Is it any wonder that people die of premature old age, of apoplexy, paralysis, dropsy, consumption, and the thousand and one maladies that scourge humanity? And is it not unreasonable to pour a few grains of diluted drugs into the stomach to purify the blood--even granting for the sake of argument that such a purpose could be accomplished by that means--when occupying nearly one-half of the abdominal cavity is an engorged intestine reeking with filth so foul that carrion is as the odor of roses compared to it, and which is being steadily absorbed into the circulation? If a man were to act as foolishly as that in his business, his friends would quickly petition the courts to appoint a guardian for him. It may be asked, why has not this discovery been made before? In the first place, the colon has had but scant attention paid to it in the dissecting room, until of late years the appendicitis craze has awakened some interest in it. Its importance was not realized--the circulatory and nervous systems receiving the lion's share of attention. In the second place, in holding post-mortems the organ was avoided, cut off, if in the way, and thrown into the slop bucket. It was known to be always full, but no one ever asked whether or not it was natural in its fullness of faecal matter, and as a result, probably the profession knows the least about this important organ, of any in the human body. Strange, is it not, that among the seven thousand physicians ground out and polished in the mills of wisdom each year, that there was not one who had originality enough to ask the question, Is it natural that this scent bag of filth should always be so full of putrid matter that we cannot abide one moment with it? And, inasmuch as it is so, is it not a great detriment at least to our health to carry this mass of filth around with us, from day to day, from week to week, and from year to year--absorbing its poison back into the circulation? Strange that these questions did not present themselves to some one of the enterprising youths of our original young America.