This collection of essays and notes is a unique combination of misinformation and much honest intent. The author is a bloodless surgeon, relying for diagnosis on the history and palpation and for treatment chiefly on manipulation and application of heat when the local temperature is low and of cold when the local temperature is elevated. He denies that germs can cause disease, deplores the use of serums and vaccines and explains the processes of disease as due to short-circuiting of nervous impulses.
In spite of these misconceptions, much of the advice about the nursing care of the patient and about diet is sound. Also his criticism of the too common practice of using drugs to overcome symptoms instead of searching for the underlying cause is not amiss.