ent upon her robust appearance, indignantly
informed me that she was "by no means strong, and had been doctorin'
off and on for a year past for the malaria."

"Do you eat and sleep tolerably well?"

"Oh, yes," with the plaintive whine peculiar to the would-be invalid.
"I sleep dreadful heavy. I take a nap each day for a couple of hours.
And I must have a pound of beefsteak or mutton-chops for dinner. The
fever makes me _that_ hungry! You see it devours all that I eat, and
the strength of the food goes to that."

Had any one pointed out to the deluded girl the folly of her theory,
and explained that the fever patient becomes almost crazed from the
restlessness that will not allow him to sleep, and that he loathes the
very thought of food with a disgust that makes the daintiest dishes
prepared by loving hands as gritty cinders between his teeth, she
would have smiled patronizing superiority, and explained at length
that her complaint was a peculiar one,--no common, everyday illness.

With this class, stomach disorders and their attendant sufferings,
such as giddiness, shortness of breath and pain in the side, are
always attributed to cardiac irregularity. There may be a lack of
appetite and dull or acute pain following eating, and the fetid breath
arising from a disordered condition of the stomach; but they resent
the notion that their "heart disease" is dyspepsia, and would, in all
probability, discharge the physician who recommended pepsin and
judicious diet.

Perhaps the most discouraging feature of this class of persons is that
they are ignorant and obstinate in this ignorance. The opinion of all
the medical fraternity in the country would, in the farmer's
daughter's estimation, be unworthy of consideration compared with the
advice or suggestion advanced by one of her own kind. The practitioner
among the unlearned has fearful odds to contend with in trying to
bring an ignorant patient under his regimen. One word from sister,
cousin or aunt, and the invalid will cast aside the physician's
remedies, and take quarts of some patent medicine.

If you should question your laundress or cook, or your farmer's wife,
you would be appalled to discover what peculiar notions she has of
her physical make-up. It would be interesting and astounding to allow
one of these people to draw a chart of her interior machinery, as she
supposes it to be. It would bear as little resemblance to the reality
as did the charts of the ancient