absolutely sure. Fifty years ago, the mortality
among patients suffering from a great many
diseases, used to be more than double what it
now is; the improvement is to be ascribed
wholly to increased care for the securing of
healthy conditions of life for the sick, and to
increased care that (according to Sydenham's
motto) the physician do no hurt. The effect of
a drug upon the constitution is now considered
by the good practitioner not less than its effect
on the disease.

Appetite being lost through excess of weakness,
may, therefore, often be recovered slowly
by a diet that increases strength. Where solid
food cannot be taken, liquid food may be made
nourishing. If milk can be borne in any form,
that is good food; and there is nourishment as
well as stimulus in spirit wisely taken. A
gentleman very consumptive and extraordinarily
weak, kept weak by use of " mild aperients,"
loathed solid food. The mild aperients were
stopped, medicine was abandoned, cream with
brandy, and milk with rum, were used as diet.
He recovered health and strength and good
digestion. A cup of cream containing half an
ounce of brandy, three or four times a day, is a
prescription much to be preferred in many cases
to the self-prescribed physic with which
many weak people make themselves weaker.
Some need frequent support of sustenance,
others bear longer intervals; but all should
seek to meet diminishing of force of life with
that by which true natural strength is revived—
judicious food and rest. A lady, become bloodless
and weak, required food half-hourly; she
was unfortunately allowed to sleep too long, and
she awoke to die.

Rest has been named in conjunction with food.
Exercise beyond certain limits defined by the
strength of an invalid, produces fatigue and
depression. One of the commonest of errors is
to lay stress indiscriminately on the strengthening
power of exercise.

A gentleman, thin, weakly, and with a
distressing impediment of speech, had been
compelled by ill health to relinquish business. He
could not recover health. It was found that he
was in the habit of walking six hours a day
"for the benefit of air and exercise." He was
recommended to stay at home, lie on the sofa,
and read novels, for a week. At the end of the
week the alteration in his appearance, voice,
manner, and even in the stammer, was most
remarkable. Having found out his mistake, he
became fat and nourishing, retaining very little
of his stammer.

The mind of a spare and active man of business
gave way, after a harassing career. He
returned from a few weeks of confinement in a
state of deplorable weakness, unable to stand
without tottering. Upon liberal diet, steel, and
cod oil, he gained flesh and strength. He was
then allowed to be out of doors for ten minutes
at a time. He ate hourly, and the exercise was
taken between meals. Everything went well,
until one day he walked a mile and a half, to a
concert, sat it out, and then returned up hill to
his house. For three days afterwards his life
was despaired of, and it was a month before he
had recovered the lost ground. We might add
here an alphabet of cases. Mr. A. looks healthy,
but is always painfully exhausted by half an
hour's walk. Mrs. B. found her digestion
destroyed by the exercise of talking, and recovered
only partially by help of champagne. Mr. C.
was so weak that he lost appetite and digestion,
and was for some hours unable to think or
write clearly after a walk of thirty yards. Mr.
D. was exhausted by putting coals on the fire.
Miss E., an overgrown, delicate girl, had
influenza, and took Epsom salts. Her friends
visited her; she sat up in bed chatting
actively, ate heartily of chicken, and died when
she laid her head back on the pillow. Mary F.,
intemperate, with fatty heart, died during the
exertion of a fit of laughter. Mrs. G. is free
from all organic disease, but the exertion of
going up one pair of stairs confines her to her
room for a week. She ascribes her debility to
the exercise she was recommended to take
while at a fashionable watering-place. A
consumptive young lady who died under the care of
a fashionable physician at a favourite spa, had
been carried out by him ostensibly for a drive
in his carriage, set down three miles from the
town, and left on the road, under orders to walk
home. That physician pinned his faith upon
mutton and exercise, without considering that
healthy exercise is a relative term; that what is
light, healthy exercise for one, is for another
dangerous if not fatal exertion; that the powers
of the weak have to be husbanded, and that a
sick or weakly person cannot fail to be harmed
by exercise that reaches the point of fatigue.

Our account may close with two curious
examples of what may be done by giving impulse
to the natural order of life against any disorder
in the system. A child was ill. The medical
attendant, a remarkably shrewd and observant
man, had done all in the power of his art, and
the child steadily got worse. One evening
the doctor called while the father sat over
his whisky toddy, and he administered some
to the child. It was taken with evident
relish, and upon this hint the doctor acted.
For three months the child, about two years
old, lived almost entirely upon whisky toddy.
By the end of that time the disease had given
way, and healthy appetite returned. While
the disease lasted, the child had enjoyed his
mixture so much that he would not go to sleep
without a small bottle of it that he nursed like
a doll. But when recovery was complete, he
loathed the sight and smell of it. In the second
similar case, wine-and-water, spirits-and-water,
and beer, were tried vainly, till it was found that
the child fastened eagerly upon a particular
kind of Scotch ale. Upon this it began to
mend directly, taking a pint daily, and for the
first fortnight nothing else. At the end of the
fortnight there was appetite for solid food, and
in six weeks the child was well, after which it
disliked the ale so much that it could not even
endure the sight of the bottle.