fficult to have good times in pairs. No amount of
instruction of rural pupils in sex hygiene will take the place of
amusements and entertainments for groups of children, forming thus a
special antidote for "two's company, three's a crowd." Liberating and
standardizing normal intersex relations and discouraging cramped social
intersex relations are more urgent needs than instruction in sex
diseases. A working environment that permits pure-mindedness will do
more to inculcate a reverence for sex cleanliness and for parenthood
than lectures and essays on moral prophylaxis.

CHAPTER XL

THE ELEMENT OF TRUTH IN QUACKERY; HYGIENE OF THE MIND

Patent medicines and other forms of quackery could not pay such
enormous dividends unless there was some truth in their claims; unless
their victim found some beneficial return for his money. They win
confidence because they raise hopes and combat fear. They do cure
thousands of people of fear and of "ingrowing thoughts." In so doing
they remove the sole cause of much disability.[17] In so doing they are
merely applying by wholesale principles of mental hygiene that are
legitimately used by physicians, tradesmen, teachers, and parents who
deal successfully with nervousness.

Quackery makes cures and makes money because of the undoubted influence
of mind in causing and in removing those ailments that originate in
fear, imagination, or morbid introspection. A few years ago a little
out-of-the-way town in southern Minnesota was visited by train loads of
the sick and crippled from miles around. Miraculous cures were heralded
broadcast. Life-long cripples left wagon loads of crutches and braces
to decorate the little church with the enchanted transom. People who
had not walked for years returned to their homes cured. The marvels of
famous shrines were fast being duplicated when the church authorities
at St. Paul issued an explanation of the alleged miraculous appearance
of biblical figures in the transom of the new church. The outlines of a
mother carrying a baby had been vaguely impressed in the transom glass
when molten. When the mystery was explained the excursions and the
cures stopped.

Nearly every physician and practically every medical charlatan can
count scores of cures of ailments that had previously defied the skill
of eminent physicians. A child's bumps actually stop aching after the
mother or nurse kisses the abused spot. Invalids forget their
limitations under stre