It will at once be understood that the defects enumerated produce distinct deterioration in the condition of the different organs of the body, and it is well known that an organ’s power of resistance to disease depends upon the adequacy of its functioning power, which in its turn depends upon adequate activity. Records exist which prove that Chinese physicians as early as 2000 B.C. employed breathing exercises in the treatment of certain diseases. It is therefore obvious that the people concerned had reached: 1. A stage in their evolution which corresponds with that of our time, i.e., demanding re-education. 2. A stage of observation of cause and effect similar to that of to-day, which led them to see the need of re-education. Such re-education is essential to the restoration of the natural conditions present at the birth in every normal babe, though gradually deteriorated under conditions of modern life. In recent years the following members of the medical profession have urged the inestimable value of the cultivation and development of the respiratory mechanism, and their conclusions have been borne out by the practical results secured by respiratory re-education combined with proper medical treatment. MEDICAL OPINIONS CONCERNING THE EVIL EFFECT OF INTERFERENCE WITH AND INADEQUATE USE OF THE RESPIRATORY PROCESSES Mr. W. Arbuthnot Lane, surgeon to Guy’s Hospital, in his lecture published in the _Lancet_, December 17, 1904, p. 1697, urges that reduction in the respiratory capacity is a very great factor in lowering the activity of all the vital processes of the body, and that in the first instance inadequate aeration and oxygenation is the result of a serious alteration in the abdominal mechanisms, and afterwards this insufficient aeration impairs the digestive processes. Dr. Hugh A. McCallum, in his clinical lecture on “Visceroptosis” (dropping of the viscera), as published in the _British Medical Journal_, February 18, 1905, p. 345, points out that over ninety per cent. of the females suffering from neurasthenia (exhaustion of nerve force) are victims of visceroptosis, and that the conditions present are bad standing posture, imperfect use of the lower zone of the thorax, and the lack of tone in the abdominal muscular system which leads to defective intra-abdominal pressure. He also mentions that Dr. John Madison Taylor of Philadelphia and Keith of England were the two first to point out that the origin of this disease begins in a faulty position and use of the thorax. In a leading article in the _Lancet_, December 24, 1904, p. 1796, this passage occurs: “Whatever may be the causes, it is certain that an increasing number of town-dwellers suffer from constipation and atony of the colon, and that purgatives, enemata, and massage are powerless to prevent their progress from constipation to coprostasis.” CONVALESCENTS