Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/240

225 itself digested and de-energized and acts more slowly than the digestive process.

After this the ever-present but now non-energized ferment-germs act tardily, till some accident of overdoing, or bad eating, or other cause, again delays digestion till fermentation is set up in the gastric cavity, and the cultivation process above described is renewed, when there is another attack of acidity of the stomach, difficult to bear and difficult to get rid of, as every unfortunate dyspeptic and every unfortunate physician to such a patient full well know to their sorrow. But the starving-out process is not easy, and is not applicable in many cases; besides, not every one has the resolution for it, when it might be proper and effective. If, in gofio, already demonstrated to have the essentials of high nutrition and palatableness, we have an article of food capable of resisting the acid decomposition for a much longer time than the ordinary preparations of farinacea, it will be an inestimable boon to all civilized communities to make the fact known to them.

I have set on foot trials of the value of gofio, in such cases as are appropriate, to carefully determine its influence in preventing gastric acidity. Whether the impressions, formed, as above described, after several months' personal experience, are to be sustained or to be found groundless, will be known in due time by ample clinical demonstrations. But, considering the importance of the subject to so many persons, and to the end that experiments in the use of gofio in appropriate cases may be multiplied, I do not hesitate to place my (as yet) unsupported personal experience before the profession and public for their careful consideration.



ERHAPS we may now enter on a more detailed examination of the nature and methods of the help that human beings in the social state render one another in making a living. The best way to do this will be to begin with the simple and proceed to the complex. It is all done by the combination of our efforts—not their aggregation simply, but their combination. We must carefully note the difference. Aggregation is a mere pooling of products or results. At any rate, let us so use the word. It may be illustrated by two fishermen fishing on the river-bank with hook and line, and dividing the catch at night. No more fish will be caught than if each fished separately and carried home his own catch.

But suppose they take a seine, they may catch ten times as many 