Surgery is occasionally necessary, but today from ten to twenty operations are performed where but one is needed. "There is nothing new beneath the sun," is a popular quotation. It seems to hold true in the healing art, for the best modern practice was the best ancient practice. Naturally, people like to make new discoveries and get credit therefore. Our valuable new discoveries in healing are very ancient. Though much that appears in these pages may seem strange and new to many, I claim no originality. My aim is to present workable, helpful facts in such a way that any person of average intelligence and will power can apply them, and to get the essentials of health within such a compass that no unreasonable amount of time need be employed in finding them. According to late discoveries, the ancient Egyptians were more advanced in the art of living than any other people on earth, including the moderns. They taught that overeating is the chief causative factor of disease, and so it is. They taught cleanliness, the priests going to the extreme of shaving the entire body daily. It would naturally follow that they prescribed moderation in eating, which leads to internal cleanliness. Cleanliness of body, in conjunction with cleanliness of mind, will put disease to rout. The ancient Greek writers commented on the good state of health among the Egyptians, and modern medical writers marvel that they made so little use of drugs. Evidently they found drugs of little value, for they were taught hygienic living. The admirable health laws laid down by Moses were derived from Egyptian sources. The ancient nations were as much influenced by the Egyptians as we are today by the Greeks who lived before the Christian era. The Greeks built combination temples and sanitaria, to which the afflicted resorted. The priests were in charge and these ancient heathens were great rogues. By fooling the people they got big fees out of them. Their oracular sayings and miracles were adroitly presented. They did not teach that overeating is the chief cause of disease, for this did not suit the mystic times. The people liked oracular prescriptions, and they got them. The law of supply and demand worked as well then as it does now. The heathen priests waxed fat and the medical art degenerated. About five centuries B. C., Pythagoras taught that health can be preserved by means of proper diet, exercise and the right use of the mind. He also taught many other truths and some fallacies. In spite of much superstition mixed with his philosophy, it was too pure for the times and he perished.