The question must be asked whether a "Textbook of Hygiene" still has a reason for existence today, amidst a brief introduction or a presentation of its fundamentals and the large manuals in which the specialized areas of hygiene and epidemiology have been exhaustively addressed by their most qualified representatives. Is there not a danger that a textbook, in an attempt to achieve a high degree of completeness in its reporting, takes on the character of a lexicon, a reference work with its own value, but without being able to claim to personally engage the reader? However, experience from teaching hygiene shows that it remains a dry, uninspired field of learning and work for the student, as well as for the practicing physician and public health officer, if the instructor does not succeed in changing this.