642 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



whose digestive system is a continual scourge, whose nerves are weak 

 or excited, whose brain receives impure blood, such a man can not be 

 the same man morally that he would be were he in full vigor of health. 

 Well men are not always virtuous. Ill health is not the sole cause of 

 crime, nor can criminals be treated as invalids not at all. And yet 

 crime is often closely connected with disease. It is often both the 

 parent and the offspring of disease. Since we may not know just how 

 much of the crime in the world is due to pathological conditions of 

 the body, we must punish crime as such, but we may, because of our 

 doubt as to its cause, be liberal with our charity and lenient in our 

 judgment whenever, and to such extent, as they may not interfere with 

 the welfare of society as a whole. 



No one holds a maniac morally responsible for his actions, even if 

 grossly criminal. Is insanity the only morbid condition that dwarfs 

 man's moral instincts, that blinds him to truth ? 



In this case we can see how much preventive measures are better 

 than curative, and the future work of the physician, if it be largely 

 the teaching people how to live so that they may avoid disease, must 

 also lessen the amount of crime. It were well if the physician kept 

 constantly before his mind the thought that he is to seek to make men 

 better morally as well as physically. If it is better so to live that ill- 

 ness shall not come, than being ill to be cured, it is also a nobler and a 

 higher task to prevent disease than to heal it, and in this labor of pre- 

 vention medicine will rise to a height far above that to which it has 

 yet attained, and accomplish results more beneficent and glorious 

 than its greatest triumphs of the past. 



And the whole community must be instructed women more than 

 men, for they more than men regulate the condition of the home. 

 Upon them is laid not only the burden of bearing the children, but they 

 most have to do with their food, clothing, and general training. And, 

 since woman must take part in the great work of sanitary instruction, 

 she should have a thorough medical education, that she may be able to 

 tell to every woman, and every girl too, what she ought to know, and 

 what she will not and can not learn so readily nor so well from any 

 man. 



If man were altogether an animal and had only animal instincts, 

 there would perhaps be little ground for hope, but man can be taught 

 not merely that he may so care for his body that it shall be less sub- 

 ject to the attacks of disease, he may be taught that it is his duty to 

 so care for it that his physical organism is a God-given trust which 

 he can not violate without moral wrong. The physician of the future 

 must, as has been already noticed, have to do with the moral as well 

 as the physical nature of man. But, before he can do this with suc- 

 cess, he must understand what man is, his feelings, emotions, thoughts, 

 as well as the course of the blood or the action of organs. If he shall 

 know of this higher part of man, he may appeal to it forcibly and 



