escape. Meanwhile
however--most strange anomaly--mankind degenerates in body and still
more in mind.

The race has become diseased, is suffering, cries out for a betterment
of its conditions, grows constantly more embittered and renounces its
faith in the powers, human and divine.

Epidemics of terrific proportions sweep their recurring millions into
the arms of death; diseases of stupendous mortality, such as
tuberculosis, cancer, syphilis, diabetes, and the extensive array of
so-called contagious diseases of children, are continually increasing,
in spite of doctors, hospitals, sanatoria, hydros, hygienics, asylums,
nostrums and serums, and continue to afflict humanity, taking their
ghastly toll in daily thousands, despite the vaunted but theoretical
advancement of Medical Science.

In the field of medical science the controversy rages at full blast
today.

An endless succession of hypotheses, conjectures and dogmas lies
widespread before us--a troubled sea of uncertainties--a complex
labyrinth of doubt.

The "doctors of medicine" are many but responsible physicians are few,
while disease is constantly on the increase among mankind.

It is really little that the people have to learn, for instinct has
taught them there is little to be hoped of succour from the professional
source. But the world-old habit of superstitious fear and reverence for
the "Medicine Man" fetish yet holds its grip upon the race--alike in the
savage or the Senate and, despite the knowledge of its fallacy,
humanity, still faithful, turns to it weakly, fear-driven, in its hour
of distress, knowing no self-reliance and no safer refuge.

The reader will pardon this digression, since it is better that from the
outset we should divest ourselves of all delusions and recognize
existing conditions as they really are in order that it may help to
eliminate these ignorant superstitions from the public mind and implant
therein the wholesome fact that there is _no magic in medicine_ but
simply _an ordinary problem of cause and effect_.

Existence is movement; the whole visible world is progress, development.
These are facts which, in truth, are daily becoming more generally
known. But man--even modern man--is still so stubbornly unyielding in
his faith that what he learns in an instant becomes immovably rooted in
his mind to the utter exclusion, generally, of anything new, which even
though it be a matter of demonstrated fact, it matters not if at
va