopathic considerations. 2. It was too weak in a general way, presumably, to attract business from "allopathic" considerations.

And what the result upon myself? A feeling that I had reached my highest possibilities in the science and art of treatment of the sick, and that in a business and a professional sense I had fallen far short of my ideal.

The mystery of cure was as deep as ever.

LECTURE III.

NATURE REVEALED IN A NEW LIGHT BY A CASE OF FEVER-DIGESTION IN HEALTH AND DISEASES COMPARED-AN ILLUSTRATION BY THE CASE OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

My Friends the Readers :

I closed my lecture of yesterday with the suggestion that, both in a business and a professional sense, I had reached the end of eleven years of the closest attention to all the requirements of my practice in a rather disappointed state of mind.

One of the most discouraging things encountered during these years was the fact that a very large business could be done without any vital knowledge of the business to be performed, a fact, as I told you, I got a hint of behind the prescription case. This is really an anomaly in business affairs. That an intelligent, thinking, reflecting human being will put his own life or the life of his wife or child into the hands of those who, in every scientific sense, are as well fitted to perform the most complicated scientific work of any kind of business without previous knowledge or experience, as they are to outrage the human stomachs of the sick, is a marvel in human affairs.

As I have intimated before, this arises from the superstitious faith of the people in the power of dosage over disease, and this faith of course arises from ignor

ance.

Cheer of mind, as I shall tell you about later on, is such a prime necessity to health; and disease, with its

associated possibilities, is so gloomy a subject to even think about; that the mind recoils from thought upon it; hence results the prevailing ignorance even in the most cultured classes, and hence the ease with which all classes alike become the prey of the spoiler in times of emotional tension when reason has become impaired, and strong words, and strong assurances are received as cold water by a thirsty soul, even with child-like faith, no matter how founded upon ignorance. This must ever be so until the people become aware that disease is largely a condition arising from avoidable causes, and that the cure is largely a matter of Nature's own handiwork.

I also told you that I had reached a condition of mind when there seemed no more progress for me-a condition that was not founded on satisfied ambition. I was in a fit condition for the incipient stage of a wilting; a dry rot of all the faculties necessary to my taxing duties. But this was not to be. On a hot day in July, 1877, I entered a home to assume charge of a case of fever that was to rouse every possible faculty called out by care of the sick as by an electric charge. I was now to have a revelation of Nature's power in disease, and that was to be all the more impressive because of the untoward conditions of environment.

The disease was typhoid fever; the patient a young married woman of rather full habit, that is, she was rather well rounded from undue proportion of fatty material, the muscle portion being light and weak. Her health had always been unstable, mental and moral faculties weak, and ambition scarcely large enough to furnish substantial reasons for being alive. The home consisted of one room and a small adjoining kitchen; this room was unprotected by a shade-tree to shut out the hot rays from a southern exposure, with no flyscreens, and the patient had only hap-hazard nursing.

Now I am not going to give you any history of symptoms as I would need to do if you were an audience of physicians. I will tell you that there was the foulest tongue I had ever seen in a sick-room, with an intense aversion to food. Now, to support the strength and vital power, it would have been my duty to enforce feeding in spite of the fact that the stomach was in as abnormal a condition as the tongue, and as functionally disabled. But Nature would have none of it. Every dose, every drink of water was instantly rejected for a period of three weeks, and it was not until the twenty-fifth day that suggestions of beef-tea failed to excite aversion. What was the condition of my patient? Was there a hopeless collapse of all the vital powers because they had not been adequately supported by the digestion of food by that very sick stomach?

I was a very surprised doctor, for, as the tolerant condition of the stomach was approached; even without food I found the tongue cleaning, and a manifest gain in both mental and physical strength, that became even marked at the time when food and doses could be borne and I was moved to let Nature continue to have her own way. And, from thence on, I only watched, without enforced feeding, and with only unmedicated doses, until the thirty-fourth day, when she politely bowed me out.

This was an object lesson :

1. Vital power supported without food.

2. Mental and physical strength increasing with the decline of symptoms.

3. A cure without the aid of remedies, and a cure that was eminently complete in every way.

4. No unusual wasting of the body.

I was set to thinking, to reflecting as never before. I tried to recall all I could of every seriously sick case I ever had with reference to these four points.

I failed to tell you how I had fed my sick during these eleven years because I wished to reserve it until I could make it more impressive. I always permitted my sick to feed or be fed, when there was not special aversion, and with milk as the preference. But I never enforced this even in a single case.

It soon began to occur to me that the sum total of food taken by every severely sick case was infinitely small in proportion to the indicated need, and always too small to account, reasonably, for the support of vital power. And it began to occur to me that there was always a waste of the body in continuous operation, during the entire period of aversion or indifference to food. I had noticed this with eyesight but not with insight.

I had had numerous cases where for so long a time so little food had been borne that I might have wondered, but did not, how vital power was being supported. Such cases are constantly occurring in the practice of every physician. I began, too, to become aware that in every case, when the appetite point was reached, there had been a decided gain in mental strength that was not to be accounted for by the support of digested and assimilated food.

Is there ever a happier expression on all the earth than is revealed by the invalid who has reached the point of keen relish for his food, before the lines of expression have become drawn by the tension of his affairs? Is there not mental and physical energy revealed in every line?

Readers, listeners, you who have become in some