96 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
disease. The glutton, the inebriate, the profligate will persist 
‘despite the Reformer; the clash from mailed fists will go in 
defiance of the Humanitarian; and in the world of trade, where 
misdirected commercial zeal racks the nerves and ofttimes 
blasts the mind, the physician’s warning will go unheeded. 
Indeed, so lightly do we regard our health that while our 
Departments of War, Navy, State and Agriculture are consid- 
ered essential, the safeguarding of the people’s Health finds no 
place in the Cabinet—the Cabinet that conducts the affairs of 
our Nation. Fortunately, there is some improvement along this 
line, and Teaching and Diplomas are now being given in Public 
Health. 
Our Marine Hospital Corps has done some excellent work in 
Malaria, Pellagra, Hookworm and water-borne diseases, and we 
feel an incentive to carry on this work. Several reasons exist 
for the apathy shown. First and foremost, a careful guarding 
of the Medical Practice Acts which at the present time are most 
unjust to the practitioner by limiting practice according to 
Statehood. This country is called United, but the laws are far 
from being unified according to the legislature of the State. It 
reminds one of the old question, “When is a man a man? When 
he is asleep!” The existence of faddists may be a help but are 
oftentimes a danger unless they are endowed with a broadly 
educated brain and a high sense of justice and equality. And 
to no one is this truer than to you as Biologists, who realize 
into what problems you may be drawn. 
How soon set theories are overthrown by a simple wild plant 
or animal appearing in an area it seldom or never occurred in 
before! The Mounds so often regarded as Man’s work have 
been proved as natural remnants of waterborne glacial mate- 
rials.* 
The question of pay to scientific workers in all countries has 
been a source of regret and only in Europe we have to look for 
government aid and appreciation of some student’s discovery. 
Better give some encouragement now and not when a man has 
died! Problems of scientific education, the greatest discoveries 
and inventions have been made in the past by men with little 
*Crook, Composition and Origin of Monks Mound. Trans. I. 8. Academy of 
Sci., 1916. 
