titude toward sanitation and hygiene among city people.

There has been a distinct change with regard to the attitude of society
toward health. A generation or two ago many people--particularly elderly
females--were not ashamed of "enjoying poor health," and a delicate
physique was regarded as rather incidental to the more highly cultured.
To-day, although we sympathize with the afflicted, society places a
premium upon a sound physique. The importance of physical exercise, of
recreation and athletics for the development and maintenance of a sound
body are now much more fully appreciated than they were fifty years ago.
We are coming to understand that good health is largely due to habits of
personal hygiene which must be instilled by the home and the school, and
that without such habits the mere knowledge of sanitation and hygiene
will not be generally applied. This new emphasis upon physical fitness
has naturally received larger attention in the cities on account of the
more unfavorable conditions of city life, while the new knowledge and
appreciation of the value of health has not been so constantly forced
upon the attention of rural people.

Gradually we are coming to appreciate that we have an ethical
responsibility for good health, and it is even receiving a religious
sanction, for we have come to know that the cause of evil behavior may
be due primarily to an unsound body rather than to a perverted soul. The
church has ever ministered to the sick and has supported hospitals, but
to-day it is commencing to advocate the prevention of disease through
sanitation and hygiene, and to preach the religious duty of fostering
health and preventing sickness.

One of the principal factors in the farmer's relative indifference to
health measures is the fact that he has become accustomed to think that
an outdoor life and isolation from other people give him an ability to
withstand sickness and he has rather gloried in his ability to throw off
ordinary ailments and to withstand the physical hardship which his work
often demands. He can see how health conditions may need attention in
the city where people are crowded together, but he is not impressed that
other causes make such diseases as typhoid and malaria much more
prevalent in the open country, and that bad sanitation on a farm a mile
away may cause sickness in his own family. American farmers have been
educated on the nature and spread of disease by their experience with
a