rcise is enforced, and the resulting
interference with normal functions is so great that he lives the winter
through in a sort of hibernation. He is nearly poisoned by lack of
ventilation in the small living room, where the one stove makes living
possible; he gets fat and indolent, and then with relaxed muscles
plunges into furious labor again when spring comes round.

"No wonder," says Woods Hutchinson, "that by forty-five he has had a
sunstroke and 'can't stand the heat' or has a 'weak back' or his 'heart
gives out' or a chill 'makes him rheumatic.'" Such a life is not
efficient any more than a steam engine is efficient when half the time
it is run at such high speed that it tends to shake itself to pieces and
the other half of the time it stands idle. Nor are the conditions under
which farmers' wives live any better. Statistics show that the highest
percentage of insanity in any class of persons in the United States (due
chiefly to overwork, overworry, and lack of proper amusements and
recreation) is to be found among farmers' wives.

An ideal life is not one which merely rounds out the allotted span, but
one which, during that span, is measurably free from ailments and
disabilities and in a condition to claim a share in the joy of living
which belongs to every human being by reason of his existence. Such
lives, to be sure, are seldom found, and no system of statistics yet
devised has been able to take account of those ailments. Insurance
companies, which make good losses for inability to work and which return
the cost of medicines and doctors' bills, give the only information on
the subject. From these, it has been shown that for each death in a
community there are a little more than two years of illness. Or,
expressed differently, for every death occurring in a village, there are
two persons constantly ill during the year. Or, still differently, there
are, on the average, thirteen days' sickness per year for every person
in a community.

It is the aim of all hygienic efforts to prevent not merely premature
death, but also the inefficiency of unhealthy living, and it is the
latter condition rather than the former which generally prevails in
rural communities. As we have seen, the death-rates in the country,
except for pneumonia, are not noticeably higher than in the city. But by
minor ailments, with the resulting loss of daily efficiency, the rural
communities are sadly overburdened. As Irving Fisher says in his R