the stomach for digestion, encouraged the use of digested foods, and these by excusing the stomach from doing its proper work, increased its disability. Children at first were usually born with good stomachs, but these by middle life or before, commonly degenerated into instruments of misery. Finally they would not even tolerate digested food and it became necessary to convey food within by some other means. Any method by which the nutritious matter properly digested can be introduced into the blood will support life. It became necessary to adopt hypodermic injections and other similar expedients. As this sort of treatment had to be applied earlier and earlier in life as time went on, even in some cases in childhood and infancy, they finally hit on the plan of using the ancient natural entrance of the umbilicus and not allowing it to close at all during life. In this way the ancient system of support and nutrition for the body through the stomach has been entirely subverted. The chemical processes of digestion, selection and assimilation of food are all done outside of the body, by artificial processes, and the cavity of the body is no longer filled with a series of brewing vats, soap factories, gas works and receptacles for refuse filth and foul water. For we may truly say that digestion consists of processes of fermentation of several different kinds and saponification or soap making. Little or nothing that is now taken into the body requires to be excreted and the only excretory organs are the skin and lungs, for moisture and carbonic dioxide. This radical change was not all effected at once, but was extended over many generations, and was not fully consummated till the second millennium was well spent. But before that one was finished, the atrophy of the digestive functions was so far complete that cases of possible reversion to them were extremely rare. The people of the present time look back with amusement, commiseration and disgust upon the walking laboratories that constituted their ancestors.” “I think,” said I, “that if the people of my day could see them the amusement would be mutual.”