In the ensuing pages I shall endeavour to give the reader a necessarily
brief and cursory, glance into the subjects which will form the
underlying motif of the vast and manifold deliberations which will
constitute the fundamental basis of the projected course of study which
will be brought under the consideration of the members of the proposed
association and will constitute the schedule, as it were, of the
periodical dissertations of these matters of world-wide and vital
individual significance to be comprised in the Series of One Hundred
Lessons.
I have been at some pains to avoid as far as possible the use of
technical and professional phrases and terminology, for the express
purpose of bringing within the scope of every faculty of understanding
these subjects which are equally _a matter of life and death importance_
to every man, woman and child, in all the wide and varied range of
nationalities and languages which constitute so large a part of our
great Republic and upon whose health and efficiency so much of our
national life depends.
The great and ominous unrest, so much in evidence of late, is ample
proof of a latent popular dissatisfaction with the conditions of life
and it is equally significant of the prevailing nervous tension--the
obvious result of malnutrition of the system--which is one of the most
prominent popular features of the worry-worn denizen of today.
Life, Health, Happiness--that vital interdependent triad--are surely a
preoccupation strong enough and precious enough to startle the minds of
the most complacent; and it is with the object of awakening all to their
possibilities--in health or in disease--of protection of the one, and
hope and regeneration under the other, that the course of study has been
inaugurated of which the following is but a bare outline.