The earlier impression, first among physicians and now in the laity, that appendicitis is an almost invariably fatal disease, is not well founded, and we now know that a large percentage of cases recover, at least from the first attack; so that it is quite possible for from half to two-thirds of the cases of appendicitis actually occurring in a given community to escape recognition, unless promptly reported, carefully examined, and accurately diagnosed. Thirdly, in spite of the remarkable notoriety which the disease has attained, the general dread of its occurrence,--which has been recently well expressed in a statement that everybody either has had it, or expects to have it, or knows somebody who has had it,--the actual percentage of occurrence of grave appendicitis is small. In the United States census of 1900, which was the first census in which it was recognized as a separate cause of death, it was responsible for only 5000 deaths in the entire United States for the ten years preceding, or about one death in two hundred. This rate is corroborated by the data, now reaching into thousands, from the post-mortem rooms of our great hospitals, which report an average of between a half and one per cent. A disease which, in spite of the widespread terror of it, kills only one in two hundred of those who actually die--or about one in every ten thousand of our population--is certainly nothing to become seriously excited over from a racial point of view. While appendicitis is one of the "realest" and most substantial of diseases, and, in its serious form, highly dangerous to life, there can be little doubt that there has come, first of all, a state of mind almost approaching panic in regard to it; and, second, a preference for it as a diagnosis, as so much more _distingue_ than such plebeian names as "colic," "indigestion," "enteritis," or the plain old Saxon "belly-ache," which has reached almost the proportions of a fad. It is certain that nowadays physicians have almost as frequently to refuse to operate on those who are clamoring for the distinction, as to urge a needed operation upon those unwilling to submit to it. The satirical proposal that a "closed season" should be established by law for appendicitis as for game birds, during which none might be taken, would apply almost as often to the laity as to the profession, even the surgical half.