It has been said, certainly with more or less truth, that we are creatures of our surroundings, but whether we accept this in its broadest sense or not, there can be no question that our well being is most intimately connected with those things with which we come into every day contact. _Nothing is more important for us to recognize than that our diseases are contracted from neighboring subjects just in proportion as we are closely associated with them._ From our fellowmen we contract, as everyone knows, a large number of diseases, either by direct contact or by means of the air that surrounds us. From the earth we get hook-worms and other animal parasites, either by coming directly in contact with it or through eating uncooked fruits and vegetables. From water we get typhoid fever, dysentery, cholera, and many other parasitic diseases. From our food we likewise contract dangerous maladies such as tapeworms from uncooked meats and fish and the deadly trichina from raw hog meat. With decomposed breads we take the poisons that produce pellagra, kak-ke, ergotism and acrodinia. From uncooked fruits and vegetables we get dysentery, typhoid fever, cholera, and parasitic diseases. Spoiled beans give us the deadly lathyrismus. From decomposed meat and fish we get ptomaine poisoning. Mosquitoes convey to us malaria, yellow fever and a parasite known as the filaria. The dreaded sleeping-sickness of Africa comes through the bites of a small fly; the bedbug is believed to be the means of conveying a frightful disease known as kala-azar, and the house-fly often brings to us the germs that produce typhoid fever, dysentery, and probably other diseases as well.