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serious aspect and there was much sickness until wet places were drained 
and chills and fever, that is malaria, became less and less prevalent; today 
malaria is a comparatively rare disease. At first, too, all the minor ills 
were absent. People did not even suffer from cough and colds. He told 
me how he used to go barefoot until the ground was covered with ice and 
snow and how he could wade through water that was cold enough to form 
ice and never “catch a cold”. But he noticed that in time ailments and 
disenses came in. He referred to some affections as “new-fangled dis- 
eases”. 
When I called his attention to the analogy between weeds and diseases 
he readily understood. Before this was pointed out to him, however, he had 
expressed his belief that the race was degenerating. Referring to his long- 
lived family with many brothers and sisters, he said that all lived to old 
age, he himself being now in the eighties. He made the contrast between 
himself and his grandchildren, especially those living in the large city; he 
regarded them as “weaklings”, requiring the attention of the physician more 
or less constantly. After I had pointed out the analogy between plants and 
man and weeds and diseases, he readily saw that his grandchildren were 
“weaklings” because they were living under an entirely different, an unsan- 
itary, environment. ‘The original Indiana inhabitants, the Indians, were 
healthy simply because not exposed to the cause of ill health and disease. 
People who are housed up in town are living hosts for the propagation of 
diseases, just as plants in hot-houses, which require constant attention te 
keep down diseases. 
Moreover, the man himself was a living illustration of these changes, 
for he came to me on account of his own ill health, which he thought his 
home physician did not understand. He said the common country doctor is 
good enough for common country diseases, but “these here new-fangled dis- 
enuses need men who have studied more’. He referred to his own ill health 
as a “new-fangled disease’, while as a matter of fact it was a very common 
ailment, one of the “diseases of civilization,’ nothing more than common 
eatarrh. One did not have to seek far for the cause of his complaint. 
Until a year ago he always lived on the farm, very seldom coming to town ; 
then he rented out his farm and removed to a small town, and now occupied 
a seat on the cracker barrel. that is. he spent much time loafing at the 
village store. Some of these stores are so dirty that they have required 
repeated notices from the State Food Inspector. Air conditions are espe- 
