These patients are so comfortable after the second or third day that it is hard to make them or their friends believe that they have appendicitis People are so afraid that they will starve to death if they have no food for a few days that they make haste to get put on a killing treatment rather than run any risk.  This fear is absurd Physicians are largely to blame for this popular ear, for those who do not feed by mouth still have the idea that their patients must have nourishment, so they feed by rectum.  This is also absurd.  What the patient needs is rest, and the more complete the rest the quicker the recovery.  Give the patient all the water he wants.

The bowels will move in fourteen to twenty eight days from the beginning of the attack.  Then the fast can be broken by giving a glass of hot milk, which is to be chewed well, or given in the form of junket; this is to be repeated three times a day for a week, or give the milk twice a day and a plate of mutton broth for the third meal.  I do not give solid food because there is a large abscess cavity opening into the bowels, and if solid food is given before it has time to close, it is liable to find its way into this cavity, thereby preventing healing, and bringing on a chronic condition that will ultimately end in death.  The less food taken for one week after the discharge takes place, the better.  Any rational individual should see that withholding food is the proper treatment.  Milk should be thoroughly mixed with saliva or not taken at all.  Remember that if milk is not taken with great deliberation, and great care given to thoroughly insalivate each sip, then it amounts to the same thing as eating solid food.

Milk is a solid food when taken into the stomach as a beverage or a drink like water.

In appendicitis all nature cries out for rest, and if it is given 99 out of every 100 cases will get well and there will be no suffering and no danger after the first seventy-two hours.

The ordinary physician sends for a surgeon, and if he is a victim of the surgical mania the patient must be operated upon at once, for if twelve or twenty-four hours are given, the conditions may clear up and an operation will be unnecessary.  The majority of surgeons feel that they will forfeit their right to heaven if they do not cut at once.  The consequence is that there are many patients operated upon who are as innocent of having the disease as the surgeon is innocent of a knowledge of a better plan of treatment.

Of course, the surgeon declares that pus should be let out by cutting into it, or it is liable to break into the peritoneal cavity and cause death This is positively not the truth, for when an abscess threatens, nature at once proceeds to throw a wall around in order to avoid accidents.  All around the point of prospective abscesses, heavy walls of adhesions are built, and if nature is not interfered with, the abscess will break into the gut, because it is the point of least resistance, and it is also the point favored by gravity.  The surgeons when they operate in these cases work exactly opposite to nature.