American Red Cross Text-Book on Home Hygiene and Care of the Sick, Isabel McIsaac [speed reading book TXT] 📗

rates from diphtheria and typhoid fever have been greatly reduced by the use of antitoxin and antityphoid vaccine. Thus in New York State in 1894, before antitoxin was generally used, 99 out of every 100,000 of the population died of diphtheria, while only 20 out of 100,000 died of it in 1914. In 1911 a United States Army Division of more than 12,000 men camped at San Antonio, Texas, for four months. All of these men were vaccinated against typhoid fever and only a single case occurred during the summer, although conditions of camp life always tend to spread the disease.

While many and various factors tend to lower resistance rather than to increase it, the idea that these factors act equally in all kinds of infection is erroneous.

"The principal causes which diminish resistance to infection are: wet and cold, fatigue, insufficient or unsuitable food, vitiated atmosphere, insufficient sleep and rest, worry, and excesses of all kinds. The mechanism by which these varying conditions lower our immunity must receive our attention, for they are of the greatest importance in preventive medicine. It is a matter of common observation that exposure to wet and cold or sudden changes of temperature, overwork, worry, stale air, poor food, etc., make us more liable to contract certain diseases. The tuberculosis propaganda that has been spread broadcast with such energy and good effect has taught the value of fresh air and sunshine, good food, and rest in increasing our resistance to this infection.

"There is, however, a wrong impression abroad that because a lowering of the general vitality favors certain diseases, such as tuberculosis, common colds, pneumonia, septic and other infections, it plays a similar rôle in all communicable diseases. Many infections, such as smallpox, measles, yellow fever, tetanus, whooping-cough, typhoid fever, cholera, plague, scarlet fever, and other diseases, have no particular relation whatever to bodily vigor. These diseases often strike down the young and vigorous in the prime of life. The most robust will succumb quickly to tuberculosis if he receives a sufficient dose of the virulent micro-organisms. A good physical condition does not always temper the virulence of the disease; on the contrary, many infections run a particularly severe course in strong and healthy subjects, and, contrariwise, may be mild and benign in the feeble. Physical weakness, therefore, is not necessarily synonymous with increased susceptibility to all infections, although true for some of them. In other words, 'general debility' lowers resistance in a specific, rather than in a general, sense."—(Rosenau: Preventive Medicine and Hygiene, pp. 403 and 404.)

CARRIERS

Well persons who carry in their bodies pathogenic germs but who themselves have no symptoms of disease are called carriers. Thus typhoid carriers have typhoid bacilli in the intestinal tract, while they themselves show no symptoms of typhoid fever; diphtheria carriers have bacilli of diphtheria in the throat or nose, but have themselves no symptoms of diphtheria, and so on. It has now been proved that many patients harbor bacteria for weeks, months, or even years following an infection, and are dangerous distributors of disease; also, some healthy individuals without a history of illness harbor living bacteria which may infect susceptible persons in the usual ways. Transmission by healthy carriers goes far to explain the occurrence of diseases among persons who have apparently not been exposed. This explanation has greatly clarified the whole problem of the spread of communicable diseases. Carriers, unfortunately, exist in large numbers, and render the ultimate control of disease exceedingly difficult. They can usually be identified by bacteriological tests. To some extent they can be supervised; food handlers at least should be legally obliged to submit to physical examinations, and should be licensed only when proved free from communicable disease.

Diseases are also spread by persons suffering from them in a form so mild or so unusual that they pass unrecognized. These persons are known as "missed" cases. Carriers of disease and "missed" cases go freely about the community, handling food, using common drinking cups, travelling in crowded street cars, standing in crowded shops; in various ways coming into close contact with other people, coughing and sneezing and kissing their friends no less often than normal individuals. It is consequently clear that the bodily discharges of supposedly normal persons may be hardly less a menace than those of persons known to be infected.

Diseases that depend for transmission upon milk, water, food, and insects may be controlled by public action, that is, by specific measures taken by a large group of people in order to protect the individual. Such action constitutes public sanitation. There is, however, a large group of diseases, chiefly sputum-borne, that cannot be controlled except by individual action. Such individual action constitutes a large part of personal hygiene.

The whole problem of controlling infections sounds simple, depending as it does for the most part upon unpolluted water, milk, and food, extermination of certain insects, and cleanliness in personal behaviour. In practice the problem is not so easy. Public sanitation has performed miracles in the past, and will do much in the future; behaviour, however, will continue to be influenced by many factors, social and economic as well as personal. Ignorance of the laws of health is an obstacle to progress, but in modern conditions even the instructed may be unable to control their ways of living and working. Indeed, such control is at present limited to the privileged few. On the ignorant and the poor, those least able to bear it, society loads the heaviest burden of sickness. Only when ignorance and poverty are abolished, as one day they will be, can the final stage be reached in the fight for public health.

THE NON-COMMUNICABLE DISEASES

In this group is included a great variety of maladies. Of some the causes are known, while in the case of others, origin, prevention, and remedy are still obscure. Here belong defects in structure of the body, both hereditary and acquired; insanity and other nervous diseases; new growths, like tumors and cancer; disturbances of bodily processes, as malnutrition and gout; and the important class of degenerative diseases, like arteriosclerosis, in which tissues become hardened and fibrous and hence less able to perform their normal functions.

The degenerative diseases are playing a menacing part in national health. The average length of life in the United States has shown a marked increase it is true, during the last 40 years. But this gain represents chiefly the saving of life through prevention of communicable diseases, especially among babies and children; among people who have passed the 30th year on the other hand, death rates are actually increasing. This increase is most marked after the age of 45, and is caused chiefly by the increase of cancer, and of degenerative diseases of the heart, blood vessels, and kidneys. Degeneration of tissues is normally a condition typical of old age, and in aged persons it may occur in any tissue. There is no elixir of youth, and for old age there is no cure. But the important facts in this connection are that degenerative changes now occur prematurely, and that among a vast number of people, in various classes of society and various occupations, the vital organs show a marked tendency to break down after the age of 45.

This condition is not inevitable. Before the beginning of the present war, death rates at all ages were decreasing in England, Sweden, and other European countries. In America also degenerative diseases can be checked or prevented to a large extent, and it is highly important that their causes should be generally understood.

The two groups following include some of the probable causes:

1. Conditions of life which result in continued overwork, and mental overwork in particular; worry, excitement, insufficient recreation and exercise, and other kinds of nervous strain typical of modern life, especially in cities.

2. Irritating substances in the body, including poisonous substances resulting from infectious diseases, and from syphilis in particular; poisons from chronic infections, alcohol, and industrial poisons such as lead and other metals; overeating and improper eating, especially of meat and other proteins, and rich or highly seasoned food; faulty digestion, constipation, and imperfect elimination through the kidneys.—(See Dr. A. E. Shipley, in bulletin of the N. Y. City Dept. of Health, Feb., 1915.)

The importance of early recognition cannot be overemphasized. In many of these troubles the symptoms are not pronounced, and the victims have no knowledge of their condition until they happen to be examined for life insurance, or until the disease is far advanced. And even when they realize that trouble exists, as for example constipation or overwork, most people absolutely fail to realize how serious the consequences may be. The first step toward remedy is periodic complete physical examination by a competent physician, in order to learn in time how to prevent these degenerative diseases, if present, from growing worse. The custom of undergoing an annual physical examination is becoming more common, and "such a course, conservatively estimated, would add 5 years to the average life of persons between 45 and 50."—(Winslow.)

"Recently, we have been making examinations of the employees of whole institutions, large banks and other industrial concerns in New York City, and we find almost the same conditions there. Out of 2000 such examinations among young men and women of an average age of 33, just in the early prime of life, men and women supposedly picked because of their especial fitness for work, only 3.14% were found free of impairment or of habits of living which are obviously leading to impairment. Of the remaining persons, 96.69% were unaware of impairment; 5.38% of the total number examined were affected with chronic heart trouble; 13.10% with arteriosclerosis; 25.81% with high or low blood pressure; 35.65% with sugar, casts or albumen in the urine; 12.77% with combination of both heart and kidney disease; 22.22% with decayed teeth or infected gums; 16.03% with faulty vision uncorrected.... The fact of greatest import, however, was that impairment, sufficiently serious to justify the examiner in referring the examinee to his family physician for medical treatment, was found in 59% of the total number of cases, while 37.86% were on the road to impairment because of the use of "too much alcohol," or "too much tobacco," constipation, eye-strain, overweight, diseased mouths, errors of diet, and so forth....

"And what is the cause of this appalling increase, in the United States, of these and other degenerative diseases? I believe it can be shown to the satisfaction of any reasonable person that the increase is largely due to the neglect of individual hygiene in United States....

"If a man were suddenly afflicted with smallpox or typhoid fever or any other acute malady, he would lose no time in getting expert advice and applying every known means to save his life. But his life may be threatened just as seriously, though possibly not so imminently, by arteriosclerosis, heart disease, or Bright's disease, and he will do nothing to prevent the encroachment of these diseases until it is too late, but will continue to eat as he pleases, drink as he pleases, smoke as he pleases, or overwork, and worry himself into a premature grave."—("Conservation of Life at Middle Age," Prof. Irving Fisher, Am. Journal of Public Health, July, 1915.)

Periodic physical examinations are as necessary for children as for adults, in order to detect physical defects. These defects are known to have such an immense bearing upon health that routine examinations of all children have become an integral part of the work of enlightened public schools.

Prevention of degenerative disease, then, as well as of the enormous numbers of preventable accidents and injuries, depends in large measure upon proper living conditions and proper personal habits. The infectious diseases, according to