, obstinate chronic cases become an annoyance to him,
and whenever he can be otherwise professionally employed, he avoids
them, disliking to undertake their treatment.

With plenty of time for scientific investigation, ample facilities to
meet the demands upon his skill, and each succeeding case presenting
some new phase, the treatment becomes a matter of absorbing interest to
the specialist, and each success inspires greater confidence. We not
only use in the treatment of indigestion, solvent remedies, like pepsin,
which act only upon proteids, but also other remedies of recent
discovery, which exert a remarkable curative influence in diseases of
the digestive organs.

The chemistry of digestion and of life is becoming better understood.
Any of the free acids may serve to dissolve a precipitated phosphate;
but it is only the investigating therapeutist and experienced
practitioner who understands which of them is the _most_ and which is
the _least_ efficacious. Alkalies may dissolve lithic deposits, but who,
unless he be an experienced physician, can detect the fault of nutrition
which leads to their formation, or rightly interpret the symptoms
indicating it? These simple illustrations of the complications which
attend dyspepsia, are mentioned merely to show that they must be
anticipated and taken into account in the treatment.

The number of cases of dyspeptic invalids treated by the staff of the
Invalids' Hotel and Surgical Institute within file past few years, is so
large as scarcely to be credited by those unacquainted with the
prevalence of this disease. For this reason we have taken unusual pains
to investigate the causes of the disease, and have spared no expense to
provide the most approved digestive solvents, and stomachic tonics,
which invigorate the mucous membrane of the stomach, and materially
assist in reducing the food to a liquid condition. Some of these,
without being purgative, increase the activity of the liver, and
stimulate the intestinal secretions, two very important indications
which should be fulfilled by remedies which cause no real depression.
The recent important discoveries made in obtaining the active principles
from indigenous plants, has opened the way to the use of a few of the
most important of these remedial agents, hitherto almost wholly unknown
to the medical profession, and the encouraging results attending our
practice have amply repaid us for the investigation and originality in