armless substances. It is astonishing what a quantity of
these poisons, whether from the food or from germs swallowed with it,
the liver is capable of dealing with--destroying them, converting them,
and acting as an absolute barrier to their passage into the general
system. But sometimes it is overwhelmed by appalling odds; some of the
invaders slip through its lines into the general circulation, producing
headache, backache, fever, and a "dark-brown taste in the mouth"; and,
behold, we are bilious, and proceed to blame the poor liver. We used to
pour in remedies to "stir it up," to "work on it"--which was about as
rational as whipping a horse when he is down, instead of cutting his
harness or taking his load off. Nowadays we stop the supply of further
food-poisons by stopping eating, assist nature in sweeping out or
neutralizing the enemies that are still in the alimentary canal, flush
the body with pure water, put it at rest--and trust the liver.
Biliousness is a sign of an overworked liver. If it wasn't working at
all, we shouldn't be bilious: we should be dead, or in a state of
collapse.

Moral: Don't rush for some remedy with which to club into insensibility
every symptom of disease as soon as it puts in an appearance. Give
nature a little chance to show what she intends to do before attempting
to stop her by dosing yourself with some pain-reliever or colic cure.
Don't trust her too blindly, for the best of things may become bad in
extremes, and the body may become so panic-stricken as to keep on
throwing overboard, not merely the poisons, but its necessary daily
food, if the process be allowed to continue too long.

This is where the doctor comes in. This is the point at which it takes
brains to succeed in the treatment of disease--to decide just how far
nature knows what she is doing, even in her most violent expulsive
methods, and is to be helped; and just when she has lost her head, or
got into a bad habit, and must be thwarted. This much we feel sure of,
and it is one of the keynotes of the attitude of modern medicine, that a
large majority of the symptoms of disease are really nature's attempts
to cure it.

This is admirably shown in our modern treatment of fevers. These we now
know to be due to the infection of the body by more or less definitely
recognized disease-germs or organisms. Fever is a complicated process,
and we are still in the dark upon many points in regard to it, but we
are coming more and