country are premature and unnecessary. The best physicians devote themselves more and more to the prevention rather than the cure of disease. It is to be hoped that the time will come when we shall pay our doctors as we do our pastors, to keep us well and doing well, rather than to cure us when we fall sick. Those of you who are looking forward to the study of medicine may readily realize that a full college course affords none too much preparation for the profound investigations which must be carried on by the physician of the coming day. No man needs wider information or deeper insight than he who guards the life and the health of his fellow men.

Assuming, then, that most sickness is unnecessary, that it is, generally, our duty to be well and our sin, or some other person's sin, if we are sick, let us glance briefly at some of the conditions of good health. Of course a treatise on hygiene cannot be compressed into the limits of a

familiar talk, but, confining our attention to the personal aspects of the matter and to those things which especially relate to student life, a few points may be emphasized.

Hygiene has been defined as the science which teaches people to take the ounce of prevention instead of the pound of cure. Of course the ounce of prevention is not always pleasant to take. People persuade themselves that it is a needless precaution, that the dose is too large or too bitter, or that it will be more agreeable at some other time. Sometimes the ounce seems so trivial as to be of no consequence, and so it is forgotten or neglected till suddenly the pound of cure becomes necessary. Surely we must count that education poor and incomplete which does not train to good judgment and self-control in the care of the health. "Be watchful over your body," says Descartes, "if you would rightly exercise your mind." Let us select a

few practical points as worthy of special consideration.

1. Food and Drink. These are the foundations of life; they have peculiar relations to our health. No small part of the diseases which afflict mankind spring from the misuse of food and drink. Lest, in the press of other interests, we should forget these necessities of our nature, two sentinels have been placed on guard to remind us from time to time of our danger. One of these sentinels we call hunger, the other, thirst. But while they are pretty sure to tell us when we need to eat or drink, they cannot always be relied upon to tell us when to stop eating and drinking. The temptations of cooks, caterers and distillers do more to shorten human life than all the contagious and inherited diseases the doctors know.

Moreover, appetite, which ought to be a faithful guide, is easily suborned and made the efficient ally of our deadliest

enemies. The world presents no more revolting spectacle than the man who has become the degraded slave of appetite. Thousands of people go through life dyspeptic and handicapped, because in youth they were unwilling to practice a little self-restraint in the use of various palatable but indigestible dishes and condiments; while other thousands lay the foundation in youth of lifelong misery and disgrace by learning to tamper with alcoholic drinks. He who eats too much takes a step towards the contemptible vice of gluttony. He who acquires an appetite for intoxicating drinks lights a torch to burn his own dwelling. There can be no temperate use of poisons. Every city and town in the land affords staggering, bloated, loathsome illustrations of the destruction of health and manhood by indulgence in intoxicating drinks. Many of these men, once as strong and hopeful and ambitious as you are, laughed at the squeamishness of

those who thought it was dangerous to drink light wines and beer. They gloried in their independence and their strength. But now their maudlin words and labored breath portray, as no temperance lecture can, the abject bondage of him who is a slave to appetite. Let every student remember the beautiful words of Tennyson:

"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control;These three alone lead life to sovereign power."

2. Brain-workers need more sleep than other people, yet they often get less. Their brain goes on working after they have retired to rest. Grinding, like a mill without a grist, it only wears away its own substance, exhausts its own power. Blessed mystery of sleep! N. physician or biologist can explain it; it is akin to creation, a divine thing. And yet, how men trifle with it, defraud it, begrudge the hours which it consumes! Kant, the philosopher, had acquired, by