mach or
liver.

The laity have never been called upon to answer the questioning of the
late Prof. Robley Dunglison: "What do you mean, sir, by biliousness? Do
you mean, sir, that the liver does not secrete or manufacture a
sufficiency of bile, or not enough? Do you mean that the bile-material
is left in the blood, or too much poured in? Do you mean that there is
an excess in the alimentary canal, and a deficiency elsewhere? Please,
sir, explain what you really mean by the term 'bilious!'" The Professor
had a way about him that at least made one stop and seriously inquire,
before adopting any random notion in regard to medicine. It is to be
regretted that, in the humdrum tread-mill work of many physicians, they
even have to drop into the commonplace way of treating dyspepsias and
such ailments without any further inquiry. A farmer knows better than to
drive a dishing wheel, or with merely having a nail clinched in the
loose shoe of a valuable horse; but he is fully satisfied to do so in a
metaphorical sense, as regards his own constitution, and the mere hint
from his physician that he had better lay up for repairs, or that there
is something wrong about him that will require investigation, and that
there is an ulterior cause to his feeling tired, headachy, or dyspeptic,
or an allusion that there is something systemic, as a cause, to his
momentary attacks of disordered vision or amaurosis, will generally make
him look on the doctor with mistrust.

The merchant, banker, and mechanic are not up to Professor von Jaksch's
ideas of toxaemia,--that toxaemia may be exogenous or endogenous, or that
the latter is further subdivided into three more varieties,--and, what
is worse, he cares still less. The above three classes of humanity, when
sick, simply would want to know if Professor von Jaksch was good on
dyspepsia, the measles, or typhoid fever. They care very little that he
divides endogenous or auto-toxaemia into that produced by the normal
products of tissue-interchange, abnormally retained in the body, giving
rise to uraemia, toxaemia from acute intestinal obstruction, etc., the
above being the first division. The second depends on the outcome of
pathological processes, which change the normal course of assimilation
of food and tissue-interchange; so that, instead of non-toxic, toxic
matter is formed. The second group he names noso-toxicoses, which he
subdivides into two principal divisions:--

(_a_) The carbohydrates, f