most rudimentary ideas. There is a story told of an old Jewish doctor who, after performing a dangerous operation, said to his disciples: "Two years ago an easy operation might have cured this disease; six years ago a wise way of life might have prevented it." As it was, in spite of his skill, the patient died next day; and similar cases are happening every day. If people would pay attention to the care of their own and their children's health, there would be a difference, not only in the mortality returns, but in the general vitality. The majority are content to get through life with a minimum of vitality, and thousands struggle on to the appointed age of man without ever having been really ill, but yet without ever having been really well—their condition is summed up in the phrase "feeble health." This content is fatal to improvement; it is like the mental position of the savage, who, knowing of nothing better, makes no progress towards civilization; but the sanitarian wishes not only to imbue every one with the ambition of a "fuller life," but also to teach how it may be obtained. He would maintain, not the minimum of vitality, but the maximum; he would have, not inert resignation to painful conditions, but that joy and glory in living which comes with the possession of perfect health, when the performance of every function is a pleasure. The old monastic idea of the mortification of the spirit through the flesh must die out, and be replaced by a more modern philosophy, which shall teach us to make life happy, and not to regard it as a trial to be got through somehow or other in a
