Disharmony is exhibited in the human body not only by rudimentary organs such as the wisdom teeth and the appendage, or by degenerating organs such as the cæcum. Some very large parts of our alimentary canal must be regarded as useless inheritances, bequeathed to us by our animal ancestors. It is no longer rash to say that not only the rudimentary appendage and the cæcum but the whole of the large intestine are superfluous, and that their removal would be attended with happy results. So far as digestion goes, the latter portion of the alimentary tract is of little importance. Even from the point of view of absorption of the products of digestion its importance is strictly secondary. And so it is not astonishing to find that the removal or disappearance of nearly the whole of the large intestine can be supported well by man. As one result of the astonishing progress of surgery, it has been found possible to excise certain parts of the gut, and particularly of the large intestine. Thus, in one case, Körte[78] removed, along with part of the small intestine, a considerable part of the large intestine, leaving in place only the terminal portion. The patient, who underwent eight successive abdominal operations, recovered. In the case[79] of another patient, operated on by Wiesinger, two coils of the large intestine (the transverse and descending colons) which were ulcerated, were isolated from the remainder of the gut, while the upper portion of the large intestine (the cæcum and the ascending colon) was sutured to the rectum. In spite of these serious interferences with natural structure, the patients recovered, and appeared to derive great advantage from the loss of the large intestine.