and standards of the body politic. Originally, there is a fair living with reasonable comforts available to us all in this country, and it is a matter of simple mathematics to show that the aggregation of an undue proportion of the available wealth in the hands of the few means a subtraction all along the line from the resources of the many and corresponding reduction in standards of living.

And in respect to the sociological and health problems created by such excessive fortunes the physician, in an individual way, has opportunity to work for society through his intimate professional relations with the very rich. He can honestly assert that the creation of unduly great fortunes is a benefit neither to their possessors nor to the race. Ability habitually to overindulge in costly indigestible food and drink and to avoid physical labor, combined with the excessive nervous strain of business competition and the complexities of social life, have their results in the steadily rising rates for disability and death from neurasthenia, gout, rheumatism, and the diseases of the kidneys, heart, and circulatory apparatus. The poor man, with all his ills dependent on malnutrition, fortunately escapes that of corpulency, a condition which was recently shown had never, in the experience of the two largest life insurance companies, existed in risks who survived to a good old age. Both extreme in the social scale have their special perils.

As doctors we appreciate that beyond the ability to provide for all one's physical and mental needs, the acquisition of wealth serves no useful purpose; while the corresponding deprivation under which the general public is thus made to labor has too profound an influence on the race to permit us to countenance wealth-getting as a pastime or an obsession. The collection of dollars has quite a different effect upon the community than that of the collection of postage stamps for example. And when the man with superabundance apparently regards money-getting as a sport, like hunting or fishing, it is well to recall that particularly all our States now have laws fixing a legal limit to the bag of quail or trout; when the desire reaches the intensity of an obsession, suggestive treatment like that required for the victim of any other unhealthy idea is desirable.

Nor does the ultimate good disposition of great wealth repair the damage wrought by its accumulation. With all appreciation toward those who build hospitals, endow institutions, and donate libraries, nothing they thus do can compensate the race as a whole for the results of the less wholesome conditions and environment which continued denial of their adequate share in the rewards of industry have brought about. It would be now both impossible and unwise to give this share back-but it was an injury to the nation and race to take it away in the first place.

Finally, while standing always for material progress, the physician ought to preach the doctrine of the simple life as opposed to the useless artificialities which constantly and unnecessarily tend to render existence more complex. He can consistently set his face against the follies and extravagances which weaken the race as a whole and create conditions which favor the elimination of the social extremes. Of far clearer vision than the self-centered money-grabber, he must interpose to stop the scramble to discount, for present advantage, the future health and happiness of the nation.