When a disease becomes so prevalent and so serious as pneumonia is at the present time, it is helpful to compare our personal experiences in coping with it, and even though there be no new methods of treatment to advocate, it is well to revise existing methods, if only for the sake of indorsement or confirmation. THE GENERAL PURPOSE OF TREATMENT. However diverse the methods employed in dealing with this disease, they all have substantially the same aim, namely, to maintain the efficiency of the heart, which, through a brief period of a self-limited infection, is subjected, in one way or another, to most severe and unusual strain. The guiding of the heart's action is, therefore, the question of paramount importance at the outset, and yet it is precisely this feature of the treatment which is most difficult to formulate satisfactorily, for it can not be successfully conducted by rule