There are three serious objections to my health prescriptions ❦ First, I make no charge for them. Second, they are written in plain English, without myth, miracle or mystery, and can be understood even by the mediocre mind. Third, you have to fill the prescription yourself, and this costs effort. Sickness is a selfish thing. If you are well you are expected to work, and give your time and talent to helping other people. If you are sick you are supposed to be immune from many unpleasant tasks and duties. Mark Twain said he was never really happy except on two occasions. One was when he was given that Oxford degree and wore a marvelous red cloak and a mortar-board hat; and the other was when he had the measles and expected to die. The joy of holding the center of the stage and having the whole family in tears, just on his own account, was worth all the pangs ❦ But, indeed, there were no pangs. Mark was a humorist, and a humorist is a man who has the sense of values, and to have the sense of values is wisdom. Mark was a great philosopher as well as a humorist ❦ Not only did he testify that pangs and pains are the attributes of life, not death, and that there is no pain in death, but he also gave testimony that sickness is an acute form of selfishness. The sick man disarranges the entire scheme of house-keeping wherever he is, unless he be in a hospital. To have his meals served to him in bed he regards as natural and right ❦ For once he holds the center of the stage—all dance attendance. Doctors come, nurses run for this and that, neighbors call and inquire. He is It. ¶ The paranoiac is a person who craves attention, and rather than go unnoticed, commits crime. Just observe how most sick people obtrude their maladies upon their friends, and then tell me whether sickness is not usually a form of paranoia! Doctor Johnson said the sick man is a rascal ❦ Not only is the remark true, but Doctor Johnson might have gone further and stated that a long period of rascality is required to produce most cases of sickness. Hate, prejudice, revenge, jealousy, wrath, are all disturbers of the circulation, and producers of toxins. These toxins poison the entire system, and continued, may produce rheumatism, dyspepsia, Bright’s disease, or various other pleasant things for which we look to the doctor for relief. ¶ Most people go through life on a short allowance of ozone, and a surfeit of food. We eat too much and breathe too little ❦ Life is combustion—the digestive tract is a boiler. And as oxygen is necessary to fire, so it is to life. The value of exercise in the open air lies in the fact that it is getting a goodly draft of oxygen through your system, and this forced draft is both eliminating refuse and burning up slag ❦ These things are all so trite and true that it seems silly to write this for cultured people, and yet cultured and educated people are sick quite as much as the other kind. In fact, more so, since necessity