to gain weight, as might have been expected.  On the seventeenth day after ending the fast he weighed 140 lbs. and on the nineteenth day 144 lbs.  On that day he received from a hospital a report that the reaction of the physiologico-pathological test was negative.  This has naturally had a great effect on the patient; and it is worthy of very careful consideration.  Of course one negative result may not be conclusive although it was positive before the fast.  But if the result should be repeated, and especially if it should prove to be permanent, the importance of the fact can hardly be exaggerated, since the suggestion arises in our minds that perhaps we may be able to cure profound blood-poisoning by fasting, neither the usual treatment nor the use of Salvarsan enabling the investigator to say that the result of the pathological reaction was negative; but this has followed after a heroic fast of 56 days.  The result if confirmed would not be unique.  Quite recently I saw a specific ulcer close to the ankle-joint for which operation had been recommended.  It seemed to me that operation would be likely to open the joint, and that therefore it was a risky proceeding.  But under a restriction of the diet, putting the young man on barley-water for a few days and then advising him to eat once a day only, the ulcer became very much smaller, and no operation has had to be performed.  Blood-poisoning of this nature, of course, is not caused by improper nutrition, but it may readily be believed to be aggravated by the ordinary conventional over-feeding to which, so far as I can see, we are all subjecting ourselves, especially as persons who put themselves in the way of contracting blood-poisoning do not generally belong to the class of those who are attracted by the suggestion that it is noble to keep the body under, and that if we do not strive to keep the body under, it will be very likely to keep us under.  Although we shall be liable to be infected, however we live, still we may believe that we shall be more likely to be badly infected (if we put ourselves in the way of contracting disease) if we have been previously subjected to the bad effects of over-feeding.  This consideration renders a possible cure by fasting, a not impossible suggestion.  And if, therefore, we have in fasting the suggestion of a remedy which offers us the hope of eradicating such a fearful disease from the human system, it certainly behoves us to make use of it.

As a rule it seems to me that bad forms of blood-poisoning of this nature are incurable.  In three or four generations they destroy the strain affected by it, do what we will.  Meantime it shows all the signs and symptoms of a hereditary disease, for the children are born suffering, showing a coppery rash, and old before they are young.  And when they get a little older they have no bridges to their noses, their teeth are ill-formed, their vision is imperfect, their intellects dull.  It seems as