A new and in many respects a nobler conception of medicine has been developed. Formerly medical practice was almost exclusively a personal service to the sick individual, and measures looking toward the general relief of disease and its prevention received scanty consideration. The idea of a wider service to the city, to the state, to the nation, to humanity rather than the personal service to the individual, is becoming dominant in medicine. This is seen in the establishment of laboratories by boards of health in cities and states in which knowledge obtained by exact investigations can be made of direct service to the people; in the medical inspection of schools and factories; in promulgating laws directed against conditions which affect health, in the extension of hospitals, and in divers other ways. The idea of public service and of returning to the people in an effective way some of the results of their labor also underlies the large donations which have been given for the creation of special laboratories and institutes in which, through research, greater knowledge of disease may be obtained and made available. The researches which have been made on the nutrition of man and the nutritive value of different foods are of great importance, and this knowledge has not yet begun to be applied as it should be. There seems to be a balance maintained between the restriction of disease by prevention and the increased influence of social conditions which are in themselves factors of disease. Preventive medicine seems to have made possible, by restricting their harmful influence, the increase in industrialism, in urban life, and in the intercommunications of peoples. The most important aid in the future to the influence of preventive medicine must be the education of the people so that the conditions of disease, the intrinsic and the extrinsic causes and the manner in which these act, shall all become a part of general knowledge, and the sympathy of the people with health legislation and their active assistance in carrying out measures of prevention may be obtained. The effect of social conditions on disease must become more generally recognized. GLOSSARY ATROPHY--A condition of imperfect nutrition producing diminution in size and loss of function of parts. BERTILLON--A French anthropologist who devised a system of measurements of the human body for purposes of identification. BLOOD-PLASMA--The fluid of the blood. CELL--The unit of living matter. Living things may be unicellular or composed of a multitude of cells which are interdependent. The general mass of material forming the cell is termed cytoplasm. In this there is a differentiated area termed nucleus which governs the multiplication of cells. In the nucleus is a material termed chromatin which bears the factors of heredity. CHEMOTROPISM--The influence of chemical substances in directing the movement of organisms.