IIYGEIA. 543 



By consulting the preface to Prof. Mayo's work, we find the 

 following statements : " The Philosophy of Living, of which 

 I am now preparing a third edition, was written at the sug- 

 gestion of an eminent publisher, [a book to order,] who de- 

 sired to have a book to the title. I gladly acceded to a 

 proposal which offered me an opportunity of using up 

 some odds and ends of physiological reflection, and in- 

 volved the necessity of referring to their sources for vari- 

 ous curious and valuable facts hitherto only vaguely known 

 to me. The book is, accordingly, a superficial compilation 

 of facts and principles, which any one, without previous 

 physiological reading, may understand." He further says 

 of his book : " It is to be viewed, therefore, rather as ancil- 

 lary to the advice of the fashionable physician, than as 

 conveying lessons of sanatory regulation and provision 

 for the poorer classes." Thus " The Philosophy of Living" 

 appears, a book to order, made up of " odds and ends of phy- 

 siological reflection;" acknowledged by its author to be a 

 " superficial compilation of facts and principles," u ancil- 

 lary [subservient] to fashionable physicians," without 

 much " provision for the poorer classes." 



The author of " The Philosophy of Living" is Herbert 

 Mayo, M.D., "formerly Senior Surgeon to the Middlesex 

 Hospital, and one of the Professors of Anatomy and Sur- 

 gery of the Royal College of Surgeons," etc. etc. His broad 

 generalization is that " Hygiene is found to be an art more 

 important than medicine." What does he mean by the "art 

 of medicine ?" The physician prescribing, (supposed to be 

 in close communication with the science of man,) the drug- 

 gists compounding doses, (posology,) or nurse administer- 

 ing remedies ? Webster's definition of Hygiene is " that de- 

 partment of medicine which treats of the preservation of 

 health." That it is a very " important department of medi- 

 cine" there can be no doubt ; but why such division into 

 two arts that are only departments of one, with an address 

 to the popular mind which is an injustice to the profession 

 from which he says he is, of course, "no renegade ?" 



