George S. Keith, M.D.,[159] after a long life of practice, has grown suspicious of current methods. “I purge, I puke, I sweat ’em; and if they die I let ’em.” As to foods, he believes that the old should only eat when they are far hungrier than they usually are and leave off eating when they now habitually begin a meal. Appetite, which seems to give momentum to all the assimilative processes, is never utilized to its full extent. Sick animals often go off alone and succeed in recovering and he believes humans have the same instinct. He is, therefore, bitterly opposed to forced feeding, even for the insane, save under very exceptional conditions. The sick should generally be allowed to eat whatever they wish, perhaps in moderation, or to go entirely without food. Probably primitive man and all animals had to undergo occasional long fasts and this serves to tone up not only the nerves but the entire digestive system. Instinct is a far truer guide than doctors who interfere with it think. Once the fevered patient who reveled in dreams of cold was kept warm; now we know better. This author has, thus, an almost implicit trust in the cravings and dislikes of the sick and would indulge them almost to the limit, as the German hygienist, Sternberg, would do to a perhaps even greater degree. He is also a great believer in rubbing and massage. Hot water plays an important rôle, too, while he attaches very special value to licorice. Doctors are often too anxious to save patients from all pain, perhaps by the use of means that entail worse consequences. Pain has its place in nature and the doctor should also try to have the patient apply the cure of patience. Pain is nature’s cry for help, to which she often responds as she does not to other stimuli; and benign as is the rôle of anæsthesia, it should not blind us to the tonic effects pain often exercises. So sleeplessness may not be an unmixed evil in certain cases and sleep artificially induced is usually of poorer and less restorative quality. He has found fixating, spontaneous retinal phosphenes a good soporific method. He believes that very many diseases would cure themselves if the patient could be induced to simply rest and starve. Although he is not a homeopathist, he nevertheless believes that dosages of medicine are far too large. He insists that old and experienced physicians ought to, and that the best do, learn a great deal from experience in keeping themselves well, and that every physician should accumulate thus a store of knowledge based on self-observation, and may well, with profit, always be mildly experimenting upon himself. As age advances he would regulate diet and treatment largely to the avoidance of accumulation of uric acid in the system. He found great reinforcement for himself in making a breakfast of coffee only, etc. * * * * *