difficulty, remain content with what must prove but a temporary
restoration?

How often, for example, does the physician, when called to the patient
suffering from a cold, inquire to see the shoes or boots of the invalid?
Never; the thing is unheard of. Their questions in the direction of
causes would not reach half way to the real goal which should be made
the point of investigation. Not that the insufficient shoes or boots are
going to have any part in the restoration of the invalid; but it may be
shown, on examination, that they were the real cause of trouble, and, by
a change, prevent in the future a similar attack, from that source at
least. The same is true of half the diseases afflicting mankind; their
prevention may be assured, to a great extent, by attention to the
dictates of hygienic laws, which are no more or less than the laws of
moderation and common sense, and not, as many suppose, the law of
obligation to eat stale bread, or "cold huckleberry-pudding," all the
balance of their lives, though this diet might be beneficial if
ghost-seeing and spirit-rapping was determined upon.

Very many cases of fevers can be directly traced to some local cause,
which should receive as much attention from the physician as does the
patient, and either the one or the other promptly removed. Indeed,
people must learn for themselves to investigate the laws regulating
health, and thus be able, without the aid of any professional, to decide
intelligently all of the more obvious questions.

It does, in this connection, seem that there is great want of judgment
on the part of those having the direction of our public schools, in that
there is so trifling attention given both the study and observance of
the laws which control our existence. What is education without a sound
body? what is life to the creature of broken health? and what is there
which is more valuable and priceless to us? The answer is plain to all,
and yet the whole advancing generation of boys and girls, beyond a mere
inkling in physiology, a possible recollection of the number of bones in
the human frame, and that common air is composed of two principal gases,
they know of hygienic law practically nothing. Worthy pupils of
incompetent pedagogues, who, not being required by the public to
properly inform themselves with a full knowledge of these important
studies, are perhaps in some measure excused for their shortcomings.
Instead of the inculcation of these use