After all, it isn't such a bad old world, all things considered, for we are alive, we see the sun, feel the air, hear the sweet singing of the birds and enjoy the beautiful in everything.

The average citizen dresses well, enjoys the usual social functions, listens in on the music or the literature of the world over the radio, in fact, he is in a better position to enjoy life than ever before in the history of civilization.

He has all the foods of the world from which to choose, instead of being limited to those peculiar to his locality.

Food! Ay, there's the rub! For with all his blessings he has forgotten the true function of food, and he has made of his body a place unfit for the enjoyment of the glorious time in which he lives.

We in America are the sickest nation on the face of the whole earth, yet we have the largest food markets of any.

We have more physicians to the thousand population than has any other nation. We have the largest and best equipped hospitals, the best insane hospitals, and the most and best means for caring for epileptics, the feeble-minded, and the crippled. Our penal system is thoroughly organized and equipped for taking care of by far the most criminals of any other country on the globe. We need all these institutions.

These are not things over which to enthuse; but rather they are things to condone, to excuse, to explain.

Why should America, one of the most enlightened of all countries on this old ball of clay, supposedly the richest of any, the farthest advanced in science and manufacture, admittedly the most modern of all--why should she have this state of affairs?

When we were unceremoniously hurried into the late world war and faced the necessity of recruiting quickly a very large army, we found to our national chagrin and dismay that our young men of army age, the most vital period of life, were nearly half of them unfit for military duty.

They had poor teeth, poor eyesight, weak arches, varicocele, rupture, deficient chest expansion, rheumatism, various dyscrasic conditions, things that make a man unfit to carry the heavy equipment and stand the rigors of a campaign.

Nearly half of these young men, the pride of their country, unfit to serve her in an emergency!

The shock was so great that we did not then fully appreciate its significance, for we were in a hurry to raise an army, no one knowing how big it might have to be, and we took a great many of these young men that could not have passed under less urgent conditions; we made over others who did not have anything worse than weak arches, perhaps, and we got by this one time with a sizeable army of fairly good physique.

Now that the smoke has cleared away and we have had time to think this over, we are humiliated to think that we are as a nation in such physical condition, for if this is true of the young man of military age, what of the older ones?

Every year at any given time two million of our people are off the pay roll, sick, with perhaps half as many more also restrained from productive pursuit to care for these.

What of those who are still carrying on? Are they enjoying life as they should? Are they fulfilling their full destinies? Are they cashing in fully on their opportunities, or are they in some degree handicapped by ill health that is causing them to fall far short of all that is coming to them?

If the young men of army age were found fifty per cent deficient, it is fair to suppose that those at home and of more advanced age were still more deficient.

With two million continually sick, all the rest come under suspicion of being only a little less sick, for it is not thinkable that these two million people are singled out of all the rest to bear the illnesses of the entire nation.

400,000 children never see the tenth year of age, 200,000 of these never see the second year. Our percentage of deficient children is increasing with each generation, not only the actual number of incompetents, but a percentage increase.

Our school reports show major or minor deficiencies in well over seventy-five per cent of American childhood.

This state of affairs is not confined to the urban part of our population, as it was once supposed to be, for the same deficiencies in nearly the same ratio show in the suburban and district schools, showing that it is something more than the restricted life of the cities that is at the root of our troubles.

Teeth have come to be looked on as a source of grave danger to any one, and tonsils are an admitted horror, while such a thing as a retained appendix in good working order is coming to be regarded as a sort of curiosity.

Surgical operations have multiplied till our hospital requirements for surgery alone have quadrupled in the past twenty-five years.

For a married woman to escape at least one surgical operation of major character is now considered remarkable, and the unfortunate sister who cannot show an abdominal scar is compelled to occupy a rear seat at the sewing societies and the afternoon teas, for she has nothing to talk about.

We hear more and more of the wonders of modern surgery, but can it develop as fast as the seeming need for it, or must we make more surgeons out of our young men?

It would seem to an inquiring mind as though the trouble is not so much in the rapid growth of surgical conditions as in the rapidly growing surgical equipment that must have more and more material.

This subject will be referred to again, but for the present it is pertinent to quote Dr. Charles Mayo, of Rochester, Minn., who said in open meeting of the American College of Surgeons a very few years ago: "Nine-tenths of the internal surgery that is done today never should have been done, and the seemingly necessary tenth part should be done by some one who has some further evidence of surgical ability than merely a diploma in medicine."