A distant memory returns to me. Once upon a time there was a little girl who, after the manner of her sex, feared greatly all and sundry of certain fierce beasts, among which were to be enumerated rats, mice, bumblebees, and more vividly and especially _DOGS_--whose culminating direfulness was only to be expressed in italicized capitals. On a day, being bidden to go across the village street to deliver a note to an opposite neighbour, she set out, radiating the pleasing results of soap, brushes, and a clean pinafore, but on reaching the gate came to a sudden pause. A specimen of the worst of enemies, who seemed to the perspective of an eye only three feet from the ground to easily rival an elephant in size, lay prone across the path, lolling an intimidating tongue, and rolling an eye which, though outwardly calm, might be guessed to conceal a horrid intent. There was a swish of short starched skirts, a twinkle of bare knees, and appeal was made to that infallible power and knowledge which Providence has so wisely placed in mothers. Being a person of nimble imagination this particular parent, realizing that a mastiff as large in proportion to her own inches as this one was to the normal height of five years might well daunt her own courage, forbore to remonstrate or use reason. "Here," she said placidly, "is a lump of sugar. Put it on your tongue and hold it there. Of course, no dog will touch a person who has sugar on her tongue." And so fortified, Five Years set forth with a conviction of immunity that carried her triumphantly past the source of terror. The incident is not in itself, perhaps, of historic importance, but is a particularly vivid example of the absolute divorce in the undeveloped mind between the laws of cause and effect, and in no department of human thought has that divorce continued so long as in the science of health. Every one of us can revive out of childhood a memory of the balm that overspread the injured temple when a sympathetic nurse bestowed the richly deserved spanking upon the offending chair corner that had caused the pain, or applied the clearly indicated plaster of a kiss; and medicine in its long career has followed the intelligent example of the nursery. But while medicine as a science has passed out of this stage with the general growth of knowledge, the bulk of mankind still continues to put sugar on the tongue as a protection against dogs, to castigate chair corners, and to apply remedies as unknown to the pharmacopœia as the feminine kiss. Perhaps the stolen potato carried in the pocket, or the bit of red flannel bound on the left wrist, are not so trusted a remedy for the pangs of rheumatism as they were fifty years ago, and the dried heart of a mouse worn in a bag about the neck seems to have lost its potency against epileptic seizures, yet the very large sums spent annually upon patent medicines--rivalling in amount what is known in temperance circles as