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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 711 



have neglected tlie near-by and the real. 

 Is it any wonder that under such guidance 

 mankind, while running regardless through 

 the mazes of this world, its eyes glued to 

 the heavens, should have stumbled and 

 fallen over the commonest obstacles; or 

 that some, bruised in falling, should have 

 turned to rend those who had misled them ? 



The philosopher of the future will surely 

 count as pathological those periods of his- 

 tory in which ordinary life, for whatever 

 reason, was cheaply held; whether by the 

 morbid ambition of kings and generals, or 

 the morbid mentality of theologians and 

 ecclesiastics. Then will it become the 

 glory of the medical profession that nearer 

 than either warriors or churchmen to the 

 sublime teachings of Jesus of Nazareth 

 have been, all through the ages, the theory 

 and practise of physicians, who have al- 

 ways held the life to be more than meat, 

 the body than raiment; who have empha- 

 sized that portion of the liturgy which 

 prays, "as well for the body as the soul"; 

 and who have believed that Christ meant 

 what he said when he asserted that he 

 came that mankind might have life, and 

 might have it more abundantly. 



The call to life, and to life in this world, 

 is thus the first and fundamental call of 

 the scientific age. And the next is the 

 call to health, i. e., to wholeness or fulness 

 of normal life. It is not merely that we 

 may have life, but that we may have it 

 more abundantly. The first and chief 

 characteristic of science is that it seeks 

 always after nature, after the normal, i. e., 

 the natural, and looks askance upon the 

 abnormal and the siiper- or the sub-natural. 

 Hence the caU of a scientific age for nor- 

 mal, natural life and healthy living ; hence 

 its disapproval of disease, hence its disgust 

 with dirt as a cause of disease, and its 

 belief in public health as well as private 

 welfare. 



The call to health is also the primal call 



to individual duty, for the call to life rests 

 not upon us, but upon our forbears. En- 

 dowed by our ancestors with living bodies 

 full of a machinery more wonderful and 

 intricate than the works of any other 

 known mechanism, we ought first to realize 

 our responsibility for the care and opera- 

 tion of this precious apparatus. And here 

 again we have to deplore that blind, if not 

 insane, leadership which for so many 

 weary centuries led mankind, not only to 

 an ignorant contempt for the flesh, but to 

 ingenious and hideous forms of mortifica- 

 tion of the body, such as fastings, flagella- 

 tions and various grotesque forms of wor- 

 ship or penance. Happily, we have now 

 a more reasonable regard for the human 

 mechanism, a more general recognition that 

 it is worthy of respect and care. And yet, 

 even to-day our children are taught but 

 little in their schools and less in their col- 

 leges about the human body and its proper 

 care and conservation. Physiology, hy- 

 giene and sanitation, as elements in the 

 curriculum, are despised by many prin- 

 cipals and superintendents of elementary 

 and secondary schools; and, being only 

 rarely subjects required for admission to 

 the higher schools and universities, educa- 

 tion is sacrificed to examination, and physi- 

 ology is pushed aside in the struggle for 

 examination records that will count. The 

 call for public health to be effective must 

 begin not with a clamor for a secretary of 

 public health in the cabinet at "Washington, 

 but with a general insistence upon sound 

 and accurate teaching in the public schools 

 of the essentials of physiology and hygiene 

 and the basic principles of sanitation. Out 

 of such teaching would soon grow an in- 

 terest in the public health, a call for effi- 

 cient service, and an expenditure for sani- 

 tation, which, rightly directed, would be- 

 come irresistible and lead up logically to 

 federal supervision and assistance. 



But the call to public health is not merely 



