To-day there is no other disease which brings surgery so quickly to mind as does appendicitis, especially if the victim can stand for a good, large fee.  It is only human I presume, for surgeons to defend the operation.  They believe in it, and are not willing to investigate, for they are satisfied.  They know or should know that ninety per cent of all the surgery practiced to-day has no excuse for its existence—­no more right to be protected by the laws that weld society together than has any other graft that exists by the grace of public ignorance and credulity.  This operation has for some time been the largest single item of revenue for the profession.

Thirty-four years ago I was called in consultation to see my first case of what was then generally recognized as perityphlitis or typhlitis—­inflammation of the connective tissue about the cecum.  It was a typical case of what is today called appendicitis.  I advised the doctor to cease his fruitless endeavors at securing relief by giving drugs, and give the patient nothing but water.  As I remember now, it took about four weeks for this patient to recover.  This plan—­positively nothing but water—­has since been a part of my treatment in all such diseases.

CHAPTER III

Etiology:  To understand the cause of appendicitis we must go back to the beginning, and when we do we find that it starts just where all diseases start, namely, where health leaves off! When the laws of health are broken for the first time, it can be said that the individual has started on the road of ill health.  How fast he will travel and just what will be the character of the disease he meets with will depend upon his constitution, inheritance, environment and education.  I do not mean by education, school or book education; I mean intuition—­that knowledge which evolves from home life and habits.  I mean, has he any self-discipline?  Does he know anything about self-denial?  Has he any conception of a control higher than impulse?  Has he been brought up to know that there is a limit to the gratifying of wants and desires beyond which, if he goes, he must make good with laws that are as exacting as they are invariable?  Does he know that nature shows no favoritism?  Does he know that there are laws regulating his intercourse with men—­with everything—­that exact absolute justice from him?  And that, if he takes advantage of weakness or ignorance because he can, or if he secures an advantage through credulity or trickery, he must settle for the crime before a judge who is absolutely just!  If he has this education, which is a constitutional ingrafting from the mother’s blood, fructified by a like potential father, he will be almost immune from all diseases.  This is an education that can not be secured unless the individual has the prenatal and environing influences to differentiate these static attributes of his nature, and, if he has, the result