in those days with the thought that some day I should know; I believed that the fault was with me, that I was lacking in diagnostic ability, and that by hard work the time would come when I could read disease by its symptoms as well as the best, for I then thought the big men of the profession knew everything they pretended to know This was my ambition, but the ability to size up symptoms under given conditions and tell their true worth forever eluded me and kept me in a state of unrest and discontent that was next to ruining my life.  If light had not come when it did I should have abandoned the profession, but it came accidentally; it could not come otherwise for I did not know how to look for it.  In the course of time I stored in my memory many cases that from accident or caprice had recovered without drugs and food.  The satisfactory advance made by sick people, suffering from different diseases, when they were left without food or drugs, occurred so often, and with such unvarying regularity that it ceased to be a coincident—­it was absurd for me to continue to explain the results by the hackneyed word “coincident,” a word that is usually loaded with a lot of dogmatism, idleness and selfishness.

When I accepted the changes, taking place without medical aid, interruption and interference, as true cures, and so much a part of nature, and so intimately blended with the fixed laws of nature that like results could be looked for with the same degree of certainty that we look for the rising or setting of the sun, I busied myself in formulating a plan of cure as nearly in accordance with natural laws as I could.  I am now, and have been for twenty years, developing in this line, and I have gone far enough to declare that I have watched symptoms start, mature, and decline, and in this way have learned, by contrasting the symptoms in a given ease that has not been medicated, with those of a similar case that has been medicated, to know the full value of symptoms under medication, as well as the full value of the symptoms when not under medication.  This knowledge I am using in analyzing this medical classic and from my standpoint I can see how very easy it was for the author of the article under consideration to blunder along as he did.  The doctor should not feel lonesome, however, for he has a world of company.]

“This condition lasted nearly twenty-four hours; then a very large and hard stool, followed by a thin one of hemorrhagico-purulent character was discharged and simultaneously a decided change took place.  The appearance and pulse improved; the abdomen became softer with the exception of the marked resistance upon the right side low down, and the fever slightly remittent, its maximum 101 degree F. Vomiting did not recur; the patient moved about somewhat in bed and slept several hours in a half-lateral posture.  Meat jelly and cold beef tea were swallowed.”