training and experience as a preparation for such service. As leaders of public opinion, through the medical journals, through the transactions of learned societies, through public addresses, through letters to the newspapers, and especially through personal contact with men and women who have the special genius and the peculiar qualities that fit them to act as leaders, physicians count for more than at any previous epoch.
In the emphasis which has been placed upon the value of this social service and the need for increasing it, there is no disposition to underestimate the social importance of the ordinary daily routine of a physician's private prac tice. Philanthropists who give universities, libraries, and hospitals, thereby do much to promote social welfare, as do other business men by introducing a higher standard into their relations with their own employees. And yet if we had to choose between such occasional and incidental acts of altruism, and the contributions to human progress made by these same " captains of industry " in the daily conduct of their various enterprises, we would scarcely hesitate to choose the latter. It is pregminently so of the medical
profession. The legitimate call of public duty will never make such demands upon individuals, and will never be addressed to so large a proportion of the profession as to obscure the call of the individual who, whether for pay or merely in the extremity of his need, demands attention. The plea for increased cooperation confidently assumes that there will result from it not less but greater useful ness to the individual patient.
Improved sanitation, pure air in living and sleeping rooms, simple and nutritious food, and appropriate dress, abstinence from the use of alcohol and harmful drugs, and, in the cities, multiplication of small parks and playgrounds in the crowded districts, are chief among the means for the prevention of disease ; and the authoritative argument for these things must come from the physician. In the wide spread movement for housing reform, to which we shall recur in the next chapter, physicians have taken an active part. The intimate relation between improved housing and the prevention of disease is obvious.