BY THE PRESIDENT. 
131 
The maintenance of the physical health of the individual must 
of course largely he influenced, indirectly, by a healthily consti¬ 
tuted, a well-stored, and a contented mind, and by a pure and lofty 
standard of morals; while the health of communities will largely 
be affected by the character of their aesthetical, social, and political 
surroundings. Here, as everywhere, laws more or less obvious and 
more or less obscure are at work. These cannot, now, even be 
glanced at. Only the laws directly controlling physical health can 
be discussed within the limits of the present Address. 
Our subject therefore shapes itself somewhat as follows. Per¬ 
sonal health directly depends on the food we eat, the fluids we 
drink, the air we breathe, the clothing we wear. The health both 
of the individual and the family or household directly depends on 
the character of the dwellings we occupy. The health of the 
individual, the family, and the community, directly depends on 
the relation of dwellings to one another in villages, towns, and 
cities. Under this division of the subject, the laws of nature in 
relation to health will now be considered. 
THE FOOD WE EAT. 
Pood is only a means to an end. Perhaps the best word to 
express that end is work ; but work done within us by, for instance, 
the heart, the lungs, or the matter of the brain, as well as exter¬ 
nally by, for example, the hands, the feet, or the muscles of the 
back. Indeed, from the point of view of health, the work done 
by the various organs of the body in blood-circulating, breathing, 
and thinking, is of far higher importance than the work done in 
sewing, walking, or weight-carrying. The work of the heart or 
the lungs is, during life, regular, untiring, unceasing; the work 
of the hands or the feet, irregular, intermittent, limited. Hay the 
work of, say, the seamstress, the pedestrian, or the coalheaver, 
only represents spare power at disposal over and above the power 
needed to carry on that work within the frame which life impera¬ 
tively demands. An engine must first move itself; its spare power 
does the outside work. Be the work internal or external, however, 
food is the means by which the work is accomplished. “If any 
man will not work neither let him eat,” said Paul. A far higher 
authority, the inflexible command of a law of nature, uttered 
without the agency of any human mouthpiece, decides that “if 
any man will not eat neither shall he work.” Pood and work are 
an equation, the one is the equivalent of the other; here man’s 
will is powerless, here he must bend to law. 
Let us look into this matter of the correlation of food and work 
