us inflammation. And, moreover, this _a
priori_ expectation was apparently confirmed by the discovery, in many
appendices removed by operation, of small oval or rounded masses,
closely resembling the seed of some vegetable or fruit. Whereupon
anxious mothers promptly proceeded to order their children to "spit
out," with even more religious care than formerly, every grape-seed and
cherry-stone. The increased use of fresh and preserved fruits was
actually gravely cited, particularly by our Continental brethren, as one
of the causes of this new American disease. Barely ten years ago I was
spending the summer in the Adirondacks, and was bitterly reproached by
the host of one of the Lake hotels, because the profession had so
terrified the public about the dangers of appendicitis from fruit-seeds
that he was utterly unable to serve upon his tables a large stock of
delicious preserved and canned raspberries, blackberries, and grapes
which he had put up the previous years. "Why," he said, "more than half
the people that come up here will no more eat them than they would
poison, for fear that some of the seeds will give 'em appendicitis."
This dread, however, has been deprived of all rational basis, first, by
finding that many inflamed appendices removed, after the operation
became more common, contained no foreign body whatever; secondly, that
many perfectly healthy appendices examined on the post-mortem table,
death being due to other diseases, contain these apparently foreign
bodies; and thirdly, that when these "foreign bodies" were cut into,
they were found to be not seeds or pits of any description, but hardened
and, in some cases, partially calcareous masses of the faeces.

We are in a nearly similar position in regard to the third alleged cause
of appendicitis, and that is food. Many are the accusations which have
been made in this field. On the one hand, meat and animal foods
generally have been denounced, on account of their supposed "heating" or
"uric-acid-forming" properties; while on the other, vegetables and
fruits have been equally hotly incriminated, on account of their seeds,
fibres, husks, and irritating substances, and the danger of their being
contaminated by bacteria and other parasites from the soil. These
charges appear to have little adequate foundation, and, so far as we are
in a position now to judge, the only way a food can give, or be
accessory to, appendicitis is by its being taken in such excessive