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 cla.s.s of the white cells has the power of motion, and another cla.s.s 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses 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 inst.i.tutions for defective persons, and almost all of our penal inst.i.tutions.
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 cla.s.s 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 a.n.a.lyzed 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 sc.u.m, 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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-j.a.panese 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 teta.n.u.s 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 teta.n.u.s, 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.
The Pasteur Treatment is saving many lives each year by treating cases of infection from "mad dogs" and other animals affected with hydrophobia.
Among the diseases which can be remedied by slight means are enlarged tonsils and adenoid growths back of the nose, both of which can be removed by a slight and almost painless operation, but which, if allowed to develop, often cause serious throat and lung troubles, deafness, and weakened minds. Slight defects of the eyes can be remedied by the wearing of gla.s.ses, but which if unchecked give rise to various nerve and spinal diseases as well as more serious eye troubles. It is believed now that most of the blindness of later life could be prevented by proper care of the eyes in early life and by prompt attention to slight defects of the eyes when they begin.
Doctor Walter Cornell, who has made a study of eye strain says, "Eye strain is the chief cause of functional diseases. It is almost the sole cause of headache, is the frequent cause of digestive diseases, of spinal curvatures, and indirectly of neurasthenia and hysteria."
Decayed teeth in children, slight in themselves, give rise to more serious troubles in later life,--ill-shaped mouths and jaws and crooked teeth result from teeth that have been drawn too early in life. Decayed teeth lead also to many stomach and digestive troubles.
Medical inspection in the schools shows a surprising number of children suffering from these minor troubles. About 80,000 children were examined, and the records show that out of every one hundred children examined sixty-six needed the services of a doctor, surgeon, or dentist, and some needed all three.
Forty out of each hundred had badly neglected teeth.
Thirty-eight had enlarged glands of the neck.
Eighteen had enlarged tonsils.
Ten had growths of the nose.
Thirty-one needed gla.s.ses.