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she not gone into the environment under which foreign diseases nourish, 

 she would not have contracted such a disease. Missionaries are a self- 

 sacrificing class of individuals; popularly it is often believed that they 

 break down on account of overwork, but one can look at it from the stand- 

 point of a change of environment — and this may lead us to critically study 

 a case of overwork in our midst ; perhaps after all it is simply the influence 

 of environment. It may not be so much a question of the amount of work 

 done as where the work is done. One may seriously question whether our 

 school children break down from 'overwork' — perhaps the defenses of the 

 body in fighting off infection, bad air, are overworked. 



To study the life-history of any one case is a task of magnitude. There 

 are many details, and the more factors one considers, the greater the 

 number of details that have to be studied. An individual in chronic ill- 

 health may complain constantly; all his symptoms and all his complaints 

 have a cause ; they must have a cause. To what extent can or does the 

 student physician take up such details ? 



There are few physicians who have many patients whose lives they 

 can study from beginning to end — and to study a long life is wholly be- 

 yond a single man's opportunity, because the physician, the student, is 

 already well advanced in years before he has the requisite knowledge to 

 make such a study. He must begin with the individual at birth, and if 

 the latter has a long span of life, the physician will be dead long before 

 his patient. To properly study the subject requires co-operation of many 

 men. 



Biography is valuable chiefly in that it teaches us how to conduct our 

 own life, that is, we can profit by the experience of others. Moralists 

 like Samuel Smiles will take a biography and from it teach certain lessons 

 (Prudence; Self-help; Industry ; Forethought; Self-reliance; etc.), but 

 the idea that the ill health or sickness of a man may teach us how to avoid 

 similar experiences has scarcely been considered and to the best of my 

 knowledge not at all in the light of good and bad air conditions. 



Many biographies contain so few references to health and illhealth 

 and disease that one might come to the conclusion that these were things 

 not worth mentioning ; very few are satisfactory to the student. Personally 

 I have never met one that gave all the details I wanted. 



The individual who is influenced by his environment manifests certain 

 symptoms. Some of these symptoms can be grouped, and one can speak 

 of types. Some part of the body or some organ may show the reaction in 



