iv

Every home should have one or more books on keeping well. The old family medical book, a chamber of horrors, has been made obsolete by a few general books with, thank heaven, a greatly different emphasis. But among recent books on the art of keeping well, I know of none more satisfactory than Dr. S. M. Rinehart’s The Commonsense of Health. Dr. Rinehart, who is the husband of Mary Roberts Rinehart, was a general practitioner in Pittsburgh for over twenty years. Later he was in charge of tuberculosis hospitals in western Pennsylvania, and during the war he was put in charge of all army tuberculosis hospitals in the United States. Recently he has been in the United States Public Health Service. His book is wholly popular in character, cheerful, good-natured, and not in the least afraid of an occasional joke. It is precisely the thing for general reading by both sexes at all ages. Common and worrisome ailments, such as colds, are dealt with, as well as certain fairly common and serious diseases, like pneumonia and tuberculosis. But the range of the book is wide, and there are discussions of nerves, how hard one should work, and besetting fears. The information is sound and the style is entertaining. One class of unfortunate will be particularly helped by the book—the unhappy man or woman termed by Dr. Rinehart a “symptom hunter.” We each know at least one!