THE ILLS OF HUMANITY A WORD OF CAUTION The physician who would take the lives of his patients into his own hands, or who undertakes to instruct men and women how to live and how to fight disease, must be reliable, honest and skillful. He must know whereof he speaks. He must possess not only l' book knowledge,'' but that intimate acquaintance with the human body that comes only through long years of observation and experience. There are so many spurious claimants for medical honors nowadays that it is little wonder the suffering public is skeptical as to the truth. Whom to trust in time of trouble is often a serious problem, and it is the purpose of the following chapters to aid in solving it. It is a pretty safe rule not to put faith in doctors or patent medicines when the booklets or pamphlets advertising the remedies for sale make great claim of healing incurable diseases. The country is flooded with cheaply gotten-up trash of a kind put out for the one purpose onlyto deceive the hoping, trusting, confiding sick, and to get their money. It is easy to estimate the character of such publications. They read like fairy tales. They promise to do impossible things, to work miracles with a few remedies or a few bottles of their "Marvelous Compound.'7 Trust them not, they are fooling you every time. The plain unvarnished truth will not hurt, and it will prevail, after all. SURGICAL OPERATIONS In this connection it may be well to say that if an operation is really necessary a surgeon should be given charge of the case at once. "While it is doubtless a fact that some unnecessary operations are performed, it is likewise true that one should not believe the false statements made by doctors and others, with inferior treatment to sell, who claim to have made some great discovery that makes operations no longer necessary. SCIENTIFIC TREATMENT FOR ALL It is no longer necessary for anyone suffering with a chronic disease to accept the services of an incompetent physician or inferior medicines of any kind. In fact, there is no excuse for so doing because it is now an easy matter for people living in any section of the country to avail themselves of the services of the most celebrated experts in diagnosis and treatment by simply writing a letter. Dr. Kidd has ample facilities for sending the very best medical treatment right to the home of the person afflicted. Moreover his treatment may be had at a very moderate cost.