A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Hygienic Physiology

J >> Joel Dorman Steele >> Hygienic Physiology




_What Came from a Crack in a Cellar Wall_.--A few years ago a Boston
gentleman inherited a house, situated on one of the most desirable streets
of the city. Resolving to make a healthy as well as a beautiful home, he.
spent a large sum, and gave personal supervision to all the details of an
elaborate system of plumbing. He moved in. Imagine his grief and
disappointment when member after member of his family succumbed to
diphtheria, and an infant and a grown daughter died. Though so deeply
smitten, he did not lose his belief in the connection between cause and
effect. He ordered a minute investigation of the premises by experts. A
slight crack, so small as to have escaped ordinary observation, was found
in the cellar wall. Investigation of the premises next door--the inmates
of which were also suffering from diphtheria--showed a choked-up drain,
which ought to have connected with the sewer, but did not. The filthy ooze
from this was pouring out, just where its effluvium and its disease germs
could pass without any hindrance through the crack.

Now that it is shown that gases pass through bricks and many kinds of
stone, it is easy to see that the sanitary welfare of one is the sanitary
welfare of all.--MRS. PLUNKETT.

6. _The Bedroom_.--_The Bed a Night Garment_.--There is still
one of our garments to be considered, which generally is not regarded as
such. I mean the bed--that piece of clothing in which we spend such a
great part of our time.

The bed is not only a place of rest; it is especially our sleeping
garment, and has often to make up for privations endured during the day
and the day's work, and to give us strength for to-morrow. Like our day
garments, the bed covering must be airy and warm at the same time. We
warm the bed by our body, just as we warm our clothes, and the bed warms
the air which is continually flowing through it from below, upward. The
regulating strata must be more powerful in their action than in our day
clothes, because during rest and sleep the metamorphosis of our tissues
and the resulting heat become less; and because in a horizontal position
we lose more heat by an ascending current of air than in a vertical
position, where the warm ascending current is in more complete and longer
contact with our upright body.

The warmth of the bed sustains the circulation in our surface to a certain
degree for the benefit of our internal organs at a time when our
production of heat is at its lowest ebb. Hence the importance of the bed
for our heat and blood economy. Several days without rest in a bed not
only make us sensible of a deficiency in the recruiting of our strength,
but very often produce quite noticeable perturbations in our bodily
economy, from which the bed would have protected us.--DR. MAX VON
PETTENKOFFER.

_Bed Ventilation_.--It often happens that the desire of the energetic
housekeeper to have her work done at an early hour in the morning, causes
her to leave one of the most important items of neatness undone. The most
effectual purifying of bed and bedclothes can not take place, if the
proper time is not allowed, for the free circulation of pure air, to
remove all human impurities which have collected during the hours of
slumber. At least two or three hours should be allowed for the complete
removal of atoms of insensible perspiration which are absorbed by the bed.
Every day the airing should be done; and, occasionally, bedding constantly
used should be carried into the open air, and left exposed to the sun and
wind for half a day.--_Home and Health_.

CIRCULATION.

THE PULSE (p. 116).--The pulse which is felt by the finger does not
correspond precisely with the beat of the heart, but takes place a little
after it, and the interval is longer, the greater the distance of the
artery from the heart. The beat of the artery on the inner side of the
ankle, for example, is a little later than the beat of the artery in the
temple.--HUXLEY.

The pulse is increased by exertion, and thus is more rapid in a standing
than in a sitting, and in a sitting than in a lying posture. It is
quickened by meals, and while varying thus from time to time during the
day, is on the whole quicker in the evening than in early morning. It is
said to be quicker in summer than in winter. Even independently of
muscular exertion, it seems to be quickened by great altitude. Its rate is
also profoundly influenced by mental conditions.--FOSTER.

CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD IN THE BRAIN (p. l20).--Signer Mosso, who has
been engaged on the subject for six years, has published some new
observations on the different conditions of the circulation of the blood
in the brain. He has had the privilege of observing three patients who had
holes in their skulls, permitting the examination of the encephalic
movements and circulation. No part of the body exhibits a pulsation so
varied in its form as the brain. The pulsation may be described as
tricuspid; that is, it consists of a strong beat, preceded and followed by
lesser beats. It gathers strength when the brain is at work, corresponding
with the more rapid flow of blood to the organ. The increase in the volume
of the brain does not depend upon any change in the respiratory rhythm;
for, if we take the pulse of the forearm simultaneously with that of the
brain, we can not perceive that the cerebral labor exercises any influence
upon the forearm, although the pulsation in the brain may be considerably
modified. The emotions have a similar effect upon the circulation of the
brain to that of cerebral labor. Signor Mosso has also observed and
registered graphically the variations of the cerebral pulse during sleep.
Generally the pulses of the wrist and the brain vary oppositely. At the
moment of waking, the pulse of the wrist diminishes, while that of the
brain increases. The cerebral pulsations diminish as sleep grows deeper,
and at last become very weak. Outward excitations determine the same
modifications during sleep as in the waking state, without waking the
sleeper. A deep inspiration always produces a diminution in the volume of
the brain, in consequence, probably, of the increased flow of blood into
the veins of the thoracic cavity; the increase of volume in the brain,
when it takes place, is, on the contrary, due to a more abundant flow of
arterial blood to the encephalus.--_Popular Science Monthly, March,
1882_.

CATARRHAL COLDS (p. l30).--I maintain that it can be proved, with as
absolute certainty as any physiological fact admits of being proved, that
warm, vitiated indoor air is the cause, and cold outdoor air the best
cure, of catarrh....Fresh cold air is a tonic that invigorates the
respiratory organs when all other stimulants fail, and, combined with arm
exercise and certain dietetic alternatives, it is the best remedy for all
disorders of the lungs and upper air passages....A combination of the
three specifics,--exercise, abstinence, and fresh air,--will cure the most
obstinate cold....Frost is such a powerful disinfectant, that in very cold
nights the lung-poisoning atmosphere of few houses can resist its
purifying influence; in spite of padded doors, in spite of "weatherstrips"
and double windows, it reduces the indoor temperature enough to paralyze
the floating disease germs. The penetrative force of a polar night frost
exercises that function with such resistless vigor that it defies the
preventive measures of human skill; and all Arctic travelers agree that
among the natives of Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador pulmonary diseases
are actually unknown. Protracted cold weather thus prevents epidemic
catarrhs, but during the first thaw Nature succumbs to art: smoldering
stove fires add their fumes to the effluvia of the dormitory, tight-
fitting doors and windows exclude the means of salvation; superstition
triumphs; the lung poison operates, and the next morning a snuffling,
coughing, and red-nosed family discuss the cause of their affliction....It
is a mistake to suppose that "colds" can be propagated only by direct
transmission or the breathing of recently Vitiated air. Catarrh germs,
floating in the atmosphere of an ill-ventilated bedroom, may preserve
their vitality for weeks after the house has been abandoned; and the next
renter of such a place should not move in till wide-open windows and doors
and a thorough draught of several days have removed every trace of a
"musty" smell.--DR. FELIX L. OSWALD, _Remedies of Nature, Popular
Science Monthly, March, 1884_.

CATCHING COLD.--The phrase "to catch cold," so often in the mouths of
physicians and patients, is a curious solecism. It implies that the term
"cold" denotes something positive--a sort of demon which does not catch,
but is caught by the unfortunate victims....If most persons outside of the
medical profession were to be asked what they consider as chiefly to be
avoided in the management of sick people, the answer would probably be
"catching cold." I suspect that this question would be answered in the
same way by not a few physicians. Hence it is that sick rooms are poorly
ventilated, and patients are oppressed by a superabundance of garments and
bedclothes. The air which patients are made to breathe, having been
already breathed and rebreathed, is loaded with pulmonary exhalations.
Cutaneous emanations are allowed to remain in contact with the body, as
well as to pervade the atmosphere. Patients not confined to the bed,
especially those affected with pulmonary disease, are overloaded with
clothing, which becomes saturated with perspiration, and is seldom
changed, for fear of the dreaded "cold."...

A reform is greatly needed in respect to "catching cold." Few diseases are
referable to the agency of cold, and even the affection commonly called a
cold is generally caused by other agencies, or, perhaps, by a special
agent, which may prove to be a microbe. Let the axiom, _A fever patient
never catches cold_, be reiterated until it becomes a household phrase.
Let the restorative influence of cool, fresh, pure atmosphere be
inculcated. Let it be understood that in therapeutics, as in hygiene, the
single word _comfort_ embodies the principles which should regulate
coverings and clothing.--AUSTIN FLINT, M.D., _in a Lecture printed in
The New York Medical Journal_.

DIGESTION AND FOOD.

THE WATER WE DRINK (p. l55).--_Qualities of Pure Water_.--"A good
drinking water," says Dr. Simpson (in _The Water We Drink_), "should
possess the following physical characters: it should be entirely free from
color, taste, or odor; it should, moreover, be cool, well aerated, soft,
bright, and entirely free from all deposit. But it should be remembered
that a water having all these characteristics may yet be more or less
polluted by organic matter, owing to the proximity of drains and
sewers....Disease has frequently been traced to the use of perfectly
bright and clear water, where there was no sediment, and where the animal
organic matter was held in a state of solution."

In the case of diseases, such as typhoid, which attack the stomach,
disease germs are removed along with the excreta; and if, as is often the
case, the drainage of an infected town flows into a river, and that river
is used in some after portion of its course as a water supply, there is
great danger of such diseases being communicated. For, however well the
water may be purified and filtered, we have no guarantee that it will not
contain some of these disease germs, which are so small that they pass
through the finest filters. It is in this way that almost all the great
cholera and typhoid epidemics have spread.--_Chambers's Journal_.

_Well Water Often Dangerous_.--A densely crowded population soon
impregnates the soil to some depth with filth, which drains into the water
course below, especially if such water is near the surface. This surface
water easily penetrates a loosely walled well. Every well, therefore,
should not only be widely separated from barnyards, cesspools, pens,
sinks, and similar places, but should be made water-tight with cement, so
that nothing can reach its interior except water that has been filtered
through dense beds of unpolluted ground below. If these precautions are
neglected, the best and deepest well may become continually contaminated
by infiltration from the surrounding surface. This impure water, even when
not used for family drinking, is sometimes supplied to cows, or used for
washing dairy pans, or employed in diluting milk for the market, and there
are many known cases in which disease has thus been disseminated. Thus, an
epidemic of typhoid fever in Cambridge, Mass., was definitely traced to a
dairy which supplied the victims with milk. Upon investigation it was
found that a short time before there had been a typhoid patient in the
farmhouse, and that the well from which water was taken to wash the milk
pans had become contaminated with the specific poison brought into it from
the surrounding drainage.

All suspected water should be thoroughly boiled before using it to drink.
Some physicians insist that the boiling should continue for one or two
hours in order entirely to destroy the bacterial germs. The heaviness and
insipidity incident to boiled water may be somewhat relieved by afterward
filtering it. Filtering, of itself, however, will do little toward ridding
the water of microbes, which are much too minute to be arrested by the
ordinary apparatus.--When journeying, where one must often take a hasty
meal at a railway station, drink hot water in preference to cold. A
convenient portable filter may be arranged with a bottle of powdered
charcoal, and a piece of filtering paper. A traveler by briskly stirring a
tablespoonful of the charcoal into a pint of water, allowing it to stand
five or ten minutes, and then filtering it through the paper, may venture
to relieve his thirst in almost any part of the country.

_Water an Absorbent of Foul Gases_.--If a pitcher of water be left
uncovered in an occupied apartment for only a few hours, it will become
foul from the absorption of the respired and perspired gases in the room.
The colder the water, the greater the capacity to contain these gases.
Water kept in a room over night is therefore unfit for drinking, and
should not be used even to brush the teeth or to gargle in the throat.

_Impure Ice, a Breeder of Disease_.--We generally take the purity of
our ice for granted, and, like the alligator in the bayou, close our
mouths and swallow it. In the country, I have seen during the ice-
harvesting season, wagon after wagon passing me on the road, laden with
ice that had been collected from canals, rivers, and streams receiving
sewerage, and from ponds that are in the summer time reeking with slime,
and often offensive from the quantity of decomposed vegetable and animal
matter brought in by the washing from the meadow. These streams would be
shunned as a source of water supply.

Should you interview a native regarding the slimy mud puddle before you,
called Mr. So-and-so's private "ice pond," he would say that "in winter it
is much better, and when frozen, you know, it makes fine ice," presenting
that popular though ignorant belief that while in the act of
crystallizing, water rids itself of all its injurious qualities, however
offensive it may be in its liquid state. Unfortunately, there is enough
truth in the current idea of the elimination of noxious and foreign matter
during the process of freezing to give color to the popular belief, but
not enough to make it a safe reliance; therefore all means should be used
to enlighten the public regarding this subject. Experiment has shown that
freezing produces little change or effect in overcoming the poisonous
influences, and ice has often served as a vehicle to convey the germs of
typhoid and other low forms of fever. Pure ice can be procured only from
water free from impurities, and ice for domestic or surgical purposes
should never be collected from ponds or streams which contain animal or
vegetable refuse, or stagnant and muddy material.--_Journal of
Reconstructives, Oct., 1887_.

THE GLANDULAR COAT OF THE STOMACH, AND HOW IT WEEPS (p. l62).--While the
food is thus being continually moved about, it is at the same time
subjected to the action of the chemical sac. This is, as we have said, a
glandular sac. It is of some thickness, and is made of little glands bound
up together with that stringy fibrous packing material which anatomists
call _connective tissue_.

If we were to imagine many gross of small India-rubber vials all placed
side by side, and bound together with hay or straw into a great mat, and
the mat rolled up into a sac, with all the mouths of the vials turned
inward, we should have a large and coarse, but tolerably fair image of the
glandular coat of the stomach. Each vial would then represent one of the
glands of this coat, one of the gastric or peptic glands, as they are
called. Each gland, however, is not always a simple tube, but is often
branched at the bottom end, and all of them are lined, except just at
their mouths, with large rounded bodies, which not unfrequently almost
choke up their cavity.

FIG. 72.

[Illustration: BRANCHED GASTRIC GLAND a. _The peptic cells._ b.
_The inert cells._]

The rounded masses, or cells, as they are called, in the interior of each
gland, form the really active part of the apparatus. Each cell is a little
laboratory, which concocts out of the material brought to it or near it by
the blood a certain potent, biting fluid, and is hence called a peptic or
digestive cell. Each cell is born at the bottom of the tube, and in
process of time travels upward toward the mouth. When it reaches the
mouth, it bursts, and pours into the stomach the fluid it has elaborated,
or perhaps may give it out without bursting, while it is still within its
tube.

In those cases in which it has been possible to look in upon the stomach
while at work (as in the famous case of Alexis St. Martin), and where the
orifices of the tiny glands (for though we have compared them to bottles,
they are exceedingly small) appear like little dots, tears were seen to
start at the mouths of the glands, gather into drops, and finally trickle
down into the lowest part of the stomach. The stomach, as it were, weeps,
and indeed the weeping of tears is just such another effect of glandular
activity--only ordinary tears form a mild and, chemically speaking,
impotent fluid; while the fluid which the tears of the stomach weep--the
_gastric juice_--is a sharp, piercing water of excessive chemical
power.--Hinton.

POISONOUS MILK, CHEESE, AND ICE CREAM (p. l69).--In late years there have
been many cases of poisoning by ice cream, cheese, and milk. The poisonous
principle sometimes developed in these articles of food has been made a
subject of special investigation, and it has been found to be due to
natural causes. Dr. Vaughan, of Michigan, after spending several months in
experimenting upon samples of twelve different cheeses, which had caused
three hundred cases of poisoning, finally succeeded in isolating certain
poison crystals, which he calls _Tyrotoxicon_. He says: "A few drops
of an aqueous solution of these crystals placed upon the tongue produces
all the symptoms observed in those who had been made sick by eating of the
cheese. This was tried repeatedly upon myself, and upon some of my
students who kindly offered themselves for experimentation." Dr. Vaughan
afterward procured the poison crystals from milk which had stood some
months in a closed bottle, and also from a sample of ice cream by which
eighteen persons had been made ill. It was learned in the latter case that
the custard, of which the ice cream was made, had been allowed to stand in
a foul atmosphere for two hours before it was frozen. By placing small
bits of this poisonous cream in good milk, and allowing it to stand
twenty-four hours, the whole became vitiated. This proved that the poison
is due to the growth of some ferment. In the autumn of 1886, many persons
in different hotels at Long Branch were poisoned by milk obtained from a
certain milkman. In this case it was found that the cows were milked at
noon, the warm milk being immediately placed in cans and carted eight
miles during the warmest part of the day, in a very hot month. In June,
1887, nineteen persons in New York city were similarly poisoned by milk
which also came from one dairy. Many of these persons had narrow escapes
from death. These, and many other like instances, teach us the importance
of the greatest care in every detail of milk handling. A little dried milk
formed along the seam of a tin pail, or any similar lodging place, may be
the starting point of poison generation. A month after his first
experiments with the ice cream mentioned above, Dr. Vaughan put small
pieces of the dried custard in pans of milk, and afterward made custard
from this milk. This yielded tyrotoxicon as before, showing the tenacious
vitality of the poison, and also explaining the fact that the precise
cause of poisoning is in many cases so difficult to trace.

FISH AS FOOD (p. 169).--It is not desirable that fish should be the sole
kind of nitrogenous food eaten by any nation; and even if milk and eggs be
added thereto, the vigor of such a people will not be equal to that of
flesh-eating nations. At the same time, the value of fish as a part of a
dietary is indicated by the larger proportion of phosphorus which it
contains, and which renders it especially fitted for the use of those who
perform much brain work, or who are the victims of much anxiety and
distress.--EDWARD SMITH, _in "Foods_."

For the mentally exhausted, the worried, the "nervous," and the distressed
in mind, fish is not simply a food; it acts as physic. The brain is
nourished by it, the "nerves"--to use the term in its popular sense--are
"quieted"; the mind grows stronger, the temper less irritable, and the
whole being healthier and happier when fish is substituted for butcher's
meat....I find persons who are greatly excited, even to the extent of
seeking to do violence to themselves or to those around them, who can not
sleep, and who are in an agony of irritability, become composed and
contented when fed almost exclusively on fish. In such cases I have
withdrawn butter, milk, eggs, and all the varieties of warm-blooded animal
food; and, carefully noting the weight and strength, I find no diminution
of either, while fish is supplied in such quantities as fully to satisfy
the appetite.--J. MORTIMER GRANVILLE, M.D., "_Fish as Food and
Physic_."

COFFEE AND TEA (p. 170).--Besides the alkaloid _Caffeine_ which
coffee contains, it also develops, in roasting, a volatile oil called
Caffeone, to which is due its characteristic aroma. The main effects of
coffee are due to both the caffeine and the caffeone, which are
antagonistic, though not contemporaneous, in action. The volatile oil
reduces arterial tension, allows a brisker flow of blood, and so increases
the rapidity of the heart's action. It also acts upon the brain, and
intellectual faculties in general; keeps one awake, and his mind clear.
Caffeine, on the other hand, like digitalis, produces a high arterial
tension, and slows the heart beat. It exerts its chief effect upon the
spinal cord, to which, like strychnia, it is an excitant. The shaking hand
of the inveterate coffee drinker is caused by caffeine. Thus a cup of
coffee produces on the drinker a double effect,--of the oil and the
alkaloid; the former sooner and transient, the latter later and
lasting....Coffee is not in itself nutritious to any marked degree; but it
saves food, and also maintains life, by its exhilarating effect upon the
nervous system. It is an excellent antidote to opium, producing the
wakefulness that antagonizes the narcotic sleep of the drug; is now and
then curative of sick headache, and is one of the standard remedies for
certain forms of nausea.

To the chemist, _Tea_ is much the same thing as coffee. It contains
considerably more tannin, a volatile oil, and an alkaloid (theine)
indistinguishable from caffeine. That the injurious effects of overdoses
are due as much to the volatile oil as to the alkaloid, is shown by the
fact that tea packers are made ill by long breathing of air filled with
it, and that tea tasters in China, who avoid swallowing the infusion, can
endure their trade but a few years, and leave the country with shattered
nerves.

Probably every one numbers among his friends women who are actual slaves
of the tea habit, and who would find tea as hard to forsake as men find
tobacco. It is not unlikely that the functional cardiac disorder, often
spoken of as the "tobacco heart," due to nervous derangement, and
accompanied by palpitation and pain in the cardiac region, is more often
due to tea than tobacco. In fact, the disorders induced by excessive tea
drinking have been grasped as a special disease, to which has been given
the name of _Theism_. This includes a train of symptoms, usually
progressive, loss of appetite, pain after meals, headache, constipation,
palpitation, cardiac distress, hysterical manifestations, dizziness, and
paresis.--DR. MAURICE D. CLARKE, _Popular Science News_.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.