CORRESP ONDENCE. 



699 



just the opposite plan successful to wit, 

 eat only and as often as hunger prompts, 

 but always abstemiously, on the principle 

 that a weak stomach, like a weak body, can 

 not manage one big load so readily as sev- 

 eral small ones. Enough to nourish the 

 body twenty-four hours is a pretty big meal. 

 For the weak, divide the task to be accom- 

 plished, if a break-down by a supreme ef- 

 fort is undesirable. 



The recommendation to the dyspeptic to 

 adopt the habits of savages and ophidians 

 is, to say the least, a display of supercili- 

 ous conceit over Dame Nature, whom our 

 writer professes so much to admire, when she 

 so benignantly takes charge of the matter, 

 saying, when athirst, water is needed ; when 

 we hunger, that food is. If men and women 

 would only follow her monitions in this 

 matter, and cease to drink when thirst is 

 satisfied, cease to eat when hunger is, yield- 

 ing not to the seductions of a menu each 

 course made more and more appetizing, so 

 as to tempt a satiated appetite to commit 

 the grossest excesses half the dyspepsia in 

 the land would disappear. 



J. R. Black. 

 Newark, Ohio, June 25, 1SS3. 



DR. OSWALD'S REPLY. 

 Messrs. Editors: 



The friends of science owe you a vote 

 of thanks for the unabridged publication of 

 the foregoing epistle. Whether the ortho- 

 dox school of therapeutics has much reason 

 to thank Dr. Black for undertaking its de- 

 fense, your readers may be inclined to doubt, 

 but his letter is an encouraging sign of the 

 times. As an attempt to suppress the prop- 

 aganda of unorthodox tenets, it marks the 

 ascendency of the third or controversial soph- 

 istry phase of argumentation. The primi- 

 tive method was rude, though it had some- 

 times the advantage of practical conclusive- 

 ness. In the winter of 1682 the Spanish 

 missionaries on the Rio Zelades in Yucatan 

 reported a revival of irreligious tendencies 

 among the aborigines of the district. Three 

 weeks after, Colonel Perez Garcia invaded 

 the diocese with a brigade of trained mas- 

 tiffs. The natives had betrayed symptoms 

 of skepticism, but the arrival of the four- 

 legged dogmatists at once solved all doubts. 

 The dangers of unbelief could no longer be 

 questioned. The local Ingersolls were treed 

 by hundreds, and the fervor of the revival 

 almost surpassed the hopes of the propa- 

 gandists. The scoffers were overtaken by 

 the Nemesis of Faith, fugitives were recap- 

 tured and dragged back, breechless and 

 howling ; in short, to use an expression of 

 the Rev. Joseph Cook's, there was " not a fig- 

 leaf left to hide the shame of historical 

 skepticism." 



In the course of time the Garcia system 



was superseded by the personal-abuse meth- 

 od : " Professor X pretends to question 



the fact that Philip II possessed a dupli- 

 cate skeleton of St. Laurentius. The pro- 

 fessor's arguments are specious and might 

 be worth refuting, if it were not well known 

 that three years ago he married the daughter 

 of a horse-farrier so notoriously addicted to 

 the use of alcoholic beverages that at the 

 present moment he is probably wallowing 

 behind his stable in a state of scandalous 

 intoxication." That settled it. 



The misrepresentation plea, I hold, is a 

 decided improvement upon the aforesaid 

 methods. Like boomerangs, sophisms are 

 crooked weapons, but they are occasionally 

 apt to recoil in an unexpected manner, and 

 may thus serve the cause of truth in spite 

 of their constructor. Dr. J. R. Black be- 

 trays an intermittent tendency to relapse 

 into the secondary system, but, on the whole, 

 contents himself with the attempt to refute 

 my tenets by misconstruing my arguments. 

 He charges me with an habitual neglect of 

 the duty " to unfold and adhere strictly to 

 truth," and supports his indictment by the 

 following specifications : He claims that, in 

 repudiating the alleged hereditary transmis- 

 sion of dyspepsia, I disregard an indisputa- 

 ble fact, because " every careful and wide- 

 observing physician " knows that in the chil- 

 dren of some families a tendency to indiges- 

 tion manifests itself almost from the mo- 

 ment of birth. Does our careful and wide- 

 observing correspondent propose to deny 

 that from the moment of birth millions of 

 infants are both overfed and drug-poisoned ? 

 That a predisposition to various diseases 

 may exist in the form of a latent tendency, 

 I have often admitted ; the point at issue is, 

 whether such tendencies ever manifest them- 

 selves in spite of an hygienic regimen, and 

 whether dietetic abuses, aggravated by emet- 

 ics, cathartics, and paregoric, ever fail to ac- 

 celerate their development. The monstrous 

 death-rate of children in the institutes man- 

 aged on the plan of Dr. Black's orthodox col- 

 leagues can no longer be explained by such 

 convenient excuses as the fatality of an in- 

 herited disposition. 



My predilection for non-medicinal reme- 

 dies Dr. Black attributes to the strength of 

 my physical and the debility of my mental 

 constitution, and betrays an uncharitable 

 disposition to aggravate the sorrows of my 

 predicament by grudging me the use of soap 

 and water. The voluntary renunciation of 

 that cosmetic, he intimates, would prove at 

 least my practical consistency. It is a source 

 of surprise that our careful and wide-observ- 

 ing scientist has not yet learned to avoid the 

 vulgar fallacy of confounding the artificial 

 with the unnatural. Between the legitimate 

 methods of assisting, imitating, and develop- 

 ing the tendencies of Nature and the auda- 

 cious attempt to counteract her operations, 



