Are these troubles, then, still to increase? Are we to wait while the bacteriologist patiently investigates the nature of these diseases, until he triumphantly isolates some characteristic germ and announces that here, at last, is the dread bacillus of cancer?[1] Should we even then be any nearer a cure? Could we rely on inoculation, and even if we could, what is to be the end? Are we to be inoculated against every known disease till our bodies become depressed and enervated sterilities, incapable of action on their own account? I pray not, for such a physical condition would imply a mental condition even more pitiable. The science of bacteriology has its uses, but they are the uses of research rather than of application. Bacteriology reveals a few of the agents active in disease, but it says nothing about the conditions which permit these agents to become active. Therefore I look to that wonderful instrument, the human body, for the true solution of our difficulty, an instrument so inimitably adaptable, so full of marvellous potentialities of resistance and recuperation, that it is able, when properly used, to overcome all the forces of disease which may be arrayed against it. In this thing I do not address myself to any one class or section of the community. I have tried in what follows to avoid, so far as may be, any terminology, any medical or scientific phrases and technicalities, and to speak to the entire intelligent public. I wish the scheme I have here adumbrated to be taken up universally, and not to be restricted to the advantage of any one body, medical or otherwise. I wish to do away with such teachers as I am myself. My place in the present economy is due to a misunderstanding of the causes of our present physical disability, and when this disability is finally eliminated the specialised practitioner will have no place, no uses. This may be a dream of the future, but in its beginnings it is now capable of realisation. Every man, woman, and child holds the possibility of physical perfection; it rests with each of us to attain it by personal understanding and effort. F. MATTHIAS ALEXANDER. 16 Ashley Place, Westminster, London. CONTENTS