85 



The subject of thought stimulation is intimately connected with the 

 subject of the Air of Places, a subject on which Hippocrates wrote 2,500 years 

 ago, but that was long before the days of bacteriology. The old chemical 

 standard for purity of the air Avas based on the amount of carbonic acid gas. 

 From the standpoint of coniosis it is the amount of infection in the air that 

 counts. Need 1 again refer to the role of the tobacco chewer and spitter and 

 smoker? 



PLANTS AND MAN. 1910. This was a paper made up largely of 

 analogies, tracing living conditions between plants and their "ills and dis- 

 eases" and of man and his ills and diseases, and the need of clean air, need 

 of placing a man under good surroundings. 



Today* we hear much of eugenics, of the influence of heredity. It is 

 a very important subject. ' But still more important is euthenics, the 

 influence of environment, because we have little control over heredity but 

 we have a far reaching influence over our environment. If a man does 

 not feel well, is ill at ease under a given environment, he should change it; 

 instead of getting drugs, or advice about the use of drugs, he should under- 

 stand the situation so he can Do Something rather than Take Something. 

 But because people are unwilling to pay a doctor for his time but are willing 

 to pay for his medicine, you readily see the result . The less a physician tells 

 his community about unsanitary conditions, the smoother his sailing, and 

 the better for his purse. (Naturally when a physician offends and antagon- 

 izes chewers and spitters they stay away, ditto the man who smokes and 

 drinks; when they do apply they may be so far advanced in actual disease 

 that the student of ill health can do little for them, he may have in mind 

 the opinion or verdict of the mechanical engineer: Not worth while, consign 

 to the scrap heap; but he does not say that aloud.) 



Where the medical man keeps still and says nothing, the newspaper 

 reporter is apt to run wild. From simple statements "The health of the 

 city is good," there soon appear claims, at a time when there are few cases of 

 "contagious disease" and few deaths, of "The healthiest city in the State." 

 At the same time a city may be "full of ill health," of people who complain, 

 who are neither actually sick and yet are not at all well. The newspaper 

 itself may be full of patent medicine ads, for ills that are indicators of un- 

 sanitary city conditions. Patent medicine men are shrewd, they advertise 

 only where there is a demand for their wares, for their nostrums. 



To the physician and especially to the student of prevalent ill health there 



