188 DISEASES DUE TO MALADJUSTMENT 



metabolism in order to correct it, also takes pains to pre- 

 scribe effectively to the patient such agreeable and inter- 

 esting sensory stimulations as will divert his mind from 

 the unwholesome associations and replace them with new 

 and favorable ones. 



Many well-intentioned but ignorant cults have been 

 founded on an imperfect understanding of this method of 

 treatment. They, of course, achieve a certain measure of 

 success in dealing with nervous disorders by purely psy- 

 chic means, but equally, of course, do not remedy the 

 actual cause. They constitute, moreover, a public 

 menace in many instances, because they carry their 

 method of treatment over to diseases of all sorts where 

 the psychopathic element is either entirely lacking or 

 of negligible importance, as, for example, smallpox or 

 diphtheria. 



Malnutrition. — By malnutrition is meant any fail- 

 ure of protoplasm to obtain the materials which are 

 essential to its successful metabolism. The most obvious 

 condition of this sort is simple starvation, which is not 

 ordinarily included among diseases. Strictly speaking, 

 diseases of malnutrition are due to lack of one or several 

 of the particular items which the cells require. For 

 example, growing children are sometimes insufficiently 

 supplied with lime salts, or it may be that for some ob- 

 scure reason their protoplasm is unable to utilize lime 

 salts even when supplied in abundance. In either case, 

 normal bone growth is impossible, giving rise to diseases 

 of which rickets is a type, with excessively bowed legs 

 and other indications that the bones have not obtained 

 sufficient lime. In Chapter X, interesting food accesso- 

 ries known as vitamins are mentioned. There are a num- 

 ber of diseases known which ar^ due to scarcity of these 

 in the diet. It may happen that the mechanism for trans- 

 ferring oxygen (see Chap. XI) becomes inefficient through 

 the failure of the body to manufacture adequate amounts 

 of hemaglobin to provide for the required transport of 



