aphragm, and I believe in most
cases will ward off diseases and keep old age awaiting for long."

Here is a little commonsense advice given by a physician who is also a
great scientist. To try it will cost you nothing--no apparatus is
required--just throw open the window and reach up and up and up, first
with one arm, then the other, and then both arms. "The person who does
this daily for five minutes as a habit will probably have no need of a
physician," adds Haeckel, and with this sage remark he dismisses the
subject, branching off into an earnest talk on radiolaria.

* * * * *

Haeckel was educated for a physician and began his career by practising
medicine. But his heart was not really in the work; he soon arrived at
the very sane conclusion that constant dwelling on the pathological was
not worth while. "Hereafter I'll devote my time to the normal, not the
abnormal and distempered. The sick should learn to keep well," he wrote
a friend.

And again, "If an individual is so lacking in will that he can not
provide for himself, then his dissolution is no calamity to either
himself, the State or the race." This was written in his twenties, and
seems to sound rather sophomorish, but the idea of the boy is still with
the old man, for in "The Riddle of the Universe" he says, "The final
effect upon the race by the preservation of the unfit, through increased
skill in surgery and medicine, is not yet known." In another place he
throws in a side remark, thus: "Our almshouses, homes for imbeciles, and
asylums where the hopelessly insane often outlive their keepers, may be
a mistake, save as these things minister to the spirit of altruism which
prompts their support. Let a wiser generation answer!"

Doubtless Haeckel could make a good argument in favor of the doctors if
he wished, but probably if asked to do so his answer would paraphrase
Robert Ingersoll, when that gentleman was taken to task for unfairness
towards Moses, "Young man, you seem to forget that I am not the attorney
of Moses--don't worry, there are more than ten millions of men looking
after his case." Ernst Haeckel is not the attorney for either the
doctors or the clergy.

It was Darwin and "The Origin of Species" that tipped the beam for
Haeckel in favor of science. Very shortly after Darwin's great book was
issued, in the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, a chance copy of the
work fell into the hands of our young physician.