HEALTH education we may take to mean the sum of all efforts to modify human conduct and attitudes so as to raise the health level of individuals or of the community. It includes the education of the diabetic or of the tuberculous in his personal regimen, propaganda for immunizing children against diphtheria or smallpox, and the promotion of sales of cod liver oil or tooth pastes. In such education the most frequent appeal in the past has been to fear. If you eat green apples you will get the gripes. If you don't brush your teeth the goblins will 'get you. Horrible pictures of smallpox victims, horrible statistics of deaths from preventable diseases, horrible reminders of aches and pains, horrible portraits of rickety children-horrible devices of various sorts to arouse horror. We could make out a good case for the appeal to fear on strictly logical grounds. We can still hear the reverberating echoes of the solemn dictum that " self-preservation is the first law of nature," even if we are not exactly clear as to what it means; and with that first law as a major premise we can rationalize taking the easier way of trying to scare people into being healthy. But that would hardly be a demonstration of the effectiveness of the technic. Of course, people are influenced by fear; of course a burned child dreads the fire; but we still have to answer the question-How can we most effectively influence people's conduct in the direction of maintaining or of improving their health? To demonstrate the effectiveness of the appeal to fear we can point to the thousands who no longer shake the hands of those they meet, who never kiss those they love, who polish the tableware in hotels and restaurants with their napkins, and who shield their babies not only from the evil eye but from the false lips of lady friends and politicians. We can also point to the entire armies that boil all the water they take internally, as well as to entire counties or larger governmental units in which the inhabitants always close their windows at night to avoid malaria-a practice which is said to account for the salubrious atmos-