268 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY 



germ-plasm. Most material and vital of these influences are 

 the common diseases of children, for they strike directly at the 

 glands of internal secretion. 



Measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, mumps, and the others have 

 long been accepted as providential visitations for sins known or 

 unknown. That children had to have them and were better off 

 when they had them has become part of the tradition of the 

 laity, fostered by the lazy ignorance of previous medical genera- 

 tions. But today we are beginning to ask ourselves why children 

 must have these endemic infections of their age. The pathologist 

 goes farther and asks the reason for certain apparent immunitiee. 

 He asks why the little boy who sleeps with his brother sick with 

 scarlet fever does not contract the disease, even though not pro- 

 tected by a previous attack. 



Determining why susceptibility to a special disease in a par- 

 ticular case exists will constitute the greatest line of advance for 

 the understanding and prevention of disease, and so the perfec- 

 tion of public health. In the last influenza epidemic countless 

 physicians were puzzled by the spectacle of men and women in 

 the pink of condition carried off in twenty- four hours while puny 

 associates were either passed over, or pooh-poohed their colds. 

 Pathologists have spent their energies fruitfully upon the infec- 

 tious causes of disease, the microbes and parasites especially. 

 But now, having solved most of those problems, the vital ques- 

 tion of why an organism permits itself to be attacked is pushing 

 itself to the front. Why a peculiar ailment selects its victim, why 

 the bacillus finds a fertile soil, is the neglected problem, which 

 must be solved before the abolition of disease and its carriers 

 will be remotely conceivable. 



Long ago, Hippocrates, revered founder of the art of medic i no, 

 recognized that there was a specific affinity of disease for indi- 

 viduals with more or less the same characteristic soinatn 

 psychic traits and trends. Tuberculosis, for Instance, 

 for its frequency in lon^-skeletoned, thin persons, remarkably 

 optimistic. And the plethoric, choleric nature of the SU 

 from gout has become proverbial i of the great 



bacteriologic discoveries of the eighties and nineties, the 

 cordance of esoteric racial and p e r s o n al malting! w 

 help in diagnosis to the p 

 sometimes en ( I ! i oieal intuition, tl 



of personal-- was liable to tin- specific disease. 



But personality and its reactions, norma] sad abnormal, are 



