Among the potent causes of the physical defectiveness and suffering we see around us are poverty, ignorance, over-work, overcrowding and the evil effects of certain trades.

The farmer is muscle-bound and stooped from his labor, but this does not account for his rheumatism, or dyspepsia, or catarrh. Poverty accounts for much suffering; but when we see half-starved savages better developed than well-paid cashiers, and poor peasant women more vigorous than the idle wives of the rich, we know that poverty is not enough. Over-crowding is certainly a vicious evil, but when we find healthy, vigorous specimens in the slums and puny, undeveloped farmer-folk, we are sure that overcrowding is only a secondary cause.

The painter gets lead poisoning from his work and the stone cutter injures his lungs, but not all of them do so. Even so, this does not account for their asthma, hay fever and undeveloped chins.

Factory workers often work in dust and darkness, or in poorly ventilated places. Fur workers and workers in many other trades, such as dye workers, mirror and thermometer workers, etc., work with poisons and absorb more or less of these. A certain percentage of such workers suffer with poisoning, others are said not to be "allergic" to these poisons.

The enervated and toxemic succumb to these forms of poisoning, others are sufficiently resistant to throw off the minute quantities of poison daily absorbed. Enervation and toxemia produce the condition known as allergy.

Ignorance explains a lot--. but we must be careful what kind of ignorance we blame for these defects. A learned professor who is an ugly asthmatic; the learned doctor who weighs over two hundred pounds and has poor health; the petted children of the wealthy upon whom every care is lavished from birth, but who are "ill to look at and worse to marry"-- these must be the results of a special kind of ignorance.

Under present conditions it is quite beyond the financial ability of thousands of families in many sections of our country to provide a combination salad of lettuce, tomatoes, and celery daily for the hungry little mouths of their children. And there are plenty of homes that know not the luxury of a bath room, or even bathing facilities aside from the kitchen sink.

When one considers the large area of a slum district of any large city, it is impossible for him not to see the chance for improvement, even under present stern economic conditions. There is overcrowding, lack of sunshine, absence of modern facilities for bathing, etc., but these do not make inescapable a life that would shame a savage. The poverty that compels people to live in the slums seems also to deprive them of the urge to improve.

The social and economic ills of society cannot be individually corrected. Until society evolves sufficient intelligence to correct them, and they may all be corrected, the individual must be proof against them--by good habits he must maintain a high state of resistance. For, alone, they are seldom sufficient to prostrate a normal man or woman. It is the combination of bad socio-economic features and bad personal habits that produce enervation, toxemia and the "disease" peculiar to the trade or occupation, or condition of life. Socio-economic causes of "disease" are complicating elements added to the pre-existing toxemia.