RUNNING THE HUMAN AUTOMOBILE The Body-Automobile.

If you were to start to-morrow morning on a long-distance ride in an automobile, the first thing that you would do would be to find out just how that automobile was built; how often it must have fresh gasoline; how its different speed gears were worked; what its tires were made of; how to mend them; and how to cure engine troubles.

To attempt to run an automobile, for even a ten-mile ride, with less information than this, would be regarded as foolhardy.
Yet most of us are willing to set out upon the journey of life in the most complicated, most ingenious, and most delicate machine ever made--our body--with no more knowledge of its structure than can be gained from gazing in the looking-glass; or of its needs, than a preference for filling up its fuel tank three times a day.

More knowledge than this is often regarded as both unnecessary and unpleasant.

Yet there are few things more important, more vital to our health, our happiness, and our success in life, than to know how to steer and how to road-repair our body-automobile.