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she not gone into the environment under which foreign diseases flourish, 
she would not have contracted such a disease. Missionaries are a self- 
sacrificing class of individuals; popularly it is often believed that they 
break down on account of overwork, but one can look at it from the stand- 
point of a change of environment—and this may lead us to critically study 
a case of overwork in our midst; perhaps after all it is simply the influence 
of environment. It may not be so much a question of the amount of work 
done as where the work is done. One may seriously question whether our 
school children break down from ‘overwork’—perhaps the defenses of the 
body in fighting off infection, bad air, are overworked. 
To study the life-history of any one case is a task of magnitude. There 
are many details, and the more factors one considers, the greater the 
number of details that have to be studied. An individual in chronic ill- 
health may complain constantly; all his symptoms and all his complaints 
have a cause; they must have a cause. To what extent can or does the 
student physician tale up such details? 
There are few physicians who have many patients whose lives they 
can study from beginning to end—and to study a long life is wholly be- 
yond a single man’s opportunity, because the physician, the student, is 
already well advanced in years before he has the requisite knowledge to 
make such a study. He must begin with the individual at birth, and if 
the latter has a long span of life, the physician will be dead long before 
his patient. To properly study the subject requires co-operation of many 
men. 
Biography is valuable chiefly in that it teaches us how to conduct our 
own life, that is, we can profit by the experience of others. Moralists 
like Samuel Smiles will take a biography and from it teach certain lessons 
(Prudence; Self-help; Industry; Forethought; Self-reliance; etc.), but 
the idea that the illhealth or sickness of a man may teach us how to avoid 
similar experiences has scarcely been considered and to the best of my 
knowledge not at all in the light of good and bad air conditions. 
Many biographies contain so few references to health and illhealth 
and disease that one might come to the conclusion that these were things 
not worth mentioning; very few are satisfactory to the student. Personally 
I have never met one that gave all the details I wanted. 
The individual who is influenced by his environment manifests certain 
symptoms. Some of these symptoms can be grouped, and one can speak 
of types. Some part of the body or some organ may show the reaction in 
