How to Live, Eugene Lyman Fisk [best thriller books to read .TXT] 📗
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At Yale and at Amherst it has been found, by actual measurement, that students not using tobacco during the college course had gained over the users of tobacco in weight, height, growth of chest, and lung capacity.
Prof. Pack, of the University of Utah, finds that tobacco-using athletes are distinctly inferior to those who abstain. Prof. Lombard, of the University of Michigan, finds that tobacco lessens the power of the voluntary muscles, presumably because of the depressing effect on the central nervous system. There is also much experimental evidence to show that tobacco in animals induces arterial changes. The present well-marked upward trend of mortality from diseases of the arteries offers a good reason for heeding such evidence and taking the safe side in every controversy regarding it. (See “Tobacco” in Supplementary Notes.)
The poisons so far mentioned are limited to the amounts taken. Infections with germs, however, bring in poisons, the quantities of which tend to increase with the multiplication of the germs. It is, therefore, especially important to avoid infections. We should not depend altogether on the protection of our health officers. We must guard our own individual bodies.
Infections enter the body through the skin or mucous lining. The common cold is believed to enter by the nose. We may avoid exposure to infection from grippe and common colds by keeping away from congested public places when there is an epidemic of grippe or colds, or when we are ourselves fatigued or for any reason likely to catch cold.
The infections of common colds are always to be found in the nasal passages and become active when the individual is subject to fatigue or indigestion or both. The liability of catching cold is greater when the mucous lining is injured. Nasal douches are injurious and impair the protective ability of the mucous membrane. They should be used only on prescription. A very gentle, warm spray of weak salt and water may be used when the nose is filled with soot and dust. The fingers should be kept from the nose. Handkerchiefs should be frequently changed, or small squares of gauze used and subsequently burned.
The germ of tuberculosis is probably conveyed oftenest through the sputum of consumptives, when this sputum has been allowed to dry, has become pulverized and is breathed into the system. All sputum should be burned. It is well to avoid rooms occupied by consumptives who are not careful with their sputum.
Suitable wire netting will guard us from malaria and yellow fever, the infections brought by mosquitoes and flies. The mosquito often carries malaria, and in the tropics carries yellow fever and other diseases. As some one has said: “A yard of screen in the window is better than a yard of crape on the door.” The greatest triumph in connection with the building of the Panama Canal was not the engineering but the reduction in the death-rate among the workers, which, on account of these insect-borne diseases, had previously prevented the successful execution of the undertaking.
Not only is it desirable to screen from mosquitoes, but to put oil on any body of water where they breed. Even a small puddle can breed millions of mosquitoes. No empty tin cans should be allowed to collect about the kitchen door; they gather rain-water and soon breed mosquitoes.
We take in many disease germs through food or drink. Every year 300,000 people in the United States enlist under the typhoid banner. To elude the typhoid-germ we need first of all pure water. But when one is in doubt as to the purity of water, it is advisable to boil water in order to destroy possible typhoid germs and other dangerous germs and impurities. Where hygienic water has been used a very large proportion of the deaths from typhoid has been eliminated. Where this is not feasible, it is desirable to use chlorinated lime (ordinary bleaching powder) in the drinking water (one part to 200,000—shake up and leave several minutes). If water of doubtful quality has to be drunk, it should be at the middle or end of a meal when the healthy stomach contains plenty of gastric juice, which to a limited extent has the power to kill germs.
It is safer to keep out of swimming tanks that are not filtered or refilled constantly, or chemically purified as by chlorinated lime.
Another measure for avoiding typhoid is to pasteurize milk. Food that is liable to contain typhoid or other dangerous germs, such as raw oysters, and milk from typhoid-infected localities, should be avoided.
In protecting the food against all kinds of impurities which injure the body, we must remember that the carrier of typhoid fever, the common house-fly, deposits typhoid germs on the food, through which the germ is taken into the system. The most effective method of fighting flies is by preventing their breeding. Their favorite places for this are horse-manure, but they will breed in almost any mass of fermenting organic material. Manure piles and stables should be screened, and the manure removed at least once in seven days. Garbage-pails should be kept tightly covered. Fly-paper and fly-traps should be used. Houses should be screened, and, in particular in the pantry, the food itself should be screened. Flies are usually thirsty in the morning. By exposing a saucer of one per cent. of formalin solution, the flies will be tempted to drink this morning cocktail and pay the death-penalty.
A fly-trap has been invented by Professor Clifton F. Hodge, of the University of Oregon, Eugene, Ore., which any one is free to construct and which, if used universally about stables early in the season, would greatly help toward banishing the fly altogether.
Flies occasionally gain entrance to the house in spite of the most careful screening. The fumes of burning Pyrethrum powder (Persian insect powder), used in the proportion of 2 lbs. per 1,000 cubic feet of air space, will either kill or stupefy flies and mosquitoes, so that they may be swept up and effectually destroyed. It may be distributed in pots and pans, and ignited after sprinkling with alcohol.
Ticks should also be carefully exterminated, as they are sometimes responsible for such diseases as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, African tick fever, and other infections. The bedbug is also by no means the harmless creature which it is generally regarded. To its credit are placed such maladies as relapsing fever. The flea has been responsible for such terrible diseases as the plague. It often operates by means of rats as its carrier to the human being. The louse is one of the direst offenders in the insect line, as it must take the responsibility not only for many cases of typhoid fever, but for the dread plague of typhus, which is ravaging the European armies.
Hookworm disease is to be avoided by not treading barefoot on ground polluted by victims of the disease, by preventing soil-pollution through the proper disposal of human excrement, and by screening all water-closets.
Cleanliness is important for avoiding infections, and bathing is important for cleanliness. The hands, the face, and finger-nails should be kept clean, especially before meals. Any cut or crack in the skin or mucous membrane may let in germs when the spot is dirty or is touched by dirty hands. This is why surgeons are so scrupulously clean. Super-cleanliness probably also explains the extraordinarily low mortality of Jewish rabbis as a class.
The need of cleanliness is particularly great for those who work in factories, mines, and other places where dirt is likely to be carried to the mouth by the hands. Probably many diseases get a foothold in this way without the victim realizing in the least that they were due to his carelessness and lack of cleanliness.
Here, as elsewhere, esthetics and health go hand in hand. A person who does not bathe daily is pretty certain to carry on his skin some perspiration which, while he may be unaware of it, gives forth an offensive odor.
Cleanliness is promoted by perspiring prior to bathing. Every one knows the exhilaration which follows a healthy perspiration. Of course, the most beneficial method of securing perspiration is the method applied to the trotting horse—vigorous exercise. In fact, one of the benefits of exercise is perspiration. When a person can not or will not take exercise, perspiration can be induced by hot baths. Such extreme measures ought not, however, to be taken too often. How often will depend on the corpulence and other circumstances of each individual. Sweating may be overdone, and should never be pushed to the extent of exhaustion. The function of the skin in removing wastes from the body is much less important than formerly supposed. The advice of a physician is desirable. It should be remembered that all of us perspire insensibly as well as visibly.
Some of the most serious and widespread although usually unmentioned infections are those from the venereal diseases, with a whole train of terrible consequences, such as blindness, joint-diseases with heart-complications, peritonitis, paralysis, and insanity. They are to be avoided by living a life hygienic and clean, not only in body but in mind and heart. From even the narrowest interpretation of hygiene, a decent life is necessary for the maintenance of health. This is a special subject on which most people are extremely ignorant. It is seldom realized, for instance, that all prostitutes are diseased. This was found to be the case in an investigation in Glasgow.
Dr. Rosenau says: “Every boy and girl, before reaching the age of puberty should have a knowledge of sex, and every man and woman before the marriageable age should be informed on the subject of reproduction and the dangers of venereal diseases. Superficial information is not true education. On the other hand, it is a mistake to dwell unduly upon the subject, for in many instances the imagination and passion of youth are inflamed by simply calling attention to the subject.”
The Life Extension Institute can furnish special pamphlets covering this important topic.
The loss of citizens to the State from the sterilizing influence of gonorrhea upon the productive energy of the family, and the blighting destructive effect of syphilis upon the offspring offer extremely serious problems for preventive work.
Section IV—Teeth and GumsThere is one source of poisoning and infection so universal as to need special mention. This is infection through the mouth. Considered from the standpoint of efficiency, the modern mouth is out of adjustment with modern conditions—or, perhaps we should say, modern conditions are out of adjustment with it. Notwithstanding the numerous bacteria that flourish within its portals, mouth secretions and the mucous membranes do not seem to have the protecting power which is often manifest in other regions of the body and which protects an animal in a state of nature. Wild animals are not subject to caries or dental decay, as are man and domesticated animals.
There are two forms of mouth-danger that should be clearly differentiated. Dental caries, or decay, is at first largely a chemical process and affects the tooth proper. Pyorrhea, or Riggs’s disease, affects the tissues surrounding the root of the tooth, and is accompanied with infection by pus bacteria, and possibly also by animal parasites, termed endameba. Scrupulous cleanliness of the mouth largely prevents both of these maladies.
In caries, or dental decay, plaques or films of mucin from the saliva
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