f me. I am not advancing any argument, medicinal or
otherwise, for my plan. I never talked to a doctor about it, and never
shall. If there are fat men and fat women who are fat for the same
reasons I was fat I suppose they can get thin the way I got thin. If
they are fat for other reasons I suppose they cannot. I don't know
about either proposition.

I have great respect for doctors--so much respect, in fact, that I keep
diligently away from them. I know the preliminaries of their game and
can take a dose of medicine myself as skillfully as they can administer
it. Also, I know when I have a fever, and have a working knowledge of
how my heart should beat and my other bodily functions be performed. I
have frequently found that a prescription, unintelligibly written but
looking very wise, is highly efficacious when folded carefully and put
in the pocketbook instead of being deposited with a druggist. I
suppose that comes from a sort of hereditary faith in amulets. No
doubt the method would be even more efficacious if the prescription
were tied on a string and hung around the neck. I shall try that some
time when my wife lugs in a doctor on me.

Still, doctors are interesting as a class. After you get beyond the
let-me-feel-your-pulse-and-see-your-tongue preliminaries they are
versatile and ingenious. Almost always, after you tell them what is
the matter with you, they will know--not every time, but frequently.
Also, they will take any sort of a chance with you in the interest of
science. However, they generally send out for a specialist when they
are ill themselves. When you come to think of it that is but natural.
Almost any man, whether professional or not, will take a chance with
somebody else that he wouldn't quite go through with on himself.
Besides, doctors treat comparative strangers for the most part, and the
interests of science are to be conserved.

Almost any doctor can tell you how to get thin. To be sure, no doctor
will tell you to do the same things any other doctor prescribes, but it
all simmers down to the same thing: Cut out the starchy foods and
sweets, and take exercise. Also: Don't drink alcohol. The variations
that can be played on this simple theme by a skillful doctor are
endless. When a real specialist in fat reduction gets hold of you--a
real, earnest reducer--he can contrive a diet that would make a living
skeleton thin--and likewise put him in his little grave. I have had
d