to presume that my patients
recovered more rapidly and with less suffering. With no perplexing
study over what foods and what medicines to give, I could devote my
entire attention to the study of symptoms as evidences of progress
toward recovery or death; and in addition to all this there was the
great satisfaction of being strictly in line with Nature as to when and
what to eat.

As to the danger of death from mere starvation, the following remarkable
case reveals how remote it is in the ordinary history of acute diseases.
The late Rev. Dr. Merchant, of Meadville, Pa., a short time before his
death, which occurred some months ago, informed me that a brother
entered the army during the War of the Rebellion with a weight of one
hundred and fifty-nine pounds. He was sent home so wasted from
ulceration of stomach and bowels that he actually spanned his thigh with
thumb and finger. He lived ten days only, to astonish all by the
clearness of his mind even on the last day of his life, when he could
think on abstruse questions as he had never been known to do in health.
At death his body weighed only sixty pounds.

It was Dr. Merchant's opinion, from a history of the case, that no food
was digested during the last four months of his life; but it is my
opinion that it took a much longer time than this for the brain to
absorb more than ninety pounds of the body. That life was shortened by
the more rapid loss of the tissues from the disease is to be taken into
account in estimating time in starvation.

IV.

Feeding the sick! Who that rule in kitchens and feed the well do not
realize with weariness of brain the demands of the stomach that at each
meal there shall be some change in the bill of fare?

The chief reliance of physicians for the maintenance of strength while
sick bodies are being cured is milk. As a food, milk was mainly destined
for the calf, and not for man--certainly not after the coming of the
molars. It is not a food that will start the saliva in case of hunger,
as the odors from the frying-pan or from roasting fowl, yet because it
plays such an important part as a complete food for some months in the
life of the calf, and because it can be taken without especial aversion
when the odors of the cooking-stove are an offence to the nostrils; it
is given by the hour, day after day, and in some cases week after week;
and there are physicians by the thousands who reinforce this inflexible
bill of fare by th