In our daily affairs we take thought for the future and reason from cause to effect. We observe, anticipate, expect and suspect. This is a commendable practice, for it is the one that is most likely to lead to success. Can we not acquire a similar attitude and habit in regard to our health? Habit is sub-conscious attention. Can we not give sub-conscious attention to the little details of such bodily functions as are liable to get out of order? Can we not by a settled habit, that is, by the formation of a second nature, assure our vital success, on which the continuance of the enjoyment of life so much depends? If some part of a complicated machine gets out of order it must be repaired at once or damage may result to other parts of it. Again, if our business accounts will not balance, the error must be found and corrected at once, or the evidence of it will annoy us sooner or later. Why should not such prompt care and attention be given to the human mechanism, to the economy of vital functions? It is not often that we neglect disease of the hands, head, face or neck because the exposure of such disease to public gaze might embarrass us; but alas for the portion of the body out of sight, especially for the internal organs, when they fail to perform their functions normally. Most of us allow the mechanism of the human body to shift as best it can and as long as it can, should it happen to become ungeared, ignoring the frequent warnings which the ever increasing morbid changes and wreckage give us. And then we surrender and succumb. What else can we do? Our vital creditors file their claims in the high court of Vital Bankruptcy. What poor business policy, and what a wretched tenant! For fifteen or more years we may have had warning "touches of the piles," sometimes accompanied with indigestion, constipation, diarrhea and insidious auto-infection and occasionally with local symptoms in and around the anal canal and its external orifice; these to an intelligent tenant should have been evidence of proctitis, or worse, of periproctitis--inflammation of the connective tissue of the rectal tube. What have we done? We have disregarded the warnings of our ungeared, disordered machine, or else we have merely tinkered with it. The human factory receives less attention than does the commercial. Soon, all too soon, the silver cord is loosed and the golden bowl broken, and just before that event, frightened, but too late, we do a little more tinkering under a doctor's direction, and spill the contents--of the golden bowl with which we were so careless--spill it into another world, to begin our folly over again!