Let it be borne in mind that hygienic living requires nothing more than the application of the same intelligence and practical common sense to the care of the body that the skillful mechanic applies to an efficient, but delicate, machine. And, just as in the case of the machine, care of the body keeps its efficiency at the maximum and lengthens the period that it may be used. This end and aim of hygienic living is best attained by cultivating that attitude of mind toward the body that avoids interference in the vital processes and permits the natural appetites, sensations, and desires to indicate very largely the body’s needs. *Attitude toward Habit-forming Drugs.*—Among the different substances introduced into the body, either as foods or as medicines, are a number which have the effect of developing an artificial appetite or craving which leads to their continued use. Since the effect of such substances is usually harmful and since they tend to engraft themselves upon communities as social customs, they present a twofold relation to the general problem of keeping well. The individual may be injured through the personal use which he makes of them, or he may be injured through the effect which they have upon relatives or friends or upon society at large. Since our social environment is a factor in health little less important than our physical environment, the conditions that make for their continuance should be more generally understood. *How Social Agencies perpetuate the Use of Habit-forming Drugs.*—When the use of some habit-forming drug has risen to the importance of a general custom, a number of conditions arise which tend to continue its use, even though the fact may be quite generally known that the substance does harm. In the first place, those who have formed the habit suffer inconvenience and distress when deprived of its use. In the second place, a number of people will have become interested in the production and sale of the substance, and these will lose financially if it is discontinued. In the third place, those of the rising generation will, from imitation or persuasion, be constantly acquiring the habit before they are sufficiently mature to decide what is best for them. Thus may the use of a substance most harmful, such as the opium of the Chinese, be indefinitely continued—a species of slavery from which the individual finds it hard to escape. Such is human nature and such are the forces and influences of human society, that the freeing of a people from the bondage of some habit-forming drug cannot be accomplished without strenuous and persistent effort. Education, persuasion, the good example of abstainers, and legal restrictions must be pitted against the forces that make for its continuance. Such a struggle is now in progress in all civilized countries relative to the use of alcoholic beverages.(135)