Every Limanoran except the young and undeveloped had as the result of attention to health in past ages what they called the conscience of the health. This put them on the alert the moment any function was disordered, and off they went to Oomalefa to consult the medical families on the exact nature of the derangement, its locality, and the diet or treatment that would restore to complete health. Few or none of full maturity but would feel this sanitary sense within them like a whip or goad which would not let them rest till the evil element was swept out. It was a daily occurrence to meet some islander hurrying post-haste for consultation and medication, and I came at last to be ashamed of the lethargy which would let me remain inert under some decay of nerve or tissue in its primary stages until it had resulted in ache or pain. The feeling of lassitude or the absence of the sense of the full tide of life made me rush in fear and trembling to the hall of consultation. In my former existence I had had the embryo of this sanitary conscience in the pains or prostration accompanying disease, but then the warning generally came too late. Now I was sensitive to the slightest derangement of any tissue or part of my system and without the goad of ache flew to Oomalefa to find the remedy; otherwise I felt that I was doing wrong to my future and my posterity and to the future of the whole race. Even the actual present of the people was affected; the slightest disorder of my constitution seemed to weigh upon the spirits of my companions and friends, for they believed there was contagion in every disease. As strongly did they hold that there was a contagion of health, and would not allow any member of their medical families or council to approach a citizen even in consultation unless the healer was himself whole in every atom of his constitution. To be sound in body and spirit was as sanative of the derangements of others as any active remedy. Every citizen was taught enough of the medical science of the island to know what was wrong in himself or his neighbour; for every citizen was a possible father or mother; and for parenthood a thorough and practical acquaintance with the laws of health and the causes and cures of the commonest diseases was a first essential. The Limanorans laughed at the absurdity of Western civilisation in allowing men and women to generate and bring up children with no more knowledge of their constitution than if they were mere animals. Still oftener they mourned that so much human generation in the world was left to the chance dictates of caprice, and that most medicine and education were only blind groping in the dark. That nothing should be done on mere authority was one of the first principles of their civilisation.