Nowhere is this tendency more strikingly and amus-
ingly illustrated than in the various recipes one hears
so confidently offered for "keeping well." The name
of these is legion, but they nearly all have two or three
characteristics in common. First, they are not really
preventives, but cures, attempts to patch up matters
after trouble has already occurred. Second, they are
pathetically and often ludicrously ineffective, many
of them absolutely worthless. Third, such of them



so CIVILIZATION AND HEALTH

as have some positive effect are apt to be too radical,
and may even aggravate the trouble they are supposed
to cure.
The vast majority of them, however, are practically
harmless and owe such success as they have to the
wonderful remedial power of Nature, which she has
been perfecting these ten million years past. Their
main fault is that they encourage ignorance or neglect
of the laws of health and the principles of prevention,
and train us to rely upon patching and covering up
after the defect has shown itself, instead of upon sound
building and good materials beforehand. They are
sxirvivals of our strong desire for a short cut which will
get us swiftly and with httle effort out of the trouble
into which carelessness or ignorance has brought us.
