LITERARY WORK, ETC. 229 



tions on the least sudden exertion, and frequent colds almost 

 invariably followed by bronchitis. Any attempt at continuous 

 work was therefore very far from my thoughts, though at 

 times I was able to do a fair amount of writing. My friend 

 and neighbour, Professor Allman, had suffered from the same 

 affliction during a large part of his life, and only found very 

 partial relief from it by the usual fumigations and cigarettes, 

 with occasional changes of air, and it was often quite painful 

 to witness his sufferings, which continued till his death in 1898. 

 As he was himself a medical man, and had had the best 

 advice attainable, I had little hope of anything but a con- 

 tinuance and probably an increase of the disease. 



But the very next year I obtained relief (and up to the 

 present time an almost complete cure) in an altogether acci- 

 dental way, if there are any " accidents " in our lives. Mr. A. 

 Bruce-Joy, the well-known sculptor (a perfect stranger to 

 me), had called on me to complete the modelling of a medal- 

 lion which he had begun from photographs, and I apologized 

 for not looking well, as I was then suffering from one of my 

 frequent spells of asthma, which often prevented me from 

 getting any sleep at night. He thereupon told me that if I 

 would follow his directions I could soon cure myself. Of 

 course, I was altogether incredulous ; but when he told me that 

 he had himself been cured of a complication of allied diseases 

 — gout, rheumatism, and bronchitis — of many years' standing, 

 which no English doctors were able to even alleviate, by an 

 American physician, Dr. Salisbury; that it was effected solely 

 by a change of diet, and that it was no theory or empirical 

 treatment, but the result of thirty years' experiment on the 

 effects of various articles of diet upon men and animals, by the 

 only scientific method of studying each food separately and 

 exclusively, I determined to try it. The result was, that in a 

 week I felt much better, in a month I felt quite well, and 

 during the six years that have elapsed no attack of asthma 

 or of severe palpitation has recurred, and I have been able to 

 do my literary work as well as before I became subject to 

 the malady. 



I may say that I have long been, and am still, in principle, 



