h in building up wrong habit-reactions and
in quickly substituting healthy ones, once the false idea is removed.

Among my stomach-patients there were two men, brothers-in-law,
immigrants from the Austrian Tyrol, and now resident in one of the
cow-boy states. Leonardo spoke little English, and though Giovanni
understood a very little, he spoke only Italian.

Several years before I knew them, Giovanni had developed a severe case
of stomach trouble and had finally gone to a medical center for
operation. The disturbance, however, was not relieved by the operation
and before long his brother-in-law fell into the same kind of trouble.
For several years the two had spent much of their time dieting,
vomiting, and worrying over their sour stomachs. Giovanni finally
became so ill that his sick-benefit society had actually assessed its
members to pay for his funeral expenses. About this time a business
man of their town, impressed by the cure of a former patient who had
made a quick recovery after seven years of invalidism, persuaded the
two men to take their little savings and come to California to be
under my care. The evening meal and breakfast went smoothly enough,
although the menu included articles which they had been taught to
avoid. However, as I left the house on a necessary absence soon after
breakfast, I saw Leonardo weeping in the garden and Giovanni spitting
up his breakfast, out at the entrance gate. On my return, I found one
of "the family" literally sitting on the coat-tails of Leonardo, while
Giovanni hovered at a distance, safe from capture. Leonardo upbraided
me bitterly for having undone all the gain they had made in the long
months of rigid dieting, for now the vomiting had returned, because
they had eaten sugar on their oatmeal at breakfast! I made Leonardo
drink an egg-nog, took him into the consultation-room and held my hand
on his knee to keep him in his chair, while explaining to him as best
I could the physiologic action of the hydrochloric acid on the
digestive juice, which he feared as a sour stomach, the sign of
indigestion.

During the conversation I said, "I suppose Giovanni imitated you in
this mistaken fear about your health." The reply was, "No, I got it
off him!" Nearly two hours later he exclaimed in astonishment: "Why,
that milk hasn't come up! Maybe I am cured!" "Of course you are
cured," I answered; "there never was anything really the matter with
your stomach, so you are cured as soon a