of my patients have brought themselves near death's door from
disobeying instructions and taking the advice of knowing neighbors.
They were persuaded to "eat"--"eat all you want, for the doctor
will not know it."

This is one disease that will give the disloyalty of the patient
away every time.

On the morning of the nineteenth day of his sickness, and the
twelfth day of my services, I called to see the sick man, and before
I could ask him a question he shot out his hand toward me and
exclaimed, "My bowels moved at four o'clock this morning! I want a
beefsteak for my breakfast!" I congratulated him on his fine
condition and ordered him a dish of mutton broth. This disgusted him
thoroughly, and his reply was in kind: "A dish of broth! After
fasting two days on my own prescription, and then twelve days on
yours, I am to be rewarded with a dish of broth." I explained that
he had a large abscess cavity that would require several days to
empty, collapse and draw together, and if he should eat solid foods
too soon he would run the risk of cultivating chronic
appendicitis--recurring appendicitis. I advised him to live on
liquid foods for three or four days, and after that he could have
solid foods if he would practice thorough mastication.

The action from the bowels had been saved for me; there was an
ordinary chamber half full; it looked to me like at least a half
gallon of fecal matter, pus and blood; it was dreadfully offensive.
Six hours after the first movement I was informed that he had
another movement very similar in quantity and consistency; this
movement I did not see, for I did not visit the man after the