n the father's income stops
on account of sickness.

The entire community suffers from the constant idleness of three million
persons, as well as from the deaths which withdraw a still larger number
of persons from actual work for a period of two to five days during the
time of death and burial of the bodies of members of the family.

Then there is all the long train of small ailments, which do not make us
seriously ill, often do not even keep us from work, but which do take
away from the pleasure and enjoyment of life, which render work a burden
instead of a delight, and lessen our ability to work by many degrees.

Not only this, but they all have within them the possibility of
developing into serious diseases. Such lesser troubles are colds,
headache, catarrh, dyspepsia, nervousness, neuralgia, sore throat, skin
eruptions, rheumatism, toothache, earache, affections of the eyes,
lameness, sprains, bruises, cuts, and burns.

Civilization has brought us great blessings but it has also brought with
it many dangers to health. Professor Irving Fisher of Yale says:

"The invention of houses has made it possible for mankind to spread all
over the globe but it is responsible for tuberculosis or consumption.
The invention of cooking has widened the variety of man's diet but has
led to the decay of his teeth. The invention of the alphabet and
printing has produced eye strain with all its attendant evils. The
invention of chairs has led to spinal curvature, etc., etc. Yet it would
be foolish even if it were possible to attempt to return to nature in
the sense of abolishing civilization.

"The cure for eye strain is not in disregarding the invention of
reading, but in introducing the invention of glasses. The cure for
tuberculosis is not in the destruction of houses but in ventilation. It
is a little knowledge that is dangerous. Civilization can, with fuller
knowledge, bring its own cure, and make the 'kingdom of man' far larger
than the 'nature' people can ever dream of."

Until within the last few years, sickness and death were regarded from
a religious standpoint. All sickness was to be borne with patience and
resignation because all our sufferings were sent by an all-wise
Providence. But since science has clearly proved that typhoid fever is
usually caused by an impure water supply, and that boiling the water
would prevent the suffering, expense and possible death; that the
dreaded yellow fever can be banished from comm