YESTERDAY'S LECTURE.

Yesterday afternoon a fair-sized audience assembled in Sever 11 to hear the first lecture of the course on "Health and Strength." Judging from the first the course will be of great interest and value to all. The doctor spoke in part, as follows: "My plan is, after two or three preliminary lectures, to take up the various systems of the body in order. We shall then be able to consider some of the causes which produce disease, and the means by which we may prevent the action of some of these causes. The constitution a person inherits will play a large part in determining what degree of health he shall have, for men resist the influences to which they are exposed with very different results. Another subject of the very greatest importance to health is food. Exercise for persons of sedentary habits is of prime importance. Cleanliness and sleep are too well known as requirements of good health to need much comment. We want to make ourselves sound in wind and limb, in heart and brain. We are all glad to be freed from aches or pains; how much better if we avoid some portion of them. The desire to avoid pain is one of our first acquisitions. For the most part this avoidance is most marked when the effect follows speedily on the cause. When there is considerable lapse of time between cause and effect, our perception of the result is not so clear. The use of alcoholic liquors, opium and tobacco are examples of this fact. We know how much the Greeks and Romans thought of exercise for promoting health. Cleanliness was a virtue well established among these nations. Lack of cleanliness is the cause of a large proportion of the deaths to-day, for we, on this continent, are at the mercy of the dirty people on the banks of the Ganges. The reasons why the Jew is so much healthier than his Christian brother, as statistics prove, is because he lives much more soberly, drinks less, marries, earlier, and takes, better care of the young and aged. In London, within the last two centuries, the death rate has fallen from 80 per thousand to 23. At the age of 15 the rate of mortality is lowest. From 25 to 70 the greatest number of deaths occur from violence, accident, or suicide. The subjects which should interest us most are in regard to what we eat, drink and wear, and the amount of our mental and physical work.