MARCH 227 



quantity, only adding to their ailments instead of dimin- 

 ishing them. The modern invalid always says : ' The 

 doctor has ordered me to eat well,' and feels his con- 

 science absolved. This reminds me of a rather good old 

 story which a doctor told me, when I was a girl in Brus- 

 sels, as having happened to himself. A bishop who was 

 eating stuffed turkey with this doctor on Good Friday 

 excused himself to a punctilious friend, who was shown 

 into the dining-room by accident, saying: 'Le doeteur 

 me le commande, et moi je lui donne absolution.' But 

 can one imagine anything more hopelessly exasperating 

 for poor doctors, who have to make their living, than to 

 find that loss of patients is the result if they venture 

 even to ask in chronic cases what people eat and drink ? 

 We all know how they knock off food in cases of serious 

 illness, though even then I think they still allow far too 

 much. During convalescence it is often desirable for 

 the patient to eat anything that he can digest. 



I know it will be said that the next generation may 

 suffer from the results of a low diet, as the doctors are 

 perpetually telling us that we have all suffered from the 

 port wine drinking and high living of our ancestors. 

 Nothing but time can prove this. 



In my youth, heaps of doctors, especially on the Con- 

 tinent, still believed in bleeding, particularly in fever 

 cases. Now this is as unknown as if it had never been 

 practised at all. Is this right or wrong ? 



I see even restaurants now advertise suppers which 

 are not indigestible ! An interesting pandering to the 

 growing faith that good health comes far before good 

 feeding. 



I was asked the other day to give a lecture on the 

 right spending of money. Oh ! what a fraud these 

 appeals to my knowledge or wisdom make me feel ! I, 

 who have so little knowledge of figures that I cannot 



