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trumpets — that at length every one, performers and 

 audience alike, has come through sheer habitude to 

 believe in its genuineness, it happens at last that 

 some medical men "interfere" with the business. 

 These men, who have long known that beri-beri does 

 not exist in this country, discover by careful in- 

 vestigation that what the poor children have been 

 suffering from is really an infectious cerebro-spinal 

 meningitis, an affection entirely different from beri- 

 beri in all material characteristics and due to quite 

 another micro-organism ! 



Thus does Nemesis once again proclaim her 

 immortality, and one can well appreciate our practi- 

 tioner's feelings on being so rudely checked in his 

 career. One can easily understand the eagerness with, 

 which he loudly proclaims the needlessness of his 

 knowing anything about the distinction between the 

 two diseases, thereby hoping to retain the confidence of 

 the crowd. It is not difficult to imagine the depth of his 

 wrath at "having his pitch queered " by these inquisitive 

 men with their beastly microscopes : indeed, without 

 straining the quality of mercy, one could even be 

 compassionate enough to suggest the advisability 

 of his forsaking his open pitch and taking (on a long 

 lease) a snug little tenement, where with the aid of a 

 carefully selected bodyguard, he might in future 

 pursue his calling in peace and without fear of 

 malicious interruption. 



But what are the parents of all these little invalids 

 thinking ? Do they say that it does not matter that 

 their children have all along been afflicted with a 

 disease of which the doctor could not even correctly 

 give the symptoms, the while that he had been glibly 

 calling it by the wrong name ? And what will be 

 their feelings towards this very self assured person 

 when they come to know that the special diet which 

 he so confidently recommended is one that has a 



