This volume is a history, or a story, of an evolution in the professional care of the sick.

It begins in inexperience and in a haze of medical superstition, and ends with a faith that Nature is the all in all in the cure of disease.

The hygiene unfolded is both original and revolutionary: its practicality is of the largest, and its physiology beyond any possible question.

The reader is assured in advance that every line of this volume has been written with conviction at white heat, that enforced food in sickness and the drug that corrodes are professional barbarisms unworthy of the times in which we live.