In these coddlesome and unmanly days of ours it is becoming almost rare to meet, in London life at all events, with a man who is not more or less of a hypochondriac about that unlucky scapegoat of modern times, his liver. It is represented as such an ubiquitous, elastic, and sentient being, that personally I am beginning to disbelieve in its existence altogether, and regard it as a sort of 'Mrs. Harris' in the human economy. Since the spread of what I may respectfully call Andrew-Clarkism amongst us, the humourist may find ceaseless matter for meditation at the club dinner-table and at ladies' luncheon-parties in finding out the exact number of glasses of wine (the quality never seems to be taken into consideration, somehow) which each respective liver will bear, and the relative size of the plate of cold meat (or 'egg, its equivalent') which may be consumed with slow mastication. The wine or the one glass of cold water, which is undoubtedly better, must be sipped, not swilled; and the general effect, though depressing, is excellent if persevered in. That it is seldom persevered in longer than Nature will allow, and that the patient after a time rushes to the nearest and best-filled board under the influence of uncontrollable thirst and hunger, and so brings a grateful liver to willing reason, is probably the cause why this modified Sangradism survives so long. The days of alcohol are theoretically numbered, but I doubt if they ever will be practically. In older and simpler times it was known as wine to strengthen the heart of man; and why the temperance doctors, who prove beyond dispute that alcohol is not food, in forbidding it always instruct their victims to resort to a corresponding increase of animal sustenance, is beyond my academic logic. It implies a syllogism as much outside of the domain of our old friend 'Barbara celarent' as Macaulay's famous argument: Most men wear coats, Most men wear waistcoats, Therefore some men wear both. But the logic of medicine is not as the reason of other trades. I had been thinking of these things the other day when I went to church and heard the dear old story of Cana in Galilee. And no reverent mind will accuse mine of irreverence if I say that, in spite of myself, my thoughts shaped themselves into an epigram:-- A miracle of Love Divine Changed all the water into wine: Save me from miracles of men, Who want to change it back again. This is a digression, but very germane to the matter in hand. For a long course of inanition on the modern principle, not sufficiently combated by submission to Nature's clamorous invitations to eat, drink, and be merry, and on the other hand indefinitely accelerated by the fearful shock of a course of German waters, was the prelude to the illness into which I fell.