A certain class of wakeful patients are benefited by the practice of eating shortly before bedtime, when this right has been earned by sufficient restriction during the day. To make this the fourth, or even the third meal, however, is almost certain to increase the difficulty at last. The victim of sleepless nights often finds himself quite overcome with drowsiness after his midday meal. If then he could throw himself upon the bed he would have no time to “count,” or even think of such a device for putting himself to sleep. He was wide awake before lunch, and but for the habit of taking it, could have finished the day better without than with this out-of-season sleeping potion. Let him take the hint, eat his second and last meal, a sufficient one of plain food, in the evening after fully rested, and, thus equipped, go to bed directly, or after an hour or two of agreeable, but non-taxing, social converse. He must avoid every form of artificial stimulation——tea, coffee, wine, beer, tobacco. To breathe the atmosphere of an office, hotel, or smoking-car, for any considerable period, is no better, may be worse, than a moderate indulgence at first-hand in the open air. CHAPTER VII. RHEUMATISM, FATTY DEGENERATION, ETC. Casey A. Wood. M.D., Professor of Chemistry in the Medical Department of Bishop’s College, Montreal, in an article entitled “Starvation in the Treatment of Acute Articular Rheumatism” (Canada _Medical Record_), gives the history of seven cases where the patients were speedily restored to health by simply abstaining from food from four to eight days, and he says he could have given the history of forty more from his own practice, but thought these would suffice. In no instance did he find it necessary to extend the fast beyond ten days. His patients were allowed to drink freely of cold water, or lemonade in moderate quantities, if they preferred, and simple sponging with tepid water was resorted to when indicated by feverishness of the surface. In no case did this treatment fail. No medicine was administered. The cases reported “included men and women of different ages, temperaments, occupations, and social positions.” He further says: “From the quick and almost invariably good results to be obtained by simple abstinence from food, I am inclined to the idea that rheumatism is, after all, only a phase of indigestion, and that, by giving complete and continued rest to all the viscera that take any part in the process of digestion, the disease, is attacked _in ipsa radice_.” In chronic rheumatism he obtained less positive results, but did not venture to try fasts of longer duration. Dr. Wood concludes by saying that “this treatment, obviating as it does, almost entirely, the danger of cardiac complications, will be found to realize all that has been claimed for it——a simple, reliable remedy for a disease that has long baffled the