investigation has been correctly carried out; that is to say, that it dealt exactly with the point under consideration. It is interesting to observe that the connection between appetite and gastric juice is by many physicians, and in many text-books of medicine, exactly reversed. Thus it is represented that some medicinal remedy calls forth a secretion of gastric juice, and this, by its presence in the stomach, awakens an appetite. Here we have to deal with a false explanation of a true fact, and that because it was not recognised that a psychic effect could by any possibility be a powerful excitant of secretory nerves. The customs of the chief meal of the day also correspond with our physiological results. After this or that _hors d’œuvre_, perhaps also with a liqueur of brandy (especially customary in Russia), both of which are designed to awaken the appetite, the repast proper begins, and, in the majority of cases, with something hot, consisting mostly of meat broth (_bouillon_, different soups, and so on). After this comes the really nourishing food--meat of different kinds served in various ways, or, in the case of poorer people, stews made with vegetables, and therefore rich in carbohydrate material. This sequence of foods, from the standpoint of physiology, is quite rational. Meat broth, as we have already seen, is an important chemical excitant of gastric secretion. An attempt is therefore made in two ways to secure a free secretion of gastric juice to act on the chief food; first, in the excitement of the appetite juice by the _hors d’œuvre_, and secondly, in the promotion of the flow by the action of the meat broth. It is in this way that human instinct has made provisions for the digestion of the chief meal. A good meat broth can only be afforded by well-to-do people, and consequently with the poorer classes a less expensive, and, indeed, also a less effective, chemical excitant is used for awakening the early secretion. For example, _kwas_[31] serves in this way with the Russian population, while in Germany, where the price of meat is high, different kinds of soups are used, consisting of water mixed with flour, bread, etc. It is further to be borne in mind that the quantity of the digestive juices in general stands in close connection with the content of water in the organism. This has been shown by the experiments of Dr. Walther for the pancreatic juice, and by my own for the gastric juice. If this sequence of foods, therefore, holds good for healthy people, it must be even more strictly adhered to in pathological conditions. Thus, when a person has no appetite, or only a weak one, he has no psychic juice or only very little; consequently, the meal must in every case be begun with a strong chemical excitant--for example, with a solution of the extractives of flesh. Otherwise solid foods, particularly if they do not consist of meat, would remain long in the stomach without any digestion whatever.