This short discussion as to how different people behave with regard to the act of eating is of itself testimony that care should ever be taken to keep alive the attention and interest for food and to promote enjoyment of the repast--that is to say, that care should be taken of the appetite. Every one knows that a normal, useful food is a food eaten with appetite, with perceptible enjoyment. Every other form of eating, eating to order or from conviction, soon becomes worse than useless, and the instinct strives against it. One of the most frequent requests addressed to the physician is to restore the appetite. Medical men of all times and of every land have held it to be a pressing duty, after overcoming the fundamental illnesses of their patients, to pay special attention to the restoration of the appetite. I believe that in this they are not only animated by an endeavour to free their patients from troublesome symptoms, but also by the conviction that the return of appetite of itself will favour the restitution of normal digestive conditions. It may be said that to the same extent to which the patient wishes back his appetite the physician has effectively employed measures to restore it. Hence we have not a few remedies which are specially named “gastric tonics,” and whose action is to promote appetite. Unfortunately medical science has latterly deviated from this, the correct treatment of the appetite, and that which corresponds to the real conditions. If one reads current text-books on disorders of digestion, it is remarkable how little attention is paid to appetite as a symptom or to its special therapy. Only in a few of them is its importance indicated, and then merely in short, parenthetic phrases. On the other hand, one may meet statements in which the physician is recommended to adopt no special means for counteracting so unimportant a subjective symptom as a bad appetite! After what I have said and demonstrated to you in these lectures, one can only designate such views as gross misconceptions. If anywhere, it is precisely here that symptomatic treatment is essential. When the physician finds it necessary, in disorders of digestion, to promote secretory activity by different remedies, this object can most certainly and completely be achieved by endeavouring to restore the appetite. We have already seen that no other excitant of gastric secretion, so far as quantity and quality of the juice are concerned, can compare with the passionate craving for food.