OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



THE OCEAN AS THE WORLD'S RESERVOIR 

 OF HEALTH 



IN olden days, or rather mediseval days, it was the 

 fashion among pseudo-philosophers to speak of the sea 

 as the primum mobile, the source of all human health 

 and, in a measure, of prosperity. This conclusion was 

 arrived at by no process of reasoning ; like so many 

 other dicta of those days, it was a shrewd guess, 

 although stated with all the pomp and authority of a 

 fundamental law which has been worked out and 

 proved. Yet in this instance, at least, the old 

 empirics spoke far more truly than they knew. The 

 guesses of the Middle Ages at the higher uses of 

 the vast water surface of the globe have become the 

 facts of our day, and as science extends her boundaries 

 it becomes more abundantly evident that what we 

 have of health on land we owe to the " healing of the 

 sea." In view of the fact that so many highly 

 educated people among us have a horror of the sea, 

 regarding it as a dread and dreary expanse of heaving 

 billows, concealing terrors greater and dangers more 

 immense than ever the ancients dreamed of, it may be 

 well for a while to draw attention to the entirely 



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