inst disease may frequently
consist of useful work without diminishing its hygienic effects.

*The Mental Attitude.*--While a proper thoughtfulness and care for the body
is both desirable and necessary, it is also true that over-anxiety about,
or an unnatural attention to, the needs of the body reacts unfavorably
upon the nervous system. Observance of the laws of health, therefore,
should be natural and without special effort--a matter of habit. The
attention should never be turned with anxiety upon any organ or process,
but the mental attitude should at all times be that of _confidence in the
power of the body organization to do its work_. Fear and morbidity, which
are disturbing and paralyzing factors, should be supplanted by courage,
cheerfulness, and hopefulness.

Let it be borne in mind that hygienic living requires nothing more than
the application of the same intelligence and practical common sense to the
care of the body that the skillful mechanic applies to an efficient, but
delicate, machine. And, just as in the case of the machine, care of the
body keeps its efficiency at the maximum and lengthens the period that it
may be used. This end and aim of hygienic living is best attained by
cultivating that attitude of mind toward the body that avoids interference
in the vital processes and permits the natural appetites, sensations, and
desires to indicate very largely the body's needs.

*Attitude toward Habit-forming Drugs.*--Among the different substances
introduced into the body, either as foods or as medicines, are a number
which have the effect of developing an artificial appetite or craving
which leads to their continued use. Since the effect of such substances is
usually harmful and since they tend to engraft themselves upon communities
as social customs, they present a twofold relation to the general problem
of keeping well. The individual may be injured through the personal use
which he makes of them, or he may be injured through the effect which they
have upon relatives or friends or upon society at large. Since our social
environment is a factor in health little less important than our physical
environment, the conditions that make for their continuance should be more
generally understood.

*How Social Agencies perpetuate the Use of Habit-forming Drugs.*--When the
use of some habit-forming drug has risen to the importance of a general
custom, a number of conditions arise which tend to continue its use,