an equally eminent medical friend to the effect that:

"Of all the surgical insanities within his recollection this
onslaught on the tonsils was the worst--not excepting the operation
on the appendix."

Dr. Mackenzie then proceeds to show how abysmal has been the ignorance
of the functions of these organs from the earliest times, (including a
distinguished English medical luminary who went to far as to say: "were
I attempting the artificial construction of a man I would leave out the
tonsils,") adding that the tonsil was regarded as a useless appendage
and "like its little neighbour, the uvula, was sacrificed on every
possible pretext or when the surgeon did not know what else to do."

"Never," he says, "in the history of medicine has the lust for operation
on the tonsils been as passionate as it is at the present time. It is
not simply a surgical thirst, it is a mania, a madness, an obsession. It
has infected not only the general profession, but also the laity." In
proof of this he adds: "A leading laryngologist in one of the largest
cities came to me with the humiliating confession that although holding
views hostile to such operations he had been forced to perform
tonsillectomy in every case in order to satisfy the popular craze and to
save his practice from destruction." He cites an instance in which a
mother brought her little six-year-old daughter to him, "to know whether
her tonsils ought to come out;"--and in answer to the assurance: "your
baby is perfectly well, why do you want her tonsils out?" the fond
mother's reply was: "Because she sometimes wets the bed!"

Recent universal inspection of the throats of school children has
revealed the fact that nearly all children at some time of life have
more or less enlarged tonsils. And the reports maintain that this, for
the most part, is harmless if not actually physiologic--natural--and
that their removal in these cases is not only unnecessary but injurious
to the proper development of the child.

Nevertheless, the reports of the special hospitals for diseases of the
nose and throat show to what an appalling extent this destructive
operation is perpetrated throughout the land.

"Much wild and incontinent talk," Dr. Mackenzie continues, "for which
their teachers are sometimes largely to blame, has poisoned the minds of
the younger generation of operators and thrown the public into hysteria.
They are told that with the disappearance of the tonsils