Well, at all events, there they are, these chronically poorly people. They will not admit that there is anything very much the matter with them, but at the same time no class of sufferers have a sharper eye for the advertisement of some infallible nostrum, that is going to banish sickness from this world entirely, or a sharper ear to listen to any suggested remedy, no matter who it is that recommends it. It may be an old wife’s cure. That does not signify; they simply console themselves with the belief that old wives often know a deal more than doctors, and swallow the compound. Now let me tell this class of invalids: I. That medicines are probably not wanted at all in such complaints as theirs. II. That medicine of any kind often does more harm than good. III. That it is folly to think or believe that a complaint which has lasted perhaps months, can be charmed away in a day or two by the best doctor in life. For the time a cure takes must bear some proportion to the time the complaint has lasted. I wish you to pin your faith on those facts, and bear them in mind. If it be true that in nearly all cases of the chronic debility I refer to—and I sincerely believe it is true—the blood-making process is primarily at fault, then, before we can remove the symptoms, it is evident we must attend to the cause. And to do so we must go to the fountain-head from which all the evil flows, and this will be found to be the stomach. In other words, these chronic complaints—with all their aches and rheums and pains, bad sleep, lowness of spirits, fluttering at the heart, palpitations, and what are termed “indescribable feelings”—may be due to a kind of dyspepsia. The system is wholly too sluggish; the liver is inactive, and consequently the heart itself is weak, and being unable to supply the brain and nervous system generally with good, honest, life-giving blood, all kinds of symptoms may occur. These are often called imaginary, but they are real enough, for all that. I have said that the taking of medicine may do actual harm. Have we any substitute? Yes; and we find it in the use of vegetables and fruit, both of which are very much neglected. These supply the blood with certain salts of a cooling nature, and without which the principal internal vital organs are unable to secrete material to keep the system regular. Very often these organs act with great irregularity, or by fits and starts, so that we may have a patient complaining of two different states of system in the same week.