INSTINCT AS A GUIDE TO HEALTH. 517 



these plants is insignificant. They are isolated examples or rarities, 

 and no particular importance can be attached to them. 



All these facts, I repeat, only make us feel more keenly how de- 

 sirable it would be to determine scientifically the conditions which 

 make the existence of our vulnerable race on a foreign land possi- 

 ble. "VYe might then direct our emigrants with the same certainty as 

 that with which a modern captain, who knows their wants, provides 

 for his troops. As I look at it, I can not regard the mission of natural- 

 ists and physicians toward their nation as conscientiously performed 

 till a satisfactory solution is given to this problem. 



mSTINCT AS A GUIDE TO HEALTH. 



By FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D. 



SINCE the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the clouds of 

 the middle ages were broken by the first sun-glimpse of reawak- 

 ening reason, the average longevity of the North Caucasian nations 

 has increased nearly seven years. In Northern Europe and North 

 America the progress in the practice, if not the science, of healthy liv- 

 ing has, indeed, kept fairly step with the general advance of civiliza- 

 tion ; the worst heresies against the health-laws of Nature have become 

 errors of the past. Unventilated dwellings have become unpopular. 

 Phlebotomy has gone out of fashion. "We have ceased to fuddle our 

 children with beer-soup. Hygienic reform has everywhere modified 

 our habits of life. 



Yet the principle of that reform has strangely failed to be recog- 

 nized. For one invalid who can steer a straight course to the harbor 

 of health, a thousand weather the breakers in a random, empiric way, 

 like untrained sailors, failing to comprehend the purpose of the beacon, 

 though using its light to avoid the nearest cliffs. Nay, if the source 

 of that light were indiscreetly revealed, it would frighten hundreds 

 back into utter darkness, to scan the firmament for a glimpse of its 

 vanished loadstars, rather than trust their safety to an earthly guide. 

 For, with the progress of a practical regeneration, a theoretical adher- 

 ence to the traditions of the past still goes hand in hand. Not all 

 civilized Buddhists have renounced the Dalai Lama ; and many of our 

 progress-loving contemporaries would be rather alarmed at the discov- 

 ery that the principle of our social, medical, and educational reforms 

 during the last two hundred years has been a restored trust in the com- 

 petence of our natural instincts. So foreign was that rule of conduct 

 to the moral standards of the middle ages that its importance was rec- 

 ognized only in its apparent exceptions, the siipposed " evil propensities 

 of our unregenerate nature," such as poison-habits, sloth, and sexual ex- 



