artistry can come, technique must be relegated to habit. So with
typewriting, driving an automobile, etc.

More fundamental than these, which are largely skill habits, are
the organic habits. One of the triumphs of pediatrics depends
upon the realization that the baby's welfare hangs on regular
habits of feeding, that he is not to be fed except at stated
intervals; as a result processes of digestion are set going in a
regular, harmonious manner. In other words, these processes may
be said to "get to know" what is expected of them and act
accordingly. The mother's time is economized and the strain of
nursing is lessened. In adults, regular hours of eating make it
possible for the juices of digestion to be secreted as the food
is ingested; in other words, an habitual adjustment takes place.

If there were one single health habit that I would have
inculcated above all others, it would be the habit of regularly
evacuating the bowels. While constipation is not the worst ill in
the world, it causes much trouble, annoyance and a considerable
degree of ill health, and, in my opinion, a considerable degree
of unhappiness. A physician may be pardoned for frank advice: all
the matters concerning the bowels, such as coarse foods, plenty
of water and exercise, are secondary compared to the habit of
going to the stool at the same time each day, whether there be
desire or not. A child should be trained in this matter as
definitely as he is trained to brush his teeth. In fact, I think
that the former habit is more important than the latter. The mood
of man is remarkably related to the condition of his
gastro-intestinal tract and the involuntary muscle of that tract
is indirectly under the control of the will through habit