its members to pay for his funeral expenses.  About this time a business man of their town, impressed by the cure of a former patient who had made a quick recovery after seven years of invalidism, persuaded the two men to take their little savings and come to California to be under my care.  The evening meal and breakfast went smoothly enough, although the menu included articles which they had been taught to avoid.  However, as I left the house on a necessary absence soon after breakfast, I saw Leonardo weeping in the garden and Giovanni spitting up his breakfast, out at the entrance gate.  On my return, I found one of “the family” literally sitting on the coat-tails of Leonardo, while Giovanni hovered at a distance, safe from capture.  Leonardo upbraided me bitterly for having undone all the gain they had made in the long months of rigid dieting, for now the vomiting had returned, because they had eaten sugar on their oatmeal at breakfast!  I made Leonardo drink an egg-nog, took him into the consultation-room and held my hand on his knee to keep him in his chair, while explaining to him as best I could the physiologic action of the hydrochloric acid on the digestive juice, which he feared as a sour stomach, the sign of indigestion.

During the conversation I said, “I suppose Giovanni imitated you in this mistaken fear about your health.”  The reply was, “No, I got it off him!” Nearly two hours later he exclaimed in astonishment:  “Why, that milk hasn’t come up!  Maybe I am cured!” “Of course you are cured,” I answered; “there never was anything really the matter with your stomach, so you are cured as soon as you think you are.”

Later Giovanni was inveigled into the house by the promise that he would have to eat nothing more than milk soup.  All was smooth sailing after this.  For my own part I feared for the permanency of the cure, for they were returning to the old environment.  But more than three years have passed, and grateful letters still come telling of their continued health.

Another patient, a teacher of domestic science in a big Eastern university, had lived on skimmed milk and lime-water from Easter to Thanksgiving.  Several attempts to enlarge the dietary by adding cream or white of egg had only served to increase the sense of discomfort.  Finding nothing in the history of the case to warrant a diagnosis of organic disease of the stomach, I served her plate with the regular dinner, bidding her have no hesitancy even over the pork chops and potato chips.  She gained nine pounds in weight the first week, and in two and a half months was forty pounds to the good.