amounts as to set up fermentive or putrefactive changes in the
alimentary canal, or by its being in an unsound, decaying, or actually
diseased condition. Any amounts or quality of food which are capable of
giving rise to an attack of acute indigestion may secondarily lead to an
attack of appendicitis. The only single article of diet whose ingestion
is declared by Osler to be rather frequently followed by an attack of
appendicitis is the peanut.

Therefore, the best thing to do in the way of taking precautions against
the occurrence of appendicitis is, in the language of the day, to
"forget it" as completely as possible, reassuring ourselves that, in
spite of its extraordinary notoriety and popularity, it is a
comparatively rare disease in its fatal form, responsible for not more
than one-half of one per cent of the deaths, and that the older we grow,
the better become our chances of escaping it.

Whatever we may have decided in regard to our brains, by the time we
reach fifty, we may feel reasonably sure we've no appendix.

But the question will at once arise, if the appendix be so tiny in size,
so insignificant in capacity, and so devoid of useful function, what is
the use of disturbing ourselves over the question of what may become of
it? If it is going to decay and drop off, why not permit it to do so,
with the philosophic indifference with which we would sacrifice the tip
of our little fingers in a planing-mill? Here, however, is just the rub,
and the fact that gives to appendicitis all its terrors, and to the
question of what to do in each particular case its difficulties and
perplexities.

The appendix does not, unfortunately, hang out from the surface of the
body, where it could peacefully decay and drop off without prejudice to
the rest of the body, or be quickly lopped off in the event of its
giving trouble. On the contrary, it projects its stubby and
insignificant length right into the midst of the most delicate and
susceptible cavity of the body, the general cavity of the abdomen, or
peritoneum. The thin, sensitive sheet of peritoneum which lines this
cavity covers every fold and part of the food-tube, from the stomach
down to the rectum. And when once infection or inflammation has occurred
at any point in it, there is nothing to prevent its spreading like a
prairie fire, all over the entire abdominal cavity from diaphragm to
pelvis. If this wretched little remnant were a coil of explosive fuse
within the