26 



THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



satioti, no relief from the strain. "Were 

 he to reduce his efforts his competitors 

 would pass him at once. This, and the 

 fact that the rewards are so rich, so sure, 

 so quickly won, stimulate him to his 

 greatest effort all the time. He is like a 

 steam-engine running constantly under a 

 forced draught. His daily routine is one 

 of intense and ever-present excitement ; 

 he must have a stimulus even in his 

 recreations ; the most exciting books, 

 dramas of the most gorgeous setting and 

 sensational character of plot, athletic 

 games that demand the utmost effort, 

 horses whose speed is that of railroad 

 trains, yachts which beat their prototypes 

 throughout the world ; these and a thou- 

 sand other things, all intense, all start- 

 ling, all sensational, are the occupation 

 of his leisure hours. What is the out- 

 come ? To supply his rapidly exhausted 

 system he is compelled to consume large 

 quantities of rich food, and to stimulate 

 himself with alcoholic beverages. He 

 starts on his career with a robust diges- 

 tion, not easily deranged. 



The very indulgence of his appetite 

 crowds upon the excretory apparatus an 

 amount of work that sooner or later dis- 

 orders it ; matter that should be cast out 

 is retained in the body, ferments and 

 forms unwholesome tissue, fatty degenera- 

 tion occurs. His intense and ever present 

 excitement interferes with proper diges- 

 tion, the food introduced into the stomach 

 instead of being dissolved is so feebly at- 

 tacked by the digestive process that it is 

 not digested ; instead of digesting we find 

 it fermenting, or even putrefying. Now 

 the injury wrought by this is three- 

 fold. 



First. The constant presence in the 

 stomach of undigested food acts as an 

 irritant. 



Second. The failure of digestion re- 

 sults in anaemia, simply becau.se the 

 blood can only come from food taken and 



digested Cut off the supply of food 

 and we have anaemia of starvation. 



Third. Food ferments or putrefies, as 

 I have already said. Now, the products of 

 putrefaction are poisonous, and the pu- 

 trefaction in the stomach often results, as 

 it does outside of the stomach, in the 

 production of poisonous ptomaines, which 

 themselves increase the irritation to the 

 gastric membranes and are also absorbed 

 to an extent by the system, giving rise 

 to well marked symptoms of ptomaine 

 poisoning. 



It is proper here to say a few words 

 concerning what we term peripheral 

 nerve irritation. To understand the 

 meaning of this you must know that 

 the nerves terminate throughout the en- 

 tire body in the muscles, on the surfaces 

 of the skin and mucous membranes, in 

 delicate, sensitive filaments and corpus- 

 cles that effect the operations of the will 

 or that control those involuntary func- 

 tions such as digestion, the heart's action, 

 etc. Continued irritation of these peri- 

 pheral nerves at any point in the system, 

 as, for example, in the uterus or womb, 

 resulting from disease of that organ or 

 caused by disease of the rectum or of 

 other parts of the body, will in time re- 

 flect itself in the stomach and lead to 

 derangement and finally to actual dis- 

 ea.se of that organ. I have under treat- 

 ment at the present time a young man 

 suffering from a stricture of the urethra, 

 which caused great irritation of the canal 

 and consequent debility of the whole 

 nervous system, resulting in chronic 

 dyspepsia and catarrh of the stomach. 



The American has little time to attend 

 to bodily ailments. If some urgent 

 symptom or acute attack of disease com- 

 pels him to consult a phj^sician, the 

 latter is required to patch him up as soon 

 as possible. Thus urged, the doctor 

 treats his symptoms instead of the dis- 

 ease; symptoms which, in the main, are 



