(3) That the tonsil has some important mission to fulfill is clearly demonstrated by the fact of its frequent recrudescence, or rather, the natural renewal of the organ after surgical removal--a spontaneous physiological organic mutiny, as it were, supported by its lymphatic glandular dependents, against the reckless ignorance of medical practitioners and the perversity of the medico-cum-parental fashion of the day. For the fact that it is a fashion, and nothing more, is unhappily fully established on ample and high authority within the medical prescriptive pale. And, in fact, even as "The Tonsure" or shaving of the crown, became by fashion and mendicity a feature of priesthood and monastic piety, so has the slaughter of the Tonsils come to be regarded by fashion and mendacity as a feature of childhood and medical expediency and ineptitude. Professor John D. Mackenzie, M.D., of Baltimore, a distinguished leader of the advanced school of medical science, in the course of a brilliant and exhaustive treatise on the subject written as he says, reluctantly, in the interest of the public health and safety, quotes the deliberate opinion of an equally eminent medical friend to the effect that: "Of all the surgical insanities within his recollection this onslaught on the tonsils was the worst--not excepting the operation on the appendix." Dr. Mackenzie then proceeds to show how abysmal has been the ignorance of the functions of these organs from the earliest times, (including a distinguished English medical luminary who went to far as to say: "were I attempting the artificial construction of a man I would leave out the tonsils,") adding that the tonsil was regarded as a useless appendage and "like its little neighbour, the uvula, was sacrificed on every possible pretext or when the surgeon did not know what else to do." "Never," he says, "in the history of medicine has the lust for operation on the tonsils been as passionate as it is at the present time. It is not simply a surgical thirst, it is a mania, a madness, an obsession. It has infected not only the general profession, but also the laity." In proof of this he adds: "A leading laryngologist in one of the largest cities came to me with the humiliating confession that although holding views hostile to such operations he had been forced to perform tonsillectomy in every case in order to satisfy the popular craze and to save his practice from destruction." He cites an instance in which a mother brought her little six-year-old daughter to him, "to know whether her tonsils ought to come out;"--and in answer to the assurance: "your baby is perfectly well, why do you want her tonsils out?" the fond mother's reply was: "Because she sometimes wets the bed!"