Every adaptation to habits, agents and influences which are inimical to life is accomplished by changes in the tissues which are always away from the ideal. The renovating and readjusting processes that must follow a reform in living is accomplished by the tearing down and casting out of these unideal tissues. New and more ideal tissues take their places. The body is renewed.

This process of readjustment is not always smooth. Aches and pains, loss of weight, skin eruptions, etc., may result. Helen Densmore truly says that, "If it were true that, after many years of abuse, we could stop the wrong course of living and all the blessings of health follow immediately, it would be proof that this disobedience is not so bad after all."

As she says, "With the drunkard the curative action is recognized at once; all know that it is not the water that is making him ill, but the alcoholic poison which he had been before accustomed to. So mother, sister, sweetheart and friends with one accord appeal to him to keep up his courage, notwithstanding his apparently bad symptoms. How differently is the poor dyspeptic treated when he attempts to reform in diet. With one accord his friends try to prevail on him to abandon it; assure him that he is killing himself; read him tomes of medical authorities to show that he is impoverishing his blood by his 'low diet' and when he returns to the old injurious diet, just as with the dram of spirits in the case of the drunkard, the effect is to stop the curative action; he feels braced up, and this is taken as proof that he was all wrong, and the accumulation of disease commences again."

These renovating crises are seldom severe and are always followed by better health. Persistence and determination are required when they come. Most people, particularly young and vigorous ones, will make the change with very little or no discomfort.

Such are our prejudices and prepossessions, and so strong is our tendency to cling to old forms and old schools, that when these manifestations appear, as they sometimes do, even though we have been forewarned and prepared to expect them, many more fail through fear born of ignorance or lack of comprehension of these curative crises than continue with the reform.