the lower classes.  These people having neglected and set at defiance all hygienic rules, feel that a mark of special distinction is set upon them by their diseases.  In fact, they “enjoy poor health,” and take all occasions to discourse to the willing or disgusted listener upon their “symptoms,” “disorders,” their “nerves,” and “Complaints.”  The final word should be spelt with a huge C, so important a place does it occupy in their estimation.  The three D’s which should be rigidly excluded from polite conversation—­Domestics, Dress and Diseases—­form the staple of their conversation.  And the greatest of these is Diseases.

A farmer’s daughter, whose rosy cheeks and plump figure elicited from me a gratulatory comment upon her robust appearance, indignantly informed me that she was “by no means strong, and had been doctorin’ off and on for a year past for the malaria.”

“Do you eat and sleep tolerably well?”

“Oh, yes,” with the plaintive whine peculiar to the would-be invalid.  “I sleep dreadful heavy.  I take a nap each day for a couple of hours.  And I must have a pound of beefsteak or mutton-chops for dinner.  The fever makes me that hungry!  You see it devours all that I eat, and the strength of the food goes to that.”

Had any one pointed out to the deluded girl the folly of her theory, and explained that the fever patient becomes almost crazed from the restlessness that will not allow him to sleep, and that he loathes the very thought of food with a disgust that makes the daintiest dishes prepared by loving hands as gritty cinders between his teeth, she would have smiled patronizing superiority, and explained at length that her complaint was a peculiar one,—­no common, everyday illness.

With this class, stomach disorders and their attendant sufferings, such as giddiness, shortness of breath and pain in the side, are always attributed to cardiac irregularity.  There may be a lack of appetite and dull or acute pain following eating, and the fetid breath arising from a disordered condition of the stomach; but they resent the notion that their “heart disease” is dyspepsia, and would, in all probability, discharge the physician who recommended pepsin and judicious diet.

Perhaps the most discouraging feature of this class of persons is that they are ignorant and obstinate in this ignorance.  The opinion of all the medical fraternity in the country would, in the farmer’s daughter’s estimation, be unworthy of consideration compared with the advice or suggestion advanced by one of her own kind.  The practitioner among the unlearned has fearful odds to contend with in trying to bring an ignorant patient under his regimen.  One word from sister, cousin or aunt, and the invalid will cast aside the physician’s remedies, and take quarts of some patent medicine.