The same tendency toward perversion, as being the more interesting phase of life, is found among physicians and trained nurses. A good physician once told me, with pained indignation, that his students would go miles to see an abnormal growth of tumor, but not one of them would turn around to enjoy the mechanism of a healthy heart. And it is a well-known fact that many trained nurses will lose interest in a case the moment a patient begins to recover. "A splendid case of typhoid fever" is, not a case in which the patient is throwing off the effects of the germ with wholesome promptness, but one in which the germ is doing its worst,--where the illness is extreme, and the delirium exciting. To be sure, in such a case, there is intense interest in taking all possible means, with promptness and decision, to save the patient's life; but, if this were done only with a keen love of wholesomeness and normal health, the interest of the nurses and physicians would never wane until the patient had become strong and vigorous. If the standard of the best physical health were steadily before the eyes of physician and nurse, and if both had a strong desire to bring the patient, as nearly as possible, up to their own high standard of health, there would be a very great difference in the atmosphere of sick rooms and hospitals. The work of physicians and nurses seems to be more often that of protection against disease than that of achievement of health; and the distinction, though at first sight it may seem a fine one, is nevertheless radical. Note the parallel between this negative tendency toward health of body, and the same negative tendency in the world toward health of soul. It is protection against the worst ravages of sin which is the moral aim of the majority of the world; not a striving toward a positive standard of healthy life for both soul and body. What is sin but disease of the soul? Sin is just as truly, just as practically, disease of the soul, as any form of known malady is disease of the body. If we could impress ourselves strongly with the fact that sin is disease,--disorder and abnormality,--it would be a radical step toward freedom from sin. By sin is meant every kind of selfishness,--whatever form it may take. A young friend, in speaking of a companion charming in his words and manners and most attractive because of his artistic temperament, but evidently loose in his ideas of morality, once expressed the opinion that it was "all right" to associate with this charming man,--enjoying all that was delightful in him and ignoring, so far as possible, all that was evidently bad. "Could you ignore dirty nails, dirty ears, and a bad smell about your companion?" someone asked. Whereupon the young man exclaimed, with an expression of supreme disgust, "How can you speak of such things,--of course I could not stay with him for five minutes!"