y fever, catarrh, grippe,
colds, sore throat; or rupture, enlarged glands, skin eruptions; or
rheumatism, lumbago, gout, obesity; or decayed teeth, baldness,
deafness, eye ailments, spinal curvature, flat foot, lameness; or sundry
other "troubles."

These ailments, though regarded as "minor," should be recognized
promptly and accepted as the signal that the person is moving in the
wrong direction. There is no need for alarm provided this warning is
heeded. Otherwise disaster is almost certain sooner or later to follow.
The laws of physiology are just as inexorable as the laws of physics.
There is no compromising with Nature. No man can disobey the laws of
health to which he has been bred by Nature without paying for it--any
more than a man can sign a check against his bank account without
reducing the amount. He may not be immediately bankrupt, and until he
exhausts his account he may not experience any inconvenience from his
great extravagance, but Nature keeps her balances very accurately, and
in the end all claims must be paid.

[Sidenote: The Personal Equation]

It is true, of course, that some persons have greater resistance than
others. If we had a convenient barometer by which to measure daily the
state of our vitality, we might register the effect of every unhygienic
act. But it is so seldom that endurance is accurately measured that few
people appreciate the enormous differences in people and the variations
of the same person at different times. These differences and variations
have a range of many hundred per cent. Some people can not walk upstairs
or run across the street without being out of breath, while others will
climb the Matterhorn without overstrain. The fact that certain people
have lived to the century-mark in spite of unhygienic living is
sometimes cited to prove that hygiene is ineffective. One might as well
cite the fact that certain trees are not blown down in a gale or are not
quickly destroyed by insect-pests to prove that gales have no tendency
to blow down or insects to destroy trees.

[Sidenote: Over-confidence]

The truth is that a person who has so much vitality as to lead him to
defy the laws of health and to boast that he pays no price no matter how
he lives, is likely to be the very man to exhaust his account of health
prematurely. There was, a few years ago, a famous American, possessed of
prodigious bodily vigor. He ought to have lived a century. Unfortunately
he had this "inso