Samuel Hopkins Adams

“ The way to dusty death,
he quoted sonorously. “We think ourselves heirs to the wisdom of the ages, without stopping to consider that we’re heirs to the foolishness, also. We’re gulled by the printed lie about Doan’s Kidney Pills, just as our fathers were by the cart-tail oratory of the itinerant quack who sold the ‘Wonderful Indian Secrets of Life’ at one dollar per bottle.”
“Well, I hesitate to admit it,” said Mrs. Clyde, with a little laugh, “but we always have a few of the old remedies about.” ”

“ The human body keeps up a sort of drug-store of its own. As soon as disease fastens on it, it goes to work in a subtle and mysterious way, manufacturing a cure for that disease. If it’s diphtheria, the body produces antitoxin, and we give it more to help it on. If it’s jaundice, it produces a special quality of gastric juices to correct the evil conditions. In the vast majority of attacks, the body drives out the disease by its own efforts; yet, if the patient chances to have been idiot enough to take some quack ‘cure’ the credit goes to that medicine. ”

“ Sharpless; do you know why a baby’s chance of survival is less in the very best possible institution without its mother, than in the very worst imaginable tenement with its mother, even though the mother is unable to nurse it?”
“It isn’t as well tended, I expect.”
“All its physical surroundings are a thousand times more advantageous: better air, better food, better temperature, better safeguarding against disease; yet babies in these surroundings just pine away and die. It’s almost impossible to bring up an infant on an institutional system. ”

“ But it frightened her into going to her doctor. He told her that a radical operation was her only chance. She was terribly frightened,—more afraid of the knife than of the disease, she told me,—and she insisted on delay until the pain grew intolerable. And now, they say, there’s only a slight chance. Isn’t it pitiful?”
“Pitiful, and typical. Mrs. Westerly, if she dies, is a type of suicide, the suicide of fear and ignorance. Two years’ waiting! And every day subtracting from her chance. That’s the curse of cancer; that people won’t understand the vital necessity of promptness.” ”

“ Clyde.
“There’s the measure of their intelligence, then,” returned the Health Master. “Sickness is sickness, just as surely as a flame is fire; and there is no telling, once it’s well started, how much damage it may do.”
“But a cold is only in the head, or rather, in the nose,” persisted Mrs. Sharpless.
“That’s where you’re wrong. Coryza is a disease of the whole system, and it weakens the whole system. The symptoms are most apparent in the nose and mouth: and it is from the nose and mouth that the disease is spread. But if you’ve got the cold you’ve got it in every corner of your being. ”

“ All schools recognize that principle of protection to the public. Yet, in the case of syphilis or gonorrhoea, when the harm to the public health is far greater than from any ‘reportable’ disease except tuberculosis, the physician must hold his peace, though he sees his patient pass out of his hands bearing fire and sword and poison to future generations. ”

“ Clyde. “It certainly does cure the pain.”
“Not cure,—drug it into unconsciousness,” amended Mr. Gormley. “The opium in it does that. Rather a heroic remedy, opium, for a little stomach-ache, don’t you think?”
“What have you got to say against Kohler’s One-Night Cough Cure that I always keep by me?” demanded Grandma Sharpless.
Mr. Gormley beamed on her in deprecatory good nature. “Who? Me? Gracious! I’ve got nothing to say against it worse than it says against itself, on its label. Morphine, chloroform, and hasheesh. What more is there to say?” ”

“ As for reporting, you can’t combat a disease until you know where it is established and whither it is spreading. So, I say, any health officer who succeeds in spurring up the medical profession, and in dragging the Great White Plague out of its lurking-places into the light of day ought to have a medal.”
“What about the other diseases? Is the same true of them?”
“Not to the same extent. No man can tell when or why the epidemic diseases—scarlet fever, measles, whooping-cough, and diphtheria—come and go. By the way, what about your diphtheria death rate here?” ”

“ If the public understood what to do in cancer as thoroughly as they know about tuberculosis, we’d save almost if not quite as many victims from the more terrible disease. Fatalism is as out of place in the one as in the other. ”

“ Strong. “That particular kind of fly breeds only in manure. The fact is that the fly is about the nastiest thing alive. Compared to it, a hog is a gentleman, and a vulture an epicure. It loves filth, and unhappily, it also loves clean, household foods. Therefore the path of its feet is direct between the two—from your neighbor’s stable-yard to your dinner-table.”
“Disgusting!” cried Mrs. Clyde.
“Worse than disgusting: dangerous,” returned Dr. Strong, unmoved by her distaste. “A fly’s feet are more than likely to be covered with disease-bearing matter, which he leaves behind him.” ”

“ I’m glad we got to the stomach first, because that is the most obscure and least hopeful of the common locations of the growth. In carcinoma of the breast, the most prevalent form among women, there is one simple, inclusive rule of prevention and cure. Any lump in the breast should be regarded, as Blood-good of Johns Hopkins puts it, ‘as an acute disease.’ It should come out immediately. If such growths come at once to the surgeon, prevention and cure together would save probably ninety per cent of those who now die from this ‘creeping death,’ as our parents called it. ”

“ Miss Ennis shrank. “Pimple is an inexcusable word,” she protested.
“Word? We’re dealing in realities now. And pimples were an inexcusable reality in your case, because they were the blossoms of gluttony, torpor, and self-indulgence.”
He leaned forward and looked closely at her chin. The surface, once blotched and roughened, was now of a smooth and soft translucency. “You once objected to the word ‘sweat,’” he continued. “Well, it has eliminated the more objectionable word ‘pimple’ from your reckoning. And it has done the job better than your blemish-remover—-which leaves scars.” ”

“ Perhaps you remember when the house caught cold, how shocked Grandma Sharpless was at my saying that colds aren’t caught in a draft. Well, they’re not. Yet I ought to have qualified that. Now, what is a draft? Air in motion. If there is one thing about air that we thoroughly know, it’s this: that moving air is infinitely better for us than still air. Even bad, stale air, if stirred vigorously into motion, seems to purify itself and become breathable and good. Now, the danger of a draft is that it may mean a sudden change of the body’s temperature. ”

“ The reason for this is that the young man with his first ‘dose’—that loathsome, light term of description!—is ashamed to go to his family physician, and so takes worthless patent medicines or falls into the hands of some ‘Men’s Specialist’ who advertises a ‘sure cure’ in the papers. These charlatans make their money, not by skillful and scientific treatment, of which they know nothing, nor by seeking to effect a cure, but by actually nourishing the flame of the disease, so as to keep the patient under their care as long as possible, all the time building up fat fees for themselves. ”

“ I want you youngsters to understand this,” he added, turning to the children. “When the blood has circulated through the system, doing all the work, it gets tired out and weak. Then the lungs bring air to it to freshen it up, and the oxygen in the air makes it strong to fight against disease and cold. But if the air is bad, the blood becomes half starved. So the man who breathes stuffy, close air all night hasn’t given his blood the right supply. His whole system is weakened, and he ‘catches cold,’ not from too much air, but too little.” ”

“ There’s harm enough in sewer-gas, but no germs. The harm is that the gas reduces vitality, and makes one more liable to disease attack. It’s just as true of coal-gas as of sewer-gas, and more true of ordinary illuminating gas than either. I’d much rather have bad plumbing in the house than even a small leak in a gas-pipe. No, Mrs. Sharpless, if you waited all day at the mouth of a sewer, you’d never catch a germ from the gas. Moreover, typhoid doesn’t develop under ten days, so your odorous outbreak of the day before could have had nothing to do with Mr. Clyde’s illness. ”

“ When I undertook to act as Chinese-plan physician to the Clyde household, I was not only to guard the family against illness as well as I could, but also to save them worry. This is Saturday. Mr. Clyde has had a hard, trying week in the factory. Why break up his day?”
Mrs. Clyde drew a long breath and her face lightened. “Then it isn’t a serious case?”
“Scarlet fever is always serious. Any disease which thoroughly poisons the system is. But there’s no immediate danger; and there shouldn’t be much danger at any time to a sturdy youngster like Charley, if he’s well looked after.” ”

“ Clyde.
“Certainly. Have you ever heard what Goler, the Health Officer of Rochester, asked that city? ‘Oughtn’t we to close the schools and repair the children?’ he asked, and he kept on asking, until now Rochester has a regular system of looking after the noses, mouths, and eyes of its young. They want their children, in that city, to start the battle of life in fighting trim.” ”

“ The consequence is that the man who finds himself afflicted takes no chances, as a rule. He goes straight to the best physician he can find, and obeys orders under terror of his life. Thus and thus only, he often is cured. Terrible as syphilis is, there is this redeeming feature: we can tell pretty accurately when the organism which causes it is eliminated. Years after the disease itself is cured, however, the victim may be stricken down by the most terrible form of paralysis, resulting from it.”
“Isn’t the Ehrlich treatment regarded as a sure cure?” ”

“ In a desert I might guarantee immunity from most of the ills that flesh is heir to. Amid the complexities of our civilization, disease and death are largely social; there is no telling from what friend the poison may come. No man can safeguard his house. The most he can hope for is a measure of protection. I can offer you nothing more than that, under our compact.”
“That is enough,” returned Mr. Clyde. ”

“ The danger-point in scarlet fever isn’t the illness; it’s the convalescence. People think that when a child is cured of a disease, he is cured of the effects of the disease also. That mistake costs lives.”
“Because the poison is still in the system?”
“Rather, the effects of the poison. Though the patient may feel quite well, the whole machinery of the body is out of gear. What do you do when your machinery goes wrong, Clyde?” ”

“ What about the general public?”
“Educate them to the necessity of watching for danger signals; the running nose, the sore throat, the tiny pimples on the inside of the mouth or cheek which are the first sign of measles. Above all, furnish free anti-toxin. Make it free to all. This is no time to be higgling over pennies.”
“I don’t like the principle of coddling our citizens by giving to those who can afford to pay.”
“Better coddled citizens than dead children. Unless you give out free anti-toxin, physicians to families where every dollar counts will say, ‘Oh, it may not be diphtheria. ”

“ I do,” said Clyde grimly. “Their advertisers won’t let ‘em print anything about it. As I told you in the matter of closing the schools, business is frightened. The department stores, theaters, and other big advertisers are afraid that the truth about the epidemic would scare away trade. So they are compelling the papers to keep quiet.”
“Idiots!” cried Dr. Strong. “Suppressing news is like suppressing gas. The longer you do it, the more violent the inevitable explosion. But when I called on the editors, they didn’t say anything to me about the advertising pressure. ”

“ Clyde’s keen, good-humored face altered and focused sharply. He scrutinized the doctor in silence. “Well, let’s have it,” he said at length. “Is it my wife?”
“No. It’s Bettina.”
The father winced. “That baby!” he said. “Serious?”
“On the contrary, quite simple. If it is handled wisely. But it means—pain. Not a great deal; but still, pain.”
“An operation?”
Dr. Strong nodded. “Merely a minor one. I’ve sounded Mrs. Clyde, without her knowing it, and she will oppose it. Mrs. Sharpless, too, I fear. You know how women dread suffering for the children they love.”
Again Mr. Clyde winced. ”

“ Clyde apprehensively.
“Oh, every imaginable kind. How could it be otherwise? Here’s the very first principle of life, the breath, being diverted from its proper course, in the mouth-breather; isn’t a general derangement of functions the inevitable result? The hearing is affected, as I’ve shown you already. The body doesn’t get its proper amount of oxygen, and the digestion suffers. The lungs draw their air-supply in the wrong way, and the lung capacity is diminished. The open mouth admits all kinds of dust particles which inflame the throat and make it hospitable to infection. ”

“ You said that deaths from tuberculosis had increased twenty-five per cent since the new man came in.”
“Well?”
“You’re wrong. Tuberculosis doesn’t increase in sudden leaps. It isn’t an epidemic disease, rising and receding in waves. It’s endemic, a steady current.”
“But look at the figures. Figures don’t lie, do they?”
“Usually, in vital statistics,” was the imperturbable reply. “In this case, probably not. That is, they don’t lie to me. I’m afraid they do to you.” Mr. Clyde looked dubiously at the propounder of this curious suggestion and shook his head. ”

“ Clyde very gently, “telling me what’s wrong? I’m not asking without a purpose.”
Dr. Strong held out his long arms before him. “I’m a surgeon without a right hand, and a bacteriologist without a left.” The sinewy and pale hands shook a little. “Neuritis,” he continued. “One of the diseases of which we doctors have the most fear and the least knowledge.”
“And with the loss of your occupation, general nervous collapse?” asked Mr. Clyde. Being himself a worker who put his heart into his work, he could guess the sterile hopelessness of spirit of the man banned from a chosen activity. ”

“ I once visited a large pasteurizing plant which made great boasts of its purity of product, and saw flies coming in from garbage pail and manure heap to contaminate the milk in the vats; milk helpless to protect itself, because all its army of defense had been boiled to death.”
“If we are allowed neither to use our farm milk raw nor to pasteurize it, what shall we do with it?” inquired Mr. Clyde. ”

“ Clyde quietly. “Will you try the position with my family?”
The other stared in silence at his questioner.
“Just consider my situation for a moment. As you know, I’m a layman, interested in, but rather ignorant of, medical subjects. As wealth goes in a city of one hundred and fifty thousand population, I’m a rich man. At any rate, I can afford a considerable outlay to guard against sickness. In the last five years I suppose disease has cost my household ten thousand dollars in money, and has cost me, in worry and consequent incapacity for work, ten times that amount. ”