INFECTIONS OF THE DIGESTIVE TRACT 351 



it be impossible to avoid great losses of energy and other 

 unhappy consequences of the chronic intoxications. 

 At present the schools look to parents to instruct their 

 children in the supposedly simple matters of regulating 

 eating and drinking, exercise, habits of work, and sexual 

 habits, while the parents vaguely hope (if they think 

 at all about such matters) to be relieved of these embar- 

 rassing duties through the schools. The truth is that 

 neither parents nor schools are to-day able to give this 

 much needed sort of education. The remedy must 

 be provided by the schools, which in their eagerness 

 to impart conventionalized facts are now quite blind to 

 some of the most pressing needs of their pupils. Through 

 the schools and universities (or other appropriate 

 organizations) the parents of the future must be educated 

 both as to the facts and the moral aspects of bodily 

 hygiene. The physician will thus be enabled to do better 

 work in the prevention of some of the most distressing 

 human ailments. And it seems not unreasonable to 

 hope that some of the lessons now learned only by bitter 

 experience, after much that is best in life has been 

 sacrificed to ignorance and uncurbed impulse, will be 

 assimilated sufficiently early in life to mitigate materially 

 the lot of a not inconsiderable part of mankind. I 

 believe the lengthening of the span of human life to be 

 among the attainable results of such teaching. Is it 

 not likely that as men grow wiser an increasing number 

 will deliberately strive so to regulate their lives as to 

 improve the expectation of crowning well-spent days 

 with the peculiarly fine satisfactions of old age ? 



