prescribed, is a question of fact to which the answer varies in every individual case.  It may be that in the great majority of cases the harm is insignificant in comparison with the good.  However that may be, the question is there, and it is of itself fatal to the conclusiveness of the argumentum ex machina.  That this is not a captious criticism, that it is based on substantial facts of life, ordinary experience sufficiently attests; but it may not be amiss to point to a conspicuous contemporary phenomenon which throws an interesting light on the matter.  The Christian Scientists regard the ignoring of disease as the primary requisite for health and longevity.  That the Christian Science doctrine is a sheer absurdity, no one can hold more emphatically than the present writer; but it cannot be denied that in thousands of cases its acceptance has been of physical benefit through its subjective effect upon the believer.  Personally, I would not purchase any benefit to my physical life at such sacrifice of my intellectual integrity; I mention the point only by way of accentuating the undisputed fact that the presence or absence of concern about health may have a potent influence on one’s bodily welfare.

Although it is a still further digression from the main purpose of this paper, I must permit myself a few words on another point relating to the strictly medical claims of the plan of “universal periodic medical examination.”  It is natural that its advocates say nothing about the danger of errors in diagnosis; everybody knows that this danger exists, but sensible men do not allow it to deter them from consulting a physician; in this, as in other affairs of life, they do not cry for the moon, but do the best they can.  But it seems to be wholly overlooked by the advocates of the propaganda of “universal periodic examination” that the extent of this danger under present conditions affords no indication at all of what it would be under the system they contemplate.  Its cardinal virtue, they constantly proclaim, would be the detection of the very slightest indication of impairment:  “The task before us is to discover the first sign of departure from the normal physiological path, and promptly and effectually to apply the brake.”  The consequence must necessarily be that for one case of false alarm that occurs today there will be a score, or a hundred, under the new regime.  For, in the first place, the individuals seeking advice will not be, as they now are in the main, selected cases in which there is some antecedent presumption that there is something wrong; and secondly, the examiner, bent upon the one great object of overlooking nothing, however slight, will give warnings which, whether technically justifiable or not, will in great numbers of cases have a wholly unjustifiable significance to the mind of the subject.  Who shall say how many persons will thus be made to carry through life a burden of solicitude about their health from which, if left to their own devices, they would have been wholly free?