I am not a poet, and it is not important that I should be beautiful, and I have been too busy to remember to pull my hair; but by giving up tight hats, and by limiting the amount of my overworking, I have managed to keep what hair I had left when the hair specialist had got through with me. I tell this anecdote at the beginning of my discussion of health, because it illustrates so well the factors which appear in every case of disease, and which you must understand in seeking to remedy the trouble. We have a phrase which has come down to us from the ancient Latins, "vis medicatrix naturae," which means the healing power of nature. So long ago men realized that it is our ancient mother who heals our wounds, and not the physician. Out of this have grown the cults of "nature cure" enthusiasts; and according to the fashion of men, they fly to extremes just as unreasonable and as dangerous as those of the "pill doctors" they are opposing. I have in mind a man who taught me probably more than any other writer on health questions, and with whom I once discussed the subject of typhoid, how it seemed to affect able-bodied men in the prime of their physical being. This, of course, was contrary to the theories of nature cure, and my friend had a simple way of meeting the argument--he refused to believe it. He insisted that, as with all other germ infections, it must be a question of bodily tone; no germ could secure lodgment in the human body unless the body's condition was reduced. "But how can you be sure of that?" I argued. "You know that if you go into the jungle, you are not immune against the scorpion or the cobra or the tiger. There is nothing in all nature that is safe against every enemy. What possible right have you to assert that you are immune against every enemy which can attack your blood-stream?"