Good Health And How We Won It

<p>Ten years ago when I was a student at college I fell a victim to a new and fashionable ailment called la grippe. I recollect the date very well because it was the first time I had been sick in fourteen years-the last difficulty having been the whooping-cough. I have many times had occasion to recall the interview with the last physician I went to see. I made a proposition which might have changed the whole course of my future life had he only been capable of understanding it.</p><p> </p><p>I said: Doctor it has occurred to me that I would like to have someone who knows about the body examine me thoroughly and tell me how to live. I can recollect his look of perplexity. Was there anything the matter with you before this attack? he asked. Nothing that I know of I answered; but I have often reflected that the way I am living cannot be perfect; and I want to get as much out of my body and mind as I can. I should like to know for instance just what are proper things for me to eat</p><p> </p><p> Nonsense he interrupted. You go right on and live as you have been living and don't get to thinking about your health.</p><p> </p><p>And so I went away and dismissed the idea. It was one that I had broached with a great deal of diffidence; so far as I knew it was entirely original and I was not sure how a doctor would receive it. All doctors that I had ever heard of were people who cured you when you were sick; to ask one to take you when you were well and help you to stay well was to take an unfair advantage of the profession.</p><p> </p><p> </p>