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Hygienic Physiology

J >> Joel Dorman Steele >> Hygienic Physiology




_How Disease Germs Grow_.--Experiments having shown that no life is
known to spring from inanimate matter, we may reasonably suppose that just
as wheat does not grow except from seed, so no disease occurs without some
disease germ to produce it. Then, again, we may logically assume that each
disease is due to the development of a particular kind of germ. If we
plant smallpox germs, we do not reap a crop of scarlatina or measles; but,
just as wheat springs from wheat, each disease has its own distinctive
germs. Each comes from a parent stock, and has existed somewhere
previously....Under ordinary circumstances, these germs, though nearly
always present, are comparatively few in number, and in an extremely dry
and indurated state. Hence, they may frequently enter our bodies without
meeting with the conditions essential to their growth; for experiments
have shown that it is very difficult to moisten them, and till they are
moistened, they do not begin to develop. In a healthy system they remain
inactive. But anything tending to weaken or impair the bodily organs,
furnishes favorable conditions, and thus epidemics almost always originate
and are most fatal in those quarters of our great cities where dirt,
squalor, and foul air render sound health almost an impossibility....
Having once got a beginning, epidemics rapidly spread. The germs are then
sent into the air in great numbers, and in a moist state; and the
probabilities of their entering, and of their establishing themselves
even in healthy bodies, are vastly increased....Climate and the weather
have also much influence on the vitality of these germs. Cold is a
preventive against some diseases, heat against others. Tyndall found that
sunlight greatly retarded and sometimes entirely prevented putrefaction;
while dirt is always favorable to the growth and development of germs.
_Sunshine and cleanliness are undoubtedly the best and cheapest
preventives against disease.--"Disease Germs" Chambers's Journal_.

You know the exquisitely truthful figures employed in the New Testament
regarding leaven. A particle hid in three measures of meal leavens it all.
A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. In a similar manner a particle
of contagium spreads through the human body, and may be so multiplied as
to strike down whole populations. Consider the effect produced upon the
system by a microscopic quantity of the virus of smallpox. That virus is
to all intents and purposes a seed. It is sown as leaven is sown, it grows
and multiplies as leaven grows and multiplies, and it always reproduces
itself....Contagia are living things, which demand certain elements of
life, just as inexorably as trees, or wheat, or barley; and it is not
difficult to see that a crop of a given parasite may so far use up a
constituent existing in small quantities in the body, but essential in the
growth of the parasite, as to render the body unfit for the production of
a second crop. The soil is exhausted; and until the lost constituent is
restored, the body is protected from any further attack from the same
disorder. To exhaust a soil, however, a parasite less vigorous and
destructive than the really virulent one may suffice; and if, after
having, by means of a feebler organism, exhausted the soil without fatal
result, the most highly virulent parasite be introduced into the system,
it will prove powerless. This, in the language of the germ theory, is the
whole secret of vaccination.--TYNDALL.

_Disease Germs Contained in Atmospheric Dust_.--Take the extracted
juice of beef or mutton, so prepared as to be perfectly transparent, and
entirely free from the living germs of bacteria. Into the clear liquid let
fall the tiniest drop of an infusion charged with the bacteria of
putrefaction. Twenty-four hours subsequently, the clear extract will be
found muddy throughout, the turbidity being due to swarms of bacteria
generated by the drop with which the infusion was inoculated. At the same
time the infusion will have passed from a state of sweetness to a state of
putridity. Let a drop similar to that which has produced this effect fall
into an open wound: the juices of the living body nourish the bacteria as
the beef or mutton juice nourished them, and you have putrefaction
produced within the system. The air, as I have said, is laden with
floating matter which, when it falls upon the wound, acts substantially
like the drop....A few years ago I was bathing in an Alpine stream, and,
returning to my clothes from the cascade which had been my shower bath, I
slipped upon a block of granite, the sharp crystals of which stamped
themselves into my naked shin. The wound was an awkward one, but, being in
vigorous health at the time, I hoped for a speedy recovery. Dipping a
clean pocket handkerchief into the stream, I wrapped it round the wound,
limped home, and remained for four or five days quietly in bed. There was
no pain, and at the end of this time I thought myself quite fit to quit my
room. The wound, when uncovered, was found perfectly clean, uninflamed,
and entirely free from pus. Placing over it a bit of gold beater's skin, I
walked about all day. Toward evening, itching and heat were felt; a large
accumulation of pus followed, and I was forced to go to bed again. The
water bandage was restored, but it was powerless to check the action now
set up; arnica was applied, but it made matters worse. The inflammation
increased alarmingly, until finally I was ignobly carried on men's
shoulders down the mountain, and transported to Geneva, where, thanks to
the kindness of friends, I was immediately placed in the best medical
hands. On the morning after my arrival in Geneva, Dr. Gautier discovered
an abscess in my instep, at a distance of five inches from the wound. The
two were connected by a channel, or _sinus_, as it is technically
called, through which he was able to empty the abscess without the
application of the lance.

By what agency was that channel formed--what was it that thus tore asunder
the sound tissue of my instep, and kept me for six weeks a prisoner in
bed? In the very room where the water dressing had been removed from my
wound and the gold beater's skin applied to it, I opened this year a
number of tubes, containing perfectly clear and sweet infusions of fish,
flesh, and vegetable. These hermetically sealed infusions had been exposed
for weeks, both to the sun of the Alps and to the warmth of a kitchen,
without showing the slightest turbidity or signs of life. But two days
after they were opened, the greater number of them swarmed with the
bacteria of putrefaction, the germs of which had been contracted from the
dust-laden air of the room. And, had the pus from my abscess been
examined, my memory of its appearance leads me to infer that it would have
been found equally swarming with these bacteria--that it was their germs
which got into my incautiously opened wound. They were the subtile workers
that burrowed down my shin, dug the abscess in my instep, and produced
effects which might well have proved fatal to me.--TYNDALL.

_Disease Germs Carried in Soiled Clothing_ (p. 89).--The conveyance
of cholera germs by bodies of men moving along the lines of human
communication, without necessarily affecting the individuals who transport
them, is now easy to understand; for it is well established that clothes
or linen soiled by cholera patients may not only impart the germs with
which they are contaminated to those who handle them when fresh, but that,
after having been dried and packed, they may infect persons at any
distance who incautiously unfold them. Thus, while the nurses of cholera
patients may, with proper precautions, enjoy an absolute immunity from
attack, the disease germs may be introduced into new localities without
any ostensible indication of their presence. It is obvious that the only
security against such introduction consists in the destruction or thorough
disinfection of every scrap of clothing or linen which has been about the
person of a cholera patient.--DR. CARPENTER.

I have known scarlet fever to be carried by the clothing of a nurse into a
healthy family, and communicate the disease to every member of the family.
I have known cholera to be communicated by the clothes of the affected
person to the women engaged in washing the clothes. I have known smallpox
conveyed by clothes that had been made in a room where the tailor had by
his side sufferers from the terrible malady. I have seen the new cloth,
out of which was to come the riding habit for some innocent child to
rejoice in as she first wore it, undergo the preliminary duty of forming
part of the bed clothing of another child stricken down with fever.
Lastly, I have known scarlet fever, smallpox, typhus, and cholera,
communicated by clothing contaminated in the laundry.--DR. RICHARDSON.

THE SANITARY HOME (see p. 94).--1. _The Site_.--First and foremost of
all the things you are to consider, is the healthfulness of a situation.
The brightest house and cheeriest outlook in nature will be made somber by
the constant presence of a doctor, and the wandering around of an unseen,
but ever felt, specter in the shape of miasm....Malaria-malus, bad; aria,
air--means, in its common definition, simply bad air. Miasma is its
synonym,--infecting effluvia floating in the air. Because, as everybody
knows, certain places have always chills and fever associated with them,
and other places have not, it follows that between such places there is
some fact of difference; this fact is the presence of miasm, a cause of
disease, having a signification associative with the locality....

Vegetation, heat, and moisture: these are the three active agents in the
production of miasma, to which a fourth is to be added, in the influence
of non-drainage, either by the way of the atmosphere or running water. The
strongest example of a malarious locality one might make would be in
suggesting a marshy valley in a tropical climate, so overrun with fixed
water as to destroy a prolific vegetation, yet not covering it enough to
protect the garbage from the putrefying influences of the sun; this
valley, in turn, so environed with hills as to shut off a circulation of
air....Ground newly broken is not unapt to generate miasm. This results
from the sudden exposure of long-buried vegetable matter to the influences
of moisture and heat....It may readily be conceived that malarious
situations exist where the miasm is not sufficient in quantity to produce
the effects of intermittent or bilious fever, yet where there is quite
enough of it to keep a man feeling good for nothing,--he is not sick, but
he is never well. I know of one country seat of this kind, where forty
thousand dollars would not pay for the improvements put upon it, and
where, I am free to declare, I would not think of living, even if, as an
inducement, a free gift were made to me of the place....Besides miasm,
there are other atmospheric associations to be considered. I recall this
moment a distillery, where attempt was made to get clear of the mash by
throwing it into a running stream, with the anticipation of its being
carried to the river, but where, on the contrary, it became a stagnant
putrescent mass, impregnating the air for miles with its unendurable odor,
and inducing such a typhoid tendency that half the countryside were down
with fever....There are, again, situations where the filth and debris of
sewage exercise a poisoning influence on the surrounding atmosphere. This
has its principal application to the neighborhood of cities and towns
drained into adjoining streams. London and the Thames furnish a notable
illustration. A cove, attractive as it is, may prove a receptacle for the
accumulation of dead fish and other offal, which shall make untenable the
charming cottage upon the bank. A deep cove has rarely healthy
surroundings, the circulation of its water being too sluggish to insure
freshness and vitality. Water, like blood, to be healthy, must be in a
state of continuous movement.

A nonobservant man, purchasing a beautiful stream, may be completely
disappointed by finding that the opacity of its water depends upon a
factory, of which he had never so much as heard; he may not let his
children bathe in it, for he may well fear for them the fate of the fish
he so plentifully finds lying dead upon the shore. A poisoned rural stream
is as sad a sight as it has grown to be a common one. Always, before
buying water, know what there is up stream, or what there is likely to be.

Never buy a country house without seeing to it that the foundation stands
upon a higher level than some channel which may drain it, and this, by the
way, is not to consider alone the dry summer day on which you go first to
visit the place; you are to think of the winter and spring. Look to it
that no excess of water shall be able to drown you out; some places, which
in dry weather are glorious, are, in winter and spring, ankle deep in
slush and mire, and everything about them is as wet as a soaked board.
Open the front door of such a house, and a chill strikes you instantly. A
fire must be kept the year round, or otherwise you live in the moisture of
a vault. Places there are of this class where the question of the water
from the kitchen pump comes to absorb the attention of the whole
household.

No shade is an abomination. A bilious fever fattens in the sun as does
miasm in a marshy valley. Too much shade, on the contrary, and too near
the house, is equally of ill import; it keeps things damp, and dampness is
a breeder of pestilence. An atmosphere confined about a house by too dense
foliage is, like the air of an unventilated room, not fit for practical
purposes. The sporadic poisons have an intimate relationship with
dampness; miasm lives in it as does a snail in his shell. Besides this, it
shuts out the cool breath of the summer nights, and makes restless
swelterers where even a blanket might be enjoyed.--DR. JOHN DARBY, _Odd
Hours of a Physician_.

2. _The House_.--So construct the dwelling from foundation to roof
that no dampness can result. Give to the cellar dry walls, a cement floor,
and windows enough to insure constant currents of air. Insist upon such a
system of immediate and perfect sewerage as shall render contamination
impossible. If "modern improvements" are afforded, see that the plumbing
embraces the latest and most scientific sanitary inventions. Do not
economize on this point; health, perhaps life, depends upon the perfect
working of the various traps. Having employed the most skilled and
intelligent plumbers, overlook their work so that you may fully understand
the principle applied.

Provide for ample ventilation in every apartment, above and below. Let the
sleeping rooms be above stairs, and furnished with appliances for moderate
warmth in winter. Treat yourself and your family to as many fireplaces as
possible. Indulge in a spacious piazza, so placed that it will not cut off
the light from the family sitting room, and, if you can, include a balcony
or two, large enough to hold a chair and a table, or a workbasket.
Remember that a house is for convenience and protection _only when you
can not be in the open air_.

3. _The kitchen and the Dust Heap.--Removal of Household Refuse_.--It
has to be assumed, especially where servants are not carefully overlooked,
that the dust heap of most houses will contain more or less decomposing
organic matter, such as bits of meat, scales and refuse of fish, tea and
coffee grounds, and the peelings of vegetables, which, though quite out of
place in the ash heap, are apt surreptitiously to be thrown upon it. Such
matter soon becomes offensive and even dangerous, and a few days'
retention of it in warm weather constitutes a legal nuisance. Household
refuse should be carted away as often as once in two days; in extreme hot
weather, daily. Where it is inexpedient to remove it frequently, it should
be kept covered to the depth of two or three inches with a layer of
powdered charcoal, or freshly burnt lime, or, at least, of clear dry
earth. All soil which has become foul by the soakage of decaying or
vegetable matter should be similarly treated. The refuse heap should be
protected from rain, and liquids should never be thrown upon it. Where
obnoxious matter has been allowed to accumulate, its disturbance for
removal should be conducted with special precaution, both on account of
its temporary offensiveness of odor and the more serious results which may
follow. It can not be too distinctly understood that cleanliness,
ventilation, and dryness are the best of all deodorizers. One of the first
of household regulations should be to see that no unsanitary rubbish
remains in or about the dwelling. Keep the dust heap itself at the
farthest practicable remove from the house. Sow grass seed plentifully
upon the back premises, and induce tidiness in the domestics by having the
kitchen door open upon a well-kept lawn.

_Burning of Garbage_.--The easiest, quickest, and most sanitary
method of disposing of household garbage is to burn it This plan has been
officially recommended by the Boards of Health in various cities. Many
housekeepers have adopted it, and find it so practicable that in New York
City there has become a marked decrease in the amount of household refuse
collected by the scavengers. If, after every meal, the draughts of the
range be opened, and all waste matter be deposited within, a few moments,
or at most, a half hour, will effectually dispose of it, and prevent all
the dangers that arise from its retention and accumulation. In the
country, where there is plenty of ground, nearly all rubbish can be
destroyed in this way and by outside fires, with the additional advantage
that the--E. R. S.

4. _The Sewers and Drains.--How to Keep out Sewer Air_.--The most
perfectly flushed sewers that are made, under the latest and fullest
sanitary light, must, owing to the constant entrance of greasy and other
adhesive material, contain more or less of particles that "stick," and
also more or less of fungi and mold; so that here, shut away from light
and air, goes on the peculiar fermentation that fits it for the soil or
habitat of the malarial germ. These germs, the soil once ready, take
possession and multiply, whether that soil be a sewer or the blood of a
person who sits calmly unconscious in a gorgeous chamber above, with a
small continuation of the sewer extending untrapped up to his washbowl.--
DR. DERBY.

Keep constant watch of your traps and drains. Cultivate the faculty of
detecting sewer gas in the house. Always fear a smell; trace it to its
source and provide a remedy. At the same time, bear in mind that it is not
always the foul smell that is most dangerous. There is a close, sweet odor
often present in bathrooms, and about drains, that is deadly as the Upas
tree. Bad air from neglected drains causes not only fevers, dysentery, and
diphtheria, but asthma and other chronic disorders. Illuminating gas,
escaping from pipes and prevented from exuding by frozen earth, has been
known to pass sidewise for some distance into houses. Thus also the air
from cesspools and porous or broken drains finds its way, when an
examination of the household entrance to the drain fails to reveal the
cause of an existing effluvia. But, however bad the drain may be outside
the house, there is little to fear provided the gas can escape externally.
Every main drain should have a ventilating pipe carried from it directly
outside the house to the top of the highest chimney. The soil pipe inside
the house should be carried up through the roof and be open at the top.

Digging for drains or other purposes should not be allowed when the
mercury stands above 60°; but if, as in repairs of pipes, it becomes
necessary to dig about the house in hot weather, let it be done in the
middle of the day, and replace the turf as speedily as possible. If the
soil be damp, or the district malarious, sprinkle quicklime upon the earth
as fast as it is turned.

_How to Clear Waste Pipes_.--The "sewer gas," about which so much has
been written, and which is so justly dreaded, is not, as many suppose, the
exclusive product of the sewer. Indeed, the foul and dangerous gases are
not only found in the sewers themselves, but in the unventilated waste
pipes, and those which are in process of being clogged by the foul matter
passing through them. Any obstruction in the soil or waste pipes is
therefore doubly dangerous, because it may produce an inflow of foul gas
into the pipe, even though the entrance to the sewer itself has been
entirely cut off.

In pipes leading from the house to the cesspool, there is a constant
accumulation of grease. This enters as a liquid, but hardens as the water
cools, and is deposited on the bottom and sides of the pipes. As these
accumulations increase, the water way is gradually contracted, till the
pipe is closed.

When the pipe is entirely stopped, or allows the water to fall away by
drops only, proceed thus: Empty the pipe down to the trap, as far as
practicable, by "mopping up" with a cloth. If the water flows very slowly,
begin when the pipe has at last emptied itself. Fill the pipe up with
potash, crowding it with a stick. Then allow hot water to trickle upon the
potash, or pour the hot water upon it in a small stream, stopping as soon
as the pipe appears to be filled. As the potash dissolves and disappears,
add more water. At night a little heap of potash may be placed over the
hole, and water enough poured on so that a supply of strong lye will flow
into the pipe during the night.

Pipes that have been stopped for months may be cleaned out by this method,
though it may call for three or four pounds of potash. The crudest kind,
however, appears to act as well as the best. If the pipe is partially
obstructed, a lump of crude potash should be placed where water will drip
slowly upon it, and so reach the pipe. As water comes in contact with the
potash, it becomes hot, thus aiding in dissolving the grease. Potash, in
combination with grease, forms a "soft" or liquid soap, which easily flows
away. It is also destructive to all animal and most mineral matters.

Some of the most dangerous gases come from wash-basin pipes, being,
perhaps, the result of the decay of the soap and the animal matter washed
from the skin.

When a pipe is once fairly cleaned out, the potash should be used from
time to time, in order to dissolve the greasy deposits as they form, and
carry them forward to the cesspool or sewer.--_Artisan_.

_What Came from a Neighbor's Cesspool_.--Keep watch not only of your
own premises, but stand on guard against those of your neighbors. Dr.
Carpenter cites a case wherein "four members of a certain household were
attacked with typhoid fever, one of whom narrowly escaped with her life.
The circumstances left no doubt in the mind of the attending physician
that the malady originated in the opening of an old cesspool belonging to
a neighboring house, then in course of demolition. The house in which the
outbreak took place is large and airy, and stands by itself in a most
salubrious situation. The most careful examination failed to disclose any
defect either in its drainage or its water supply; there was no typhoid in
the neighborhood; and the milk supply was unexceptional. But the
neighboring house being old, and having been occupied by a school, its
removal had been determined on to make way for a house of higher class;
and as the offensive odor emanating from the uncovered cesspool was at
once perceived in the next garden, and the outbreak of typhoid followed at
the usual interval, the case seems one which admits of no reasonable
question."

5. _The Cellar_.--_A Typical Bad Cellar_.--Did the reader ever,
when a child, see the cellar afloat at some old home in the country? You
creep part way down the cellar stairs with only the light of a single
tallow candle, and behold by its dim glimmer an expanse of dark water,
boundless as the sea. On its surface, in dire confusion, float barrels and
boxes, butter firkins and washtubs, boards, planks, hoops, and staves
without number, interspersed with apples, turnips, and cabbages, while
half-drowned rats and mice, scrambling up the stairway for dear life,
drive you affrighted back to the kitchen....Now consider the case of one
of these old farmhouse cellars that has been in use fifty years or more.
In it have been stored all the potatoes, turnips, cabbages, onions, and
other vegetables for family food. The milk and cream, the pork and beef,
and cider and vinegar, have all met with various accidents, and from time
to time have had their juices, in various stages of decay, absorbed by the
soil of the cellar bottom. The cats have slept there to fight the rats and
the mice, who have had their little homes behind the walls for half a
century; and the sink spouts have for the same term poured into the soil
close by, their fragrant fluids. The water rushes upward and sideways into
the cellar, forming, with the savory ingredients at which we have
delicately hinted, a sort of broth, quite thin and watery at first, but
growing thicker as the water slowly subsides and leaves its grosser parts
pervading the surface of the earth, walls, and partitions. All this time
the air rushes in at the openings of the cellar, and presses constantly
upward, often lifting the carpets from the floors, and is breathed day and
night by all who dwell in the house. Does it require learned doctors or
boards of health to inform any rational person that these conditions are
unfavorable to health?--MRS. PLUNKETT, _Women, Plumbers, and
Doctors_.

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