Checking the Waste

M >> Mary Huston Gregory >> Checking the Waste

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A disease is considered preventable if, by using the best known means of
treatment, it might be prevented or cured, so that either the disease or
the death usually resulting from it would be avoided.

Of course, not all deaths from a given disease could be prevented even
with the best known means. Infant diseases constitute one class which is
considered most hopeful of betterment through a pure milk supply and
better hygiene; and yet many authorities believe that not more than half
the deaths could be prevented owing to the large part played by weather
conditions, feeble constitutions, and other unchangeable conditions.

Preventable diseases may be divided into six classes:

(1) Diseases caused by lack of proper hygiene.

(2) Diseases caused by bad habits.

(3) Contagious diseases.

(4) Diseases caused by insects.

(5) Accidents, wounds, or operations and their resulting diseases.

(6) Diseases remedied by slight means.

We will treat each of these in turn.

(1) By proper hygiene is meant the proper treatment of the body as to
breathing, eating, drinking, sleeping, bathing and rest. This treatment
includes plenty of fresh air, both day and night, keeping outdoors as
much as possible, and in well-aired houses the rest of the time.
Vigorous but not violent exercise, brisk walking, regular physical
exercise, such as is practised in gymnasiums, will go far toward keeping
the body in good condition.

The question of fresh air in the home is one of the most important
points to be considered. The bedrooms, the living-rooms, and the kitchen
should have the air changed constantly, not once or twice a day. In
order to prevent drafts, and that the house may not be kept at too low a
temperature in winter, a board, eight to twelve inches in height, may be
placed across the bottom of a window that is raised.

Many diseases, not only of the throat and lungs, but of the other
organs, may be prevented by the constant introduction of fresh air into
our rooms day and night.

Tuberculosis causes more deaths than any other single disease in
America, and the sickness and disability continue longer than with most
diseases. It is extremely contagious, being a germ disease, and not an
inherited one, as was formerly supposed. It increased very rapidly for
a few years but is now slightly decreasing, owing to better knowledge of
its cause and cure.

Its prevention and its cure both lie largely in fresh air. Physicians
say that no one who lives an open-air life with plenty of fresh air
night and day will contract it. The cure which is restoring hundreds to
health is to find a place where the air is pure, and live and sleep
practically outdoors; to eat as much milk, raw eggs, and meat as can be
digested and to observe the other rules of hygiene. Incipient cases,
those in the earliest stages, may sometimes be cured while continuing at
work by following the other rules as nearly as possible.

On account of the extremely contagious nature of tuberculosis, special
care should be taken to prevent its spread. The sputum coughed up from
the lungs is the principal carrier of the disease, and the person who,
having tuberculosis, even in its earliest stages, spits in a public
place, is an enemy of mankind, for he endangers the lives of hundreds of
others. The only excuse for this is that he usually does it through
ignorance, but the knowledge of the danger should be so impressed on all
the people that no one could plead ignorance, and for a consumptive to
spit on the street should be counted as much a crime morally as for a
smallpox patient deliberately to expose others to the disease.

Great care should of course be taken in the home of a consumptive
patient to prevent the infection from spreading through the family.
Separate sleeping-rooms, thorough disinfection, and the use of paper
napkins which are burned at once, to take the place of handkerchiefs,
should be some of the means employed.

Pneumonia, pleurisy, bronchitis, grip, colds, and catarrh are some of
the other ailments which may be largely banished by living the outdoor
life. The method of treatment is medical, is different in each case, and
should be decided by the family physician. The constant habit of
breathing impurities, day after day and year after year, brings about a
gradual change in the tissue of the lungs.

In the same way, simple food to take the place of the rich, heavy foods
eaten in large quantities, will prevent many of the diseases of the
stomach, liver, and kidneys, and improve the general health and
strength. A diet of less meat and more eggs has been tried by football
teams in training and found to give an equal amount of strength with
greater endurance. A diet of milk, cereals, vegetables, nuts, and
fruits, raw or simply cooked, with a small amount of animal foods, will
perhaps give the best results in this climate. Food fried in fats, rich
pastries and gravies are the hardest to digest, and better health will
usually follow discontinuing them.

The purity of the food eaten should receive careful consideration.
Artificially preserved foods are usually more or less dangerous, for
although dealers urge that the poison contained in them is too small to
do harm we must remember that it is not the single dose that does harm,
but the many foods each containing a very small amount of poison, taken
day after day.

Pure food laws, national and state, have done great good in driving
adulterated and impure foods out of the markets by requiring all foods
to be properly labeled.

Thorough mastication or chewing of the food is only a little less
important than the character of the food itself. Rapid swallowing
without chewing in childhood lays the foundation for many of the
digestive diseases of later life. If food be thoroughly masticated much
that would otherwise be hard to digest can be eaten without bad results.
One of the best known examples of this is meat, which, while full of
nourishment, sets up in the large intestine a condition known as
"auto-intoxication," a species of digestive poison. If meat be eaten
slowly and chewed thoroughly, this condition is almost entirely absent.

Pure drinking water is almost as necessary as pure food. We take water
into the body for three principal purposes: first, it is needed to
dissolve and dilute various substances and carry them from one part of
the body to another; second, it forms a large part of the blood and
other important fluids of the body, and is a part of many substances
formed in the body; third, it serves to carry from the body the worn-out
and useless tissues, the waste products of the body.

These are extremely poisonous and must be promptly disposed of to
prevent sickness. This can not be done except by an ample supply of
water. Few persons, especially grown persons, drink enough water. Ten
glasses of pure water are needed properly to supply the body.
"Insufficient water drinking is perhaps the commonest cause of the
interruption of the normal life processes," says Doctor Theron C.
Stearns.

But the common drinking cup in public places probably causes far more
disease than the drinking itself prevents.

Particles of dead skin and disease-germs are left in the cup by each
drinker. Some of the most serious diseases may be carried in this way. A
cup made of heavy waterproof paper, cheap enough to be thrown away
after being used once, is a recent invention that is highly recommended
for use by school children and those who are obliged to drink away from
home. The water in a public drinking-fountain should come out in a small
steady stream so that those who have no cups may drink from the stream
itself as it rises. Many school-houses are so equipped.

Sleep is a necessary part of good hygiene. It promotes health and
prevents disease. It is largely in sleep that the system renews itself,
that growth takes place, that waste products are thrown off, and the
body repairs its wastes. No less than eight hours for grown persons and
ten for children should be employed in sleep. Late hours and sleepless
nights are the frequent cause of nervousness, eye strain, nervous
prostration, and the beginning of brain troubles and insanity.

Bathing is also necessary to good health. The pores of the skin play a
large part in carrying off the wastes of the body, through the
perspiration, and if these become clogged, this poisonous material
remains in the system. We have all noticed how a bath refreshes and
gives tone to the entire body by opening the pores.

The skin is composed of minute scales, arranged in layers like fish
scales. The tiny crevices between these form a lodging place for dirt
and germs. If these remain, our own bodies are constantly exposed to
their infection, if they drop off, as some are constantly doing, we may
spread the contagion to others. This is strikingly illustrated by
scarlet fever, smallpox, and similar diseases where these minute scales
are the sole source of contagion.

Exercise is another necessity of health. Regular physical culture in a
gymnasium will develop any muscle or part of the body almost at will,
but if this be not possible much can be accomplished in developing the
body by simple work. Gladstone found health in chopping wood, Roosevelt
in a daily tennis game, and President Taft in golf. Many find it in
gardening or farming. These all help to develop vigorous bodies.

Anything which brings into moderate play any set of muscles, which
increases the circulation, or stimulates the secretion is beneficial.
House-work, which, in its various forms, brings into use all the muscles
of the body, is a wholesome exercise for women. Those who do no
house-work seldom substitute for it any other active exercise, and many
diseases which are caused by deposits of waste tissues that are not
thrown off by the body, are the result.

Rest--recreation--pleasure--these are as necessary to health as
anything else, but the American people are slow to learn the need of
them. We hear much of nervous prostration as an American disease. It is
due to a variety of causes,--high living, late hours, ill-ventilated
rooms, and climate; but chief of all the causes is the long hours of
work under strong pressure. Work done in a hurry and without rest may
accomplish many things, but it invariably causes a corresponding loss of
nerve force. Fatigue, by checking bodily resistance, gives rise to all
kinds of poisons in the system. Every part of the body feels the ill
effect of continued exhaustion.

Of the diseases caused by bad habits, it can only be said that all the
evils they cause, directly and indirectly, are entirely preventable;
that they are usually wrong morally, and that the suffering which
results is sure.

Under this head come the effects of drinking, of the use of tobacco and
drugs, and of bad personal and social habits. It is only necessary to
refrain from these bad habits to prevent all the diseases that arise
from them, with all their train of suffering, poverty and crime.

It is not the province of this book to deal with scientific temperance,
but merely to state a few of the most serious results of the use of
alcohol and other poisons. The white corpuscles of the blood have been
called our "standing army," because they are natural germ-destroyers.
One class of the white cells has the power of motion, and another class
has the power of absorbing outside matter, such as disease-germs. One
destroys the germs and the other moves them through the blood and
carries them off with the waste products of the body.

The white corpuscles thus stand as the defenders of the body, ready to
destroy the germs as they enter, and are, for each individual, the best
of all preventives of germ diseases. The person whose blood is lacking
in white cells is always liable to "catch" contagious or infectious
diseases, and the one who has that element of the blood in proper
proportion is best fitted to withstand disease.

Leading physicians believe that the greatest harm that comes from the
use of alcohol lies in the fact that nothing else so weakens the
resistance of the white corpuscles, and that therefore the person who is
an habitual user of alcohol lacks the power to repel all classes of
disease. English and American life insurance companies give us almost
exactly the same figures, which show that of insured persons, the death
rate is twenty-three per cent. higher among those who use alcohol than
among total abstainers. It is probable that the proportion of persons
carrying life insurance is much less among the drinking classes and that
if we had complete statistics the difference would be far greater than
appears in the life insurance tables.

Of time lost by sickness, directly and through other diseases caused by
alcoholism, drugs and other bad habits, the percentage is very great,
according to all hospital records.

The number of prominent persons who have died of "tobacco heart"
indicates that the rate of those whose heart action is weakened by the
use of tobacco is probably very large.

Doctor Morrow says that if we could put an end at once to diseases
caused by bad habits it would result in closing at least one-half of our
institutions for defective persons, and almost all of our penal
institutions.

There is another long list of diseases which are contagious, that is,
which one person may transmit to another. These are usually serious but
their spread may be largely prevented by keeping the sick person alone,
except for the necessary nurses, quarantining the house and disinfecting
everything when the period of infection is past.

In this class are smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, mumps,
chicken-pox and whooping-cough.

These latter are the so-called "childish diseases" which it was formerly
considered impossible to escape, and little attempt was made to guard
against them. Now they are recognized as serious, whooping-cough for its
close relation to brain and spinal trouble; measles for their effect on
the eyes and lungs; chicken-pox for its similarity to smallpox, and
mumps for its general lowering of the tone of the system, allowing other
diseases to gain a foothold.

Special serum treatment for diphtheria and vaccination for smallpox have
greatly reduced the danger from these once greatly dreaded diseases.

Of preventable diseases none should receive more attention than typhoid
fever, because it is a great scourge and yet it can be prevented by
simple means. If we understand that typhoid is a dirt disease, that it
comes only from dirt, we shall feel it a disgrace to have an epidemic of
typhoid, though one of the saddest features about it is that we must
suffer for the sins of others. The one who is attacked by typhoid fever
may not be the one who has left dirt for the disease to breed in.

Typhoid fever germs are bred chiefly in manure piles, sewers, or
cess-pools, and would not be transmitted to man directly, but there are
several indirect ways in which they may be carried. Flies also breed in
the same places. Their legs become covered with typhoid germs, and then
they fly into houses directly on the food and cooking utensils. This is
one of the most common ways in which the disease is carried, and
doctors tell us that the common house-fly should be known as the
"typhoid fly" so that people may know the serious danger that lurks in
what was formerly considered as nothing worse than an annoying foe to
clean housekeeping.

If houses are thoroughly screened, if cess-pools, manure piles and
garbage are kept tightly covered, screened, or, still better,
disinfected with chloride of lime, there will be no breeding-places left
for flies and this will remove one of the greatest dangers.

The other danger lies in a polluted water or milk supply. Every sewer
that is carried into a stream, every manure pile that drains into a
water course is a menace to health.

Very frequently the farm well for watering stock is near the barn,--near
the manure pile, which, as it drains, carries down millions of typhoid
germs to the water-level below. The well becomes infected, the family
drink from it, and soon there may be several cases of typhoid fever in
the home.

Worst of all, the milk pails are rinsed at the well, and all the milk
that is poured into them spreads the germs wherever the milk may be
sold. In this way an epidemic may be carried to an entire town, and to
persons who themselves have taken every precaution against the disease.

Drinking water should be boiled unless one is sure of the water-supply,
and surface wells are never safe unless we know that they drain only
from clean sources, and then the water should be analyzed frequently.
Boiling absolutely destroys typhoid and other germs, and well repays the
extra work it makes. One case of typhoid fever causes more work than
boiling the water for years, if we consider the work only.

If you can not buy pasteurized milk, and are not sure of conditions
about the dairy, your milk should be boiled, or, still better,
sterilized at home by putting it in bottles or other containers, and
placing in a vessel of hot water, keeping the milk for several hours
about half-way to the boiling point, then cooling gradually.

All these means of prevention are troublesome and require time and work,
but as the result in health for the family is sure, every housekeeper
should gladly take this extra burden on herself if it be necessary. In
some states and many cities, the laws governing dairies are now so
strict that there is no need of doing this work in the home. This care
in the dairies should be insisted on everywhere, even if it raises the
price of milk, because it means the saving of many doctor and drug bills
and also raises the standard of public health.

Yellow fever was formerly dreaded more than any other single disease
because it was so wide-spread, so fatal, and was thought to be violently
contagious, but during the Spanish-American War it was proved that it is
not contagious at all, but comes only from the bite of a certain
mosquito, the stegomia, which is usually found only in hot climates. It
is conveyed in this way: the mosquito bites a yellow fever patient; for
twelve days it is harmless, but after that time it may infect every
person that it bites.

If every yellow fever patient could be screened with netting to prevent
his being bitten, we could prevent the yellow fever mosquito from
becoming infected. Further, if we can prevent healthy people from being
bitten by fever-infected mosquitoes, they will escape the disease, and
still further, if we can destroy the eggs of mosquitoes, we can entirely
obviate all danger of yellow fever in a community.

The mosquito breeds only in water; by having all cisterns, rain-water
barrels, and other water containers carefully covered, and by spreading
the surface of pools of standing water, especially dirty water, covered
with greenish scum, with a thick coating of kerosene oil, we can prevent
the eggs from hatching. This has been done in many communities in Cuba
and the southern part of the United States, and has resulted in
completely stamping out the disease in those places.

Malaria is caused by another mosquito, called the anopheles and while
malaria is seldom fatal as is yellow fever, it causes much suffering and
loss of time, and strong efforts should be made to prevent it. The same
measures that are used to prevent yellow fever will banish malaria from
any community. They are the screening of patients to prevent spreading
the disease; screening all houses closely and keeping close watch for
mosquitoes in the house, and covering all ponds in the neighborhood with
oil. New Jersey mosquitoes were formerly known far and wide, but such an
active campaign has been waged against them, that they have been almost
completely driven from the state.

The ordinary mosquito has never been found to do any harm beyond the
discomfort of its bite.

Of other diseases caused by insects, an affection of the eyes called
pink-eye is carried by very tiny flies, and the dreaded bubonic plague
is supposed to be transferred from sick people to well ones by the bites
of fleas, which in turn are brought to this country by rats.

The hook-worm which affects so many persons in the South is often called
"the lazy disease" since the persons afflicted with it are not totally
disabled, but are lacking in energy and vigor because the small insects
take from the blood the red corpuscles which should carry the digested
food all over the body. These insects can be destroyed by medicine, of
which only a few cents worth is required to cure a case and make the
patient fit for work and enjoyment. In Porto Rico almost 300,000 cases
have been treated by the United States government in the last six years.

Another matter which should receive careful consideration is the large
number of preventable accidents. Mining accidents come in a few cases
from failure to provide the best appliances in the mines, but in many
cases are due to carelessness or ignorance of the operators themselves.
There still remain a large number of accidents which occur in the best
regulated mines, and when no instance of special carelessness can be
traced. For years these disasters have puzzled mining engineers, but
within the last few months it has been discovered that the minute
particles of coal dust in a dry mine completely fill the air, so that
the air itself is ready to burn.

When a light is taken into this coal-filled atmosphere, it bursts into
flame, causing a violent explosion. Sprinkling the mines, forcing a fine
spray of water through the air of every part of the mines, it is
thought, will prevent this class of accidents, which have furnished long
lists of killed and injured each year.

Reports show that one miner is killed and several injured for every one
hundred thousand tons of coal mined. The mining accidents of one year
total 2,500 killed and 6,000 seriously injured.

Other industries do not cause such wholesale injuries, but there are
thousands of individual accidents each year where the injury varies from
mangled fingers to death.

When the cause is failure to provide suitable safeguards to machinery,
or to warn employees of danger, the penalty to the employers should be
made severe, so that no consideration of money will prevent them from
taking precautions. More often, however, the injury is due to the
carelessness of the men or to the fact that they try to run machines
with which they are unfamiliar.

Manual training schools, night schools for working-men, with a short
apprenticeship in the running of machinery and an explanation of the
dangers, will go far to prevent this class of accidents, but the fact
will still remain, that often those who are most familiar with machinery
become careless and are more liable to injury than beginners.

The number of accidents that have been added to the world's list by
automobiles, both to those riding and to persons who are run over by
them, is great and is in a large measure due to carelessness in handling
the machine or to reckless driving.

The entire number of accidents in the United States, including railway
accidents, reaches the immense total of sixty thousand killed and many
times that number injured. A most appalling waste of life and labor
value!

Professor Ditman says, "Of 29,000,000 workers in the United States over
500,000 are yearly killed or crippled as a direct result of the
occupations in which they are engaged--more than were killed and wounded
throughout the whole Russo-Japanese War. More than one-half this
tremendous sacrifice of life is needless."

Until the last quarter of a century there was a large addition to the
death rate each year from the blood poisoning following operations and
injuries making open wounds. It was not until the discovery of the germs
which cause septic poisoning that deaths from these causes could be
checked. The use of antiseptics, such as carbolic acid, alcohol, and
various other preparations, the boiling of all surgical instruments, and
the boiling or baking of all articles used in the treatment of open
wounds and sores has reduced the death rate at least one-half.

The rate could be lowered much more if all sores were treated as
surgical cases and carefully sterilized from the beginning. About
eighty-five deaths out of every hundred from these causes might be
prevented.

Every Fourth of July a great many entirely preventable deaths and minor
accidents occur. The toy pistol has come to be considered almost as
deadly as the larger variety. The tiny "caps" that are used in them are
fired back into the hand of the person shooting them, tiny particles of
powder enter the skin, burrowing into the flesh, and the skin closes
over them, shutting out the air. If these particles carry with them
tetanus germs, as is often the case, because these germs are found
chiefly in the dirt of the street where most of this shooting is done,
lock-jaw or tetanus, a severe form of blood-poisoning, results, and is
usually fatal. The same results come less frequently from fire-crackers
and other explosives, and in addition many accidents which injure hands,
eyes, and other parts of the body, are the result of the use of the
heavier explosives.

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