physician’s skill; and the frequency with which rheumatism occurs will give every one a chance of trying its efficacy.” As elsewhere remarked, nearly all patients continue eating regularly, until food becomes actually disagreeable, even loathsome, often; and, after this, every effort is exhausted to produce some toothsome compound to “tempt the appetite.” Furthermore, and often worst of all, after the entire failure of this programme, the patient can, and usually does, take to gruel or some sort of “extract,” which he can drink by holding his breath. All this tends to aggravate the acute symptoms, and to fasten the disease in a chronic form upon the rheumatic patient, or to insure rheumatic fever; and the same principle holds in nearly all acute disorders, it is well to remember. So inveterate is this mania for eating, even when to continue is like turning coals upon the dead ashes and clinkers of an expired fire, that, in ordinary practice, it is well-nigh impossible to induce any class of patients to abstain from food at the beginning of an attack, or to give the fasting cure a fair trial at any stage of the disease. The term frequently applied——“starvation cure”——is both misleading and disheartening to the patient: in fact, he is both _starved_ and _poisoned_ by _eating_ when the hope of digestion and assimilation is prohibited, as is, in great measure, the case in all acute attacks, and more especially when there is nausea or lack of appetite; and he can only escape from the danger by abstaining temporarily. Dr. Wood’s prestige in the natural treatment of acute rheumatism was obtained in hospital practice, where it is comparatively easy to “control the symptoms” by withholding the cause, or, in other words, where the physician——providing the nurse is honest——can regulate the diet of his patients, absolutely. After such experience, it was less difficult for Dr. Wood to introduce this remedy among the most intelligent of his patients in private practice; for he could recommend it as in no sense an experiment, but as a remedy of positive advantage and, in fact, indispensable, if the best results were to be effected. My own experience, so far as it goes, has been similar to that of Dr. Wood. Moreover, in chronic cases——cases of long standing——the best results may be hoped for——in fact the best possible results have invariably followed——from an abstemious (_frugivorous_) diet, together with simple bathing, as special symptoms may indicate,——and an improved general regimen, as to fresh air, exercise (inaugurated gradually), beginning, perhaps, with passive exercise, as rubbing, etc., by the attendant. A chronic disease usually implies chronic provocation: Nature has simply commuted the extreme penalty of the law; or, it may be likened to the reprieve of a convict under sentence of death, with an assurance of full liberty upon complete reform. Among the disorders radically and safely removed by fasting, is