sease in which death was inevitable,
such as cancer, consumption, etc., patients were permitted to take what
they could with the least offence to the sense of relish. In every case
of recovery there was a history of increasing general strength as the
disease declined, of an actual increase of vital power without the
support of food that had no more relish than the dose that crucified
the nerves of taste.

In all America milk is the chief reliance to support vital power when no
other food can be taken. Milk in one stage of normal digestion gets into
the form of tough curds ready for the press, and curds should always be
thoroughly masticated before swallowing.

Sir William Roberts, of England, in his exhaustive work on _Digestion
and Diet_, asserts that milk-curds are not digested in the stomach
during sickness, but are forced into the duodenum, where, he asserts,
they are digested, but he gives no reason for his faith that there is
power to digest in the duodenum where there is none in the stomach.

It was not difficult to make the mothers in the homes understand that
taking milk by the drink was equivalent to swallowing green cheese-curds
without due mastication.

With these hygienic conceptions and methods I continued to visit the
sick as a mere witness of Nature's power in disease rather than as an
investigator, yet without being able to understand the secret of the
support of vital power without food. But whatever risk there might be,
or how strong my faith when my patrons were the subjects of what might
be called foolhardy experiments, there came a time when this faith was
to have the severest of all tests.

An epidemic of diphtheria broke out among my nearest neighbors, and
after four deaths in as many families within a stone's throw of my
residence a son of mine aged three years was taken. I had never given
him in all his life even a cross look, and whatever sin there was in
making idols of children in this I was the worst of all sinners, and I
did not quite believe, as some Christian folks would have me, that my
happiness through him was not the very incense of gratitude to the great
Author for the gift of such a treasure of the heart.

In my hour of trial two of my ablest and most experienced medical
friends came to me. Quinine and iron in solution were their verdict--and
the little throat was not copper-lined; and, in addition, all the strong
whiskey possible to force into the stomach: all this would hav