In the Marquesas Islands, in the South Seas, there lived a beautiful and happy race of savages, believed to have been descended, long ages ago, from Aryan stock. From the point of view of physical perfection, they were an ideal race, living a blissful outdoor life, which you may read about in Melville's "Typee," and in O'Brien's "White Shadows in the South Seas." This race conformed to all the requirements of the nature enthusiast. They went practically naked, their houses were open all the time, they lived on the abundant fruits of the earth. To be sure, they were cannibals, but this was more a matter of religious ceremony than of diet. They ate their war captives, but this was only after battle, and not often enough to count, one way or the other, in matters of health. They had lived for uncounted ages in perfect harmony with their environment; they were happy and free; and certainly, if such a thing were possible to human beings, they should have been proof against germs. But a ship came to one of these islands, and put ashore a sailor dying of tuberculosis, and in a few years four-fifths of the population of this island had been wiped out by the disease. What tuberculosis left were finished by syphilis and smallpox, and today the Marquesans are an almost extinct race. But there is another side to the argument--and one more favorable to the nature cure enthusiast. We civilized men, by soft living, by self-indulgence and lack of exercise, may reduce the tone of our body too far below the standard which our ancestors set for us; and then the common disease germs get us, then we have colds, sore throats, tuberculosis. The nature cure advocate is perfectly right in saying that there is no use treating such diseases; the thing is to restore the body to its former tone, so that we may be superior to our normal environment and its strains.