contrary, there is no such thing as a torpid or
an over-active liver.

It is true that after a "bilious" person has vomited for a few minutes
he is likely to throw up a certain amount of bile, which is supposed
to have been lying in his stomach and causing the nausea. In fact,
however, this bile is merely a part of the usual supply stored away in
the gall-bladder. By the very act of retching, the bile is forced out
of the bile channels into the stomach and thence up into the mouth.
Anybody can throw up bile at any time if he only tries hard enough.

One of the favorite habits of certain people is the taking of calomel
and salts. After such a dose they view with satisfaction the green
character of the stools and conclude that they have rid themselves of
a great amount of harmful matter. As a matter of fact, the greater
part of the coloring in the stools is from the calomel itself, changed
in the intestines from one salt of mercury to another. Any excess bile
is the result of the irritating action of the calomel on the
intestinal wall, an irritation which makes the bowel hurry to cast out
this foreign substance without waiting for the bile to be absorbed as
usual.

A patient once told me that he had bought medicine from a street fakir
and by his direction had followed it with a dose of salts. He saved
the bowel movement, washed it in a sieve, and discovered a great
number of "gall-stones," which the medicine had so effectively washed
from his system. He was much astonished when I told him that his
gall-stones were merely pieces of soap. He did not know that
everybody manufactures soap in his body every day, and that by taking
an extra quantity of oil in the shape of the fakir's medicine and an
extra quantity of potash in the salts, he had merely augmented a
normal physiological process. The supposed action of calomel belongs
to the same class of phenomena, and has no slightest effect on the
liver or on real gall-stones, which are the precipitate of bile-salts
in the gall-bladder, and which cannot be reached by any medicine.

If the popular notions about biliousness are ill founded, what then
causes the disturbances which undoubtedly do occur and which show
themselves in attacks of nausea or sick headache? The answer can be
given in a word of four letters; a coated tongue, a bilious attack and
a sick headache are all the outcome of a mood. Stocks have gone down
or the wife is cranky or the neighbors are hateful. Adrena