Medical Fads and Fancies 41 
it might be observed in extenuation that it is hoped that 
the picture drawn is not too depressing. If most of us 
are not entirely well, we have been thus for long periods 
of time, and everyone else is in the same boat. Glasses 
and false teeth are not incompatible with happiness. It 
should not depress us because we hear of facts that per- 
haps we had not previously appreciated. Then perhaps, 
too, as has been suggested, no doctor is normal, but sees 
only through the light of his vocation. Somebody once 
said that the doctor thought everyone was sick and the 
Christian Scientist thought that no one was ill. This 
as you will. 
With regard to this matter of bodily statics. By 
statics, of course, is meant the architecture of our 
bodies; our peculiarly personal figure and structure, that 
makes for individual carriage, our own way of standing 
and holding the shoulders, a certain form of feet, a 
certain balance of the pelvis and above all a certain form 
of spine. Only in young, and even then, in very few per- 
sons, is there a highly admirable static condition. We 
see only occasionally beautiful bodies in which the spine 
 isof lovely curves, the poise is exquisite and there is that 
grace and ease of movement that we love to contemplate. 
‘As we get older these are gradually lost, the shoulders 
droop, the spine undergoes various abnormal curvatures 
and becomes set in them, the arches of the feet often 
break and the figure is, at least in a measure, lost. Now, 
with these modifications of figure go muscle strain. We 
stand erect because muscles hold us in that position. If 
one is shot while standing, the muscles instantly relax and 
he falls. With changes in the bony framework occur 
muscle strains which result in fatigue, muscle spasm and 
pain. The vast majority of backaches are secondary to 
such malstatic states, spinal curvatures, ill balance and 
