s you think you are."

Later Giovanni was inveigled into the house by the promise that he
would have to eat nothing more than milk soup. All was smooth sailing
after this. For my own part I feared for the permanency of the cure,
for they were returning to the old environment. But more than three
years have passed, and grateful letters still come telling of their
continued health.

Another patient, a teacher of domestic science in a big Eastern
university, had lived on skimmed milk and lime-water from Easter to
Thanksgiving. Several attempts to enlarge the dietary by adding cream
or white of egg had only served to increase the sense of discomfort.
Finding nothing in the history of the case to warrant a diagnosis of
organic disease of the stomach, I served her plate with the regular
dinner, bidding her have no hesitancy even over the pork chops and
potato chips. She gained nine pounds in weight the first week, and in
two and a half months was forty pounds to the good.

=When Re-education Failed.= But there is one patient who has had to
have his lesson repeated at intervals. This man laughingly calls
himself a disgrace to his doctor because he is a "repeater." His story
illustrates the power of an autosuggestion and the disastrous effect
of attention to a physiological function. When Mr. T. came first to me
he weighed only 120 pounds, although he is over six feet tall and of
large frame. From the age of sixteen he had followed fads in eating
and thought he had a weak stomach. I treated his "weak stomach" to
everything there was in the market, including mince-pies, cabbage,
cheese, and all the other so-called indigestibles. He gained 16-1/2
pounds the first week and 31 pounds in five weeks. One would think
that the idea about the weak stomach would have died a natural death,
but it did not. Again and again he came back to me like a living
skeleton, the last time weighing only 105 pounds, and again and again
he has gone back to his home in the Middle West plump and well. Twice
while he was at home he underwent unnecessary operations, once for an
ulcer that was not there and once for supposed chronic spasm of the
pylorus. Needless to say, the operations did not help. You cannot cut
out an idea with a knife. Neither can you wash it out with a
stomach-pump; else would Mr. T. long ago have been cured! This
particular idea of his seems to be proof against all my best efforts
at re-education. Psycho-analysis is impracticable, p