Physicians Expect Criticism

Explanation Regarding the Piece of Toast Given President.

     Buffalo, N. Y.: A surgeon who attended the president was told that many persons were already criticising the surgeons for having permitted the president to eat toast because there was a general belief, among laymen at any rate, that toast was a substance that would be gritty and tend to irritate a weakened stomach.
     “I knew we would be criticised, and bitterly, whenever a change for the worse appeared in the president’s condition, no matter what we did,” he said. “People cannot be altogether reasonable at such a time and in such matters as this, and we are too human ourselves to expect them to be. But about the toast.”
     The physician held out his index finger and the one next to it and crossed them just below the nail of the index finger. “There,” he said, “that is as large as the piece of toast the president had, and it was very thin, much thinner by half than are my fingers. He merely nibbled at the toast. He had hardly a mouthful of it; not a mouthful, not half a bite altogether. It was given him not so much as food, but because there seemed to be no better way of removing the heavy coating on his tongue and the inside of his mouth. The coating was very disagreeable to him an was endangering his comfort.”