One of the most striking characteristics of the modern treatment of disease is the return to what used to be called the natural methods—diet, exercise, bathing, and massage. There probably never has been a period in the history of the profession when the value of _diet_ in the prevention and the cure of disease was more fully recognized. Dyspepsia, the besetting malady of this country, is largely due to improper diet, imperfectly prepared and too hastily eaten. One of the great lessons to be learned is that the preservation of health depends in great part upon food well cooked and carefully eaten. A common cause of ruined digestion, particularly in young girls, is the eating of sweets between meals and the drinking of the abominations dispensed in the chemists’ shops in the form of ice-cream sodas, etc. Another frequent cause of ruined digestion in business men is the hurried meal at the lunch-counter. And a third factor, most important of all, illustrates the old maxim, that more people are killed by over eating and drinking than by the sword. Sensible people have begun to realize that alcoholic excesses lead inevitably to impaired health. A man may take four or five drinks of whiskey a day, or even more, and thinks perhaps that he transacts his business better with that amount of stimulant; but it only too frequently happens that early in the fifth decade, just as business or political success is assured, Bacchus hands in heavy bills for payment, in the form of serious disease of the arteries or of the liver, or there is a general breakdown. With the introduction of light beer there has been not only less intemperance, but a reduction in the number of the cases of organic disease of the heart, liver, and stomach caused by alcohol. While temperance in the matter of alcoholic drinks is becoming a characteristic feature of Americans, intemperance in the quantity of food taken is almost the rule. Adults eat far too much, and physicians are beginning to recognize that the early degenerations, particularly of the arteries and of the kidneys, leading to Bright’s disease, which were formerly attributed to alcohol, are due in large part to too much food. _Nursing._—Perhaps in no particular does nineteenth-century practice differ from that of the preceding centuries more than in the greater attention which is given to the personal comfort of the patient and to all the accessories comprised in the art of nursing. The physician has in the trained nurse an assistant who carries out his directions with a watchful care, and who is on the lookout for danger-signals, and with accurate notes enables him to estimate the progress of a critical case from hour to hour. The intelligent, devoted women who have adopted the profession of nursing, are not only in their ministrations a public benefaction, but they have lightened the anxieties which form so large a part of the load of the busy doctor.