It is still a wonder to the writer to find men, supposedly well educated and intelligent, who believe in their remedies, when it would seem that the vast number and variety of these, with the widely divergent habit in prescribing, would in itself be enough to convince any one who can think at all that there is simply nothing in the drug treatment of disease, and that after all we must go back to the patient himself, correct the causes of his condition and give Nature what little assistance we can and let it go at that.

When we consider the vast array of drugs that have been used in insanity alone, we do not wonder that we have not as yet arrived at any definite understanding of its nature or causes, for even yet in these purely mental cases, supposedly, drugs are relied on and prescribed as faithfully as if it did make some difference to the course of the disease.

The writer meets in consultation many men in many localities, all of whom are ready with suggestions about drugs, but when put on the rack as to just what the drug can do in this case they have a very lame explanation of this, and usually afterward do not urge its use.

There is no scientific background for the use of drugs in any condition, for the very nature of disease is such that drugs can have nothing but a purely symptomatic effect at best, so are no heavy part of the well equipped physician in the treatment of disease.

Sir William Osier said once that there were but five remedies that were of any use to the human race, and if he had left out these five he would have merited applause.

Insanity does not differ materially from any other disease, being only a different expression of just the same state as expresses as mumps or measles or tuberculosis or cancer or anything else, all without exception being built on a basis of autointoxication that is a self-created, and to exactly the same extent, a self-controllable affair.

So, in considering what to do for any case of insanity it is necessary to rule out drugs as inconsequential if not positively harmful, and start in to determine by what avenues the patient has departed from the normal, how far he has departed, and the best means for starting him on the back track.

This should constitute both diagnosis and prognosis, for the present condition of the patient will furnish all the data necessary for even a prognosis.

Since Bouchard wrote his little treatise on "Autointoxication" there has been much said of this state, and for a time there were many who enthusiastically followed up the theories expressed by Bouchard, but the methods outlined were never founded on a clear conception of the state in its entirety, and were much short of proper results, so interest waned and all went back to their drugs as the only thing in sight that was worth while.

More recently Guelpa of Paris with his work "Autointoxication and Disintoxication" elicited another ripple of interest, but it was decided that he claimed too much; he was called on the carpet by the French Academy and thrown out, because he could not convince them that he was right.

Guelpa was right in his theories of detoxication, but his idea of diet in the intervals of his detoxication periods was most unscientific, as he allowed his patients to recreate the very same conditions for which they had undergone a detoxication, so his methods were not in any sense curative, merely temporarily palliative.

The secret of successful treatment is suggested by a full under' standing of what causes disease, and when this is well understood the natural and sensible plan of treatment will suggest itself: merely stopping everything that caused the condition.

This sounds hard when we think conventionally about it, but it really is not hard at all, once one has started in on the plan necessary to carry this through; for so much of our eating is pure habit that once this is broken, which requires a surprisingly short time, the rest is fairly easy, and one can go along for years happy in the selection of his foods, which become so increasingly enjoyable, that it is usual to get letters from those who have been on correct diet for years, saying that they are enjoying themselves at table far better than ever before.

All the really good foods are available if taken in moderation and correct chemical combination. Why should one suffer from self-denial on such a plan?

The insane case has lost intelligent initiative, so others must administer the care necessary in detoxication and diet till a clean body allows reason to return, after which a short period of instruction in the food lore that is authentic will be sufficient to insure freedom from further danger of mental disease.

Benjamin Franklin is credited with saying that only one in every hundred is capable of independent thought and correct reasoning power. In other words, ninety-nine per cent are insane, and who shall decide as to the sanity of the select one per cent?

If left to his own judgment every insane case will believe himself to be the only strictly sane one on the place.

You could never convince him that he is not sane, for his reasoning power is gone, and he fails to see the relation between cause and effect; therefore, he is insane.

Have you ever dreamed of falling over a precipice, or of being burned alive, or of robbing a bank, or murdering some one?

You did none of these things, yet they all existed in your mind as definitely as if they actually occurred.

Physical discomfort causes dreams, and if this discomfort is severe the dreams will take on pain or other dire symptom as their central thought, a reflection of the physical state on the mental, and it is a matter for wonder just how many people are ever actually at perfect ease while sleeping, for we all know the connection between mince pie at bedtime and a bad night.

This does not mean that we cannot eat a piece of mince pie and go to bed without hearing of it, and consider that nothing happened, just because we did not dream some horrible dream, for dreams are only recognized at the moment of waking, and perhaps the pie has been disposed of long before waking and will give no further evidence of its diabolic proclivities; yet it has caused much fermentation, perhaps unconscious discomfort, that no doubt took the form, of subconscious distress of which you know nothing in the morning.

Yet you will have manufactured and retained, stored in the system, toxins from this indulgence just the same, and your dreams, if you had them, were insanity, that is, there was no reason on the throne to tell you that this was not all true.

The insane patient is in a dream, perhaps a violent dream. He may even be a source of great danger to those about him, yet he is merely dreaming, the subconscious mind in control while the conscious mind sleeps, and from a purely physical condition from which he can be roused if the causes are promptly discontinued and kept discontinued till the body has time to unload the accumulation that has caused the state, whether this be self-manufactured toxins, or those from drugs.