ty, or unusual mental endowment, is in
reality due to a chance compatibility of work with physique. To secure
such compatibility is the purpose of physical examination after school
age.

If the periodic visit to the doctor is the first law of adult health,
still more imperative is the law that competent physicians should be
seen at the first indication of ill health. Even when competent
physicians are at hand, parents and teachers should be taught what
warning signs may mean and what steps should be taken. In Germany
insurance companies find that it saves money to provide free medical
and dental care for the insured. Department stores, many factories and
railroads, have learned from experience that they save money by
inducing their employees to consult skilled physicians at the first
sign of physical disorder. Many colleges, schools, and "homes" have a
resident physician. Wherever any large number of people are assembled
together,--in a hotel, factory, store, ship, college, or school,--there
should be an efficient consulting physician at hand. If people are
needlessly alarmed, it is of the utmost importance to show them that
there is nothing seriously wrong. Therefore visits to the consulting
physician should be encouraged.

The reader's observation will suggest numerous illustrations of pain,
prolonged sickness, loss of life, that could have been prevented had
the physician been semi-annually visited. A strong man, well educated,
with large income, personally acquainted with several of the foremost
physicians of New York City, after suffering two weeks from pains "that
would pass away," was hurriedly taken to a hospital at three o'clock in
the morning, operated upon immediately, and died at nine. A business
man of means put off going to a physician for fifteen years, for fear
he would be told that his throat trouble was tobacco cancer, or
incipient tuberculosis, or asthma; a physical examination showed that a
difficulty of breathing and chronic throat trouble were due to a
growth in the nose, corrected in a few minutes by operation.

A celebrated economist was forced to give up academic work, and
consecrated his life to painful and chronic dyspepsia because of eye
trouble detected upon the first physical examination. A woman secretary
suffered from alleged heart trouble; paralysis threatened, continuous
headache and blurred vision forced her to give up work and income; a
physical examination found the cause in nasal