Last summer we were enabled to make a systematic study of a series of patients admitted to the hospital from the middle of June to the middle of August. This study was undertaken without preconceived ideas, and included the cases in the regular order of their admission to the hospital. From this number sixty were selected in which we were able to get a fairly full history of the antecedents of the illness, and the conditions connected with its incidence.
After the patients came into the hospital they were placed under practically experimental conditions, as all of our patients are; but in addition we made a systematic study of the blood and stomach contents, as well as the urine, with the object of noting the relation between digestion and metabolism, and the mental condition, not from the laboratory point of view, but from the standpoint of the clinical bearing of this relation.