my intention to be
reproachful. She was not educated to a knowledge of herself; and she was
by no means, at the present time, what she had been in her best days. It
is not to be wondered at, therefore, that she acted like a wayward
child; though it is greatly to be regretted, since, in her
circumstances, it probably cut off every chance of her recovery.

In the spring, two or three years after her first change of diet, a
cough with which she had occasionally been troubled before, came on with
renewed violence, and never after wholly left her. She remained in this
condition till the opening of the next year, when her cough made still
farther advances, and was attended with hectic fever. She died in the
month of May following.

A post mortem examination was made, which determined the case to have
been what Dr. Jackson and myself and many others supposed, a case of
scrofula or struma; though it was certainly attended with many curious
and rather anomalous symptoms. Though there were no ulcers in the lungs,
they were found full of tubercles; and so were the mesenteric glands,
and the lining membrane of the alimentary canal. It was even said by the
principal individual concerned in the examination, that her whole body
was but a mass of disease. For myself, I was necessarily absent at the
time, and therefore have no facts of my own to present.

I never had a case, either before or since, in which my hands were so
completely tied as in this. The patient probably had as much confidence
in me as in anybody; and yet she would not long follow me implicitly and
strictly, without yielding to the whims of her friends or her enemies,
and halving the practice with some physician or quack, either known or
unknown. Under the care of some good, common-sense physician, and with
full faith in him on the part of all concerned, I am still of opinion,
as I always have been, that she might have recovered and lived many
years, and, perhaps, been able to do a vast amount of good.

CHAPTER XC.

STARVING OUT DISEASE.

Dr. Johnson, one of the best British writers on dyspepsia, advises his
medical brethren to starve out the disease, as the surest way of getting
rid of it. He says he has by far the best success with those patients
who submit to this course. It is not starvation, exactly, though it
savors of it. He says, keep them on just two pints of Indian-meal
gruel--by which he appears to mean thin hasty pudding--a day, and no
more.