ill--with the
substitution of fine flour when the bowels become too active.

Yours, etc.,
HORACE A. BARROWS.

LETTER VI.--FROM DR. CALEB BANNISTER.

PHELPS, N. Y., May 4, 1835.

SIR,--My age is fifty-three. My ancestors had all melted away with
hereditary consumption. At the age of twenty, I began to be afflicted
with pain in different parts of the thorax, and other premonitory
symptoms of phthisis pulmonalis. Soon after this, my mother and eldest
sister died with the disease. For myself, having a severe attack of ague
and fever, all my consumptive symptoms became greatly aggravated; the
pain was shifting--sometimes between the shoulders, sometimes in the
side, or breast, etc. System extremely irritable, pulse hard and easily
excited, from about ninety to one hundred and fifty, by the stimulus of
a very small quantity of food; and, to be short, I was given up, on all
hands, as lost.

From reading "Rush" I was induced to try a milk diet, and succeeded in
regaining my health, so that for twenty-four years I have been entirely
free from any symptom of phthisis; and although subject, during that
time, to many attacks of fever and other epidemics, have steadily
followed the business of a country physician.

I would further remark, before proceeding to the direct answer to your
questions, that soon perceiving the benefit resulting from the course I
had commenced, and finding the irritation to diminish in proportion as I
diminished not only the quality, but quantity of my food, I took less
than half a pint at a meal, with a small piece of bread, amounting to
about the quantity of a Boston cracker; and at times, in order to lessen
arterial action, added some water to the milk, taking only my usual
quantity in _bulk_.

A seton was worn in the side, and a little exercise on horseback taken
three times every day, as strength would allow, during the whole
progress. The appetite was, at all times, not only _craving_, it was
_voracious_; insomuch that all my sufferings from all other sources,
dwindled to a point when compared with it.

The quantity that I ate at a time so far from satisfying my appetite,
only served to increase it; and this inconvenience continued during the
whole term, without the least abatement;--and the only means by which I
could resist its cravings, was to live entirely by myself, and keep out
of sight of all kinds of food except the scanty pittance on which I
subsisted. And now to th