harmless, yet sometimes these practitioners have done great injury where relief might have been obtained through proper care. I think several of them injured me, and I should feel like taking a shotgun to one of these amateur aurists were I to find him operating on one of my children. I wish I knew why the community deaf man of a country neighborhood is considered so fair a subject for experimentation. Probably in some cases it is really a nuisance to communicate with him, and again he may be the object of genuine sympathy, perhaps with an admixture of curiosity. I have run the whole gauntlet, and should need an entire book to report all the remedies suggested or actually tried on me. Perhaps the most popular “cure” is skunk oil. This theory appears to be that since the skunk has a very acute sense of hearing, he can communicate this faculty to a human, through his oil. Personally, I believe the skunk to be a lazy, stupid beast, with hearing below normal; but, at any rate, we are earnestly told that oil from a skunk, if dropped into the ears, will surely improve their hearing. No man has ever given this remedy a fairer trial than I have done. Later an aurist diagnosed my case as a disorder of the interior ear which was rather encouraged than cured by the application of the oil. Another “remedy,” based on a similar principle, is an exclusive diet of pork. Here the excellent ears of the pig are to be transmitted to the consumer! I have been several times presented with the argument that deafness is more prevalent among the Jews and other non-pork eaters than among any other class. Also, they say that the disease of deafness was rarely known among the earlier pioneers, who lived mostly on “hog and hominy.” Possibly this was due to the fact that corn grows on “ears.” At any rate, here are fair samples of the arguments which are submitted to the unfortunate deaf. One Winter, when I taught school and “boarded round,” I experienced a full course of treatments based on this remedy. It was started by the school trustee, an economical soul, who sold his butter and fed his family on pork fat. In those days we were innocent of bacteria or vitamines, and this clever adaptation of a deafness cure helped the trustee to avoid the local odium which would naturally center upon a householder who fed the teacher on lard. And with one accord the neighbors joined in the good work. I moved to a new family each week, and as the news of the projected treatment spread, each farmer killed a hog just before my arrival. I ate fresh pork every day for three months. Ungratefully enough, I did not recover my hearing, but the treatment surely roused the sporting instinct in that neighborhood. Near the close of the term this comment was reported to me: “No, it ain’t done him no good—he can’t scarcely hear it thunder; but I’ll bet fifty dollars he’s raised bristles on his back.”