728 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
shell, as in the days of boyhood ; else, he may smash one egg at 
a time into a cup, without breaking the yolk, adding thereto 
a dash of pepper, and salt, before swallowing it down like an 
oyster. It is surprising to find how soon a patient becomes 
accustomed to this regimen; even fussy, squeamish, neurotic 
women take their eggs without a murmur. As a rule, the eggs 
should be swallowed at the end of each meal, because they then 
interfere less with the appetite for the next meal. It is not 
enough to stop at three eggs a day, which are the minimum 
quantity, not the maximum allowance. ‘In the second week 
of treatment, if the eggs are borne well, I am accustomed to 
increase the quantity to two eggs three times a day, and there- 
after to keep up the increase week by week, until twelve, eighteen, 
and even twenty-four raw eggs are consumed daily. The gain 
produced in flesh, and strength, under these conditions is most 
striking.” It is a certain fact that the gouty uric acid state 
leads to a practical.immunity from consumption. 
As to the indisputable truth of planetary influences on our 
bodily welfare, or the reverse, John Swann, in his Speculum 
Mundi (1643), has put the question thus :— 
** Senseless is he who without blush denies 
' What to sound senses most apparent lies : 
And such is he that doth affirm the starres 
To have no force on their inferiours.”’ 
“And, of how the brains of mice do wax and wane with the 
waxing and waning of the moon, being ever less when the light 
of that horned lamp is further from the full.” 
** The best laid schemes 0’ mice, and men 
Gang aft a-gley.” 
For hydrophobia, with its horror of water as the leading 
symptom, in old Roman times the main general remedy advocated 
by Celsus, and others, was to cast the patient into water before 
he, or she, was aware of it, and this to be repeated daily for 
several days, “ Since that which he feareth is the only medicine 
to cure him. Should the patient swim well, hold him under 
water a little while, till he have taken in some pretty quantity.” 
Charles Lamb tells, in one of Elia’s charming essays, about a 
pump which stood in Hare’s Court, the Temple, and which was 
always going, the water of which “ is excellent, cold, with brandy, 
not very insipid without.” “At one time,” said Mary 
