strictive, but
liberating. They may seem at first restrictive, for they prohibit many
things which we have been in the habit of doing; but they are really
liberating, for the things we were doing were unrealized restrictions on
our own power to work, to be useful, or even to enjoy life. The "rules"
of hygiene are thus simply the means of emancipating us from our real
limitations. These so-called rules, when tried, will prove to be not
artificial but natural, not difficult but easy, not complicated but
simple. They are almost as simple as the direction to bathe in the river
Jordan. It is, in fact, their very simplicity and availability to which
is largely due their deplorable neglect and the failure to realize the
wonderful benefits following their careful and continued observance.

[Sidenote: The Evil of Romancing]

Not only a healthy mental attitude toward life, but a healthy mental
attitude toward one's own unhygienic habits is essential. It is a very
common thing for a man to romance over his shortcomings, or his
unhealthy physical conditions, to make humor of them to his friends.
Very often the first step toward a better physical condition is a change
in this mental attitude.

Section IV--The Possibilities of Hygiene

[Sidenote: The Preventability of Disease and Death]

Certain it is that more people would practise hygiene if they could be
made to realize in some vivid way how much they needed it. Few persons,
even when they read and accept the statistics on the subject, really
have a picture of the imperative need of hygiene as an integral part of
every human life. It is not brought home to them how widespread is
illness, how numerous are preventable deaths, how many are the
tendencies toward individual and racial deterioration.

The report of the Roosevelt Conservation Commission on National
Vitality, indicates that annually there are in the United States over
600,000 deaths which might be prevented if existing knowledge of hygiene
were properly applied; that at least half of the 3,000,000 and more
sick-beds constantly kept filled in the United States are unnecessary;
that the financial loss from earnings cut off by preventable disease and
premature death amounts to over $1,500,000,000 annually; and that over
15 years are lost to the average life through the lack of application of
knowledge which already exists but which simply has not yet been
disseminated and applied.

[Sidenote: Impairments Unsuspecte