Thomas Dyer Tuttle

“ It is frequently asked, "How long will vaccination protect against smallpox?" You can no more answer this question than you can tell how long the antitoxin will live in the blood of any particular person. The only safe thing to do is to be vaccinated every few years, and if smallpox is present in your community, get vaccinated every year until the vaccination takes. If it takes, it shows that you were in a condition to catch the disease; and if it does not take, you may feel safe from smallpox for a while, at least. ”

“ The air that goes into our lungs, if it is fresh and pure, contains a great deal of oxygen and a very little of another gas called carbon dioxid. The air that comes out of the lungs contains a very little oxygen and a great deal of carbon dioxid. The blood not only takes the oxygen out of the air, but gives carbon dioxid to the air. This carbon dioxid is very poisonous, and would kill the cells if it remained in the blood; hence we should never breathe the same air twice. There is no lack of fresh air in the world, and no excuse for anyone's ever breathing air that is not pure. ”

“ Why consumption is a house disease
When the consumptive coughs, he sends fine droplets of moisture into the air. These droplets contain the germs that cause tuberculosis. The moisture evaporates and the germs are left sticking to the floors, the walls, the curtains, and the furniture of the room. When the room is swept or dusted, the germs are stirred up with the dust and people inhale them. The germ that causes consumption will live for a long time in a house; you cannot see it, but it is there. Wherever a consumptive has lived, he has left the germs of this disease behind him. ”

“ Let a fly with germs on its feet alight in a clean yard where sunshine can reach every corner, and what chance will the germs have to grow? They will not even get a start. Hence, while disease cannot be caused by dirt, disease germs stand a very good chance of living where there is plenty of dirt and no sunshine. Filthy habits are on an equality with filthy conditions, and go hand in hand with them. One of the worst of habits, and a cause of much sickness, is that of answering Nature's calls in places other than the closet. ”

“ We have learned that every part of the body needs regular rest. Your stomach is a part of your body. In the stomach and intestines all the food is changed so that the little cells can make use of it. Do you think the cook would serve good meals if she were kept cooking all the time, both night and day? You know she would soon stop cooking for you if you did not give her time to rest. Your stomach does work that is even more important to you than cooking. ”

“ When any one has been sick he is thin, because, to produce heat and power while he was sick, he has had to use the fat stored up in his body. To have such a supply of fat is like having a bank account to draw on when out of work. We might call the deposits of fat in our bodies our health banks.
Fat meat is not the only form in which we eat fats; we eat them in a great many other ways. Certain vegetables, [16] such as beans, contain an oil that forms fat. Ripe olives contain a great deal of fatty oil. Butter is a very important form of fat, and cream contains a large amount of it. ”

“ Nothing is more important than pure food in building up the body and in making heat and power. In consumption the food that is stored up in the body burns itself up very fast. The consumptive must therefore take not only the food needed to supply the usual demands of the body, but enough to make something extra for the disease to burn up without drawing on the reserve fund stored in the body. ”

“ Let us suppose that the nurse did not throw the discharges either into the closet or into the sewer, but carelessly threw them out on the ground behind the house, where, as it was winter time, they froze as hard as rocks. It does not seem to hurt typhoid germs in the least to be frozen; when they get warm again they are as lively as ever. Let us suppose these particular germs lay there all winter, but in the spring when everything melted the germs were still alive and ready to spread disease. ”

“ FLIES AS CARRIERS OF DISEASE
How germs get into our bodies
Disease germs get into our bodies in three principal ways: they are eaten with our food; they are taken in with the air we breathe; and they get in through breaks in our skin, even though these breaks be very small, as when made by the bite of a mosquito or other insect. ”

“ Milk has carried the germs of every disease of which the germ is known; it has also carried many diseases of which we do not know the germ. Disease germs grow rapidly in milk, and they do not make the milk look different or taste different from milk that is perfectly pure. If you could take two bottles of milk entirely free from disease germs and put typhoid fever germs in one, and should set both bottles in an ice box for twenty-four hours, you would not then be able to tell into which one you had put the germs. ”

“ When you skin your hand, you kill many cells, and at the same time make an opening for germs to get in and cause sickness. You can kill cells also by starving them, for they must have not only enough food, but the right kind of food. If you feed your bodies on nothing but candy, pie, and cake, most of the cells will refuse to perform their work and many of them will die. These cells must have also an abundance of air, and the air must be pure and fresh. If you breathe the air that others have breathed or that contains poison of any kind, you will soon find that you are not feeling well. ”

“ This is literally true, and the only reason that we have germ diseases is because we do not kill the germs that come from the sick people.
Professor Irving Fisher of Yale University has said, "It is entirely possible to wipe out consumption within a single generation." It may not actually be done so quickly, but it is certain that the disease can finally be wiped out, though it may require many generations to accomplish it. ”

“ If we do not have good teeth, we cannot grind our food as fine as it ought to be ground, and, as a result, a great deal of the starch will not be reached by the saliva.
Nature starts every child with a full set of good, strong, clean teeth. These teeth, which we call first, or milk, teeth, are not very large, but they are perfect in every respect and last until the second, or permanent, teeth come in. That is, they will last so long if they are taken care of. If they are not taken care of, they will decay just as the later teeth will decay, and they must be cared for in the same way. ”

“ He cannot tax his stomach by eating things that are not nourishing; all the work his stomach can do must be devoted to the foods he really needs.
The weapons with which we fight consumption are rest, good food, fresh air, and sunshine. These will do more good than all the medicine in the world. Fresh air is not only one of the best things for the cure of consumption, but it is one of the best things for the prevention of consumption. You should always breathe plenty of fresh air night and day, and there is plenty of fresh air to be had if you will take it. ”

“ We do not chew our food simply to make it fine enough to swallow, but for quite another reason as well. In our mouths there is a fluid called saliva. Think of something that you are very fond of eating, and the mere thought of it makes the saliva come into your mouth. This saliva has a very important duty to perform in connection with preparing the food for the little cells of the body. Each little grain of starch—and you will remember that all vegetable foods are composed largely of starch—has a capsule about it. ”

“ A cold bath is more stimulating than a warm bath. If, after you have taken a cold bath and rubbed yourself briskly with a rough towel, the skin becomes red and warm, a cold bath is best for you. But if, after you have taken a cold bath and rubbed yourself for not more than ten minutes, the skin appears bluish and cold, a cold bath is not good for you, and you should not take it. A cold bath should always be taken in the morning, just after getting out of bed, and a warm bath should always be taken in the evening, just before going to bed. ”

“ There are three principal ways by which we fight disease germs: first, by keeping our bodies so well and strong that germs cannot live in them; second, by keeping germs out of our bodies; third, by preventing germs from accumulating in the world—that is, by killing as many of them as possible. ”

“ When alcohol is taken into the stomach, very little of it reaches the intestines. It is rapidly absorbed by the lining of the stomach and passes into the blood. The blood from the stomach goes directly to the liver. The alcohol makes the cells of the liver hard and causes them to become filled with fat, as it does the cells of the stomach. In this way it destroys the action of these cells and prevents their doing the work for which they are intended. From the liver the alcohol goes with the blood to all parts of the body, and it has its influence on all the cells in the body. ”

“ If starchy foods are not thoroughly cooked, the little grains go into the stomach as hard as grains of sand; then most of them are not digested at all, but pass out of the system without furnishing any nourishment to the body. If starchy foods are fried in fats, as is the case with doughnuts, the granules of starch become coated with fat. As the fat is not digested until it comes to the intestines, the saliva never reaches the coverings of the starch, and more work is thrown on the other juices of the body. ”

“ Modern methods of hygiene and sanitation as applied to public health have robbed smallpox and diphtheria of their death-dealing power; cholera and yellow fever have been forced to retreat before the victorious hosts of applied medical science; tuberculosis, the greatest foe of human life, is slowly but surely receding before the determined efforts of modern preventive medicine.
By nature man is endowed with resistive power sufficient to ward off most forms of disease, provided he keeps his health at a normal standard by right living. ”

“ Now, if the cells in your body make antitoxin when you have diphtheria, it is probable that antitoxin is the very thing needed. And if you can help these cells by giving them antitoxin, ready-made, does it not seem a reasonable thing to do? People who give the name of poison to a substance which is known to have saved many lives are not worthy of attention. Anything may prove a poison if taken in excess; too much play will prove a poison, and too much work also. ”

“ The last way that we will mention by which germs get into milk is by disease in the cow herself. Cows suffer from many diseases, just as men do; and when a cow is sick, her milk is very likely to contain the germs of the disease that is making her sick. Especially is this true of tuberculosis, or consumption, as it is called. A great many children get consumption by drinking milk from consumptive cows. No milk should ever be used from a cow that is not healthy. All dairy cows should be examined at frequent intervals by a competent veterinarian to make sure that they are free from any disease. ”

“ People who are sick with a slow disease like consumption are often advised by their friends to take whisky to brace them up. It is true that the immediate effect of the whisky is to make the patient feel a little better, but the final effect is to leave him in a much weaker condition than before. More than this, the cells are much less able to resist the disease germs than they were before the alcohol was taken. When people are exposed to such diseases as scarlet fever and smallpox, they may think that if they take a drink of whisky they will not be so liable to contract the disease. ”

“ If the table is made to look clean and inviting, do you not think that you, in your turn, should make yourself as neat and clean as possible before you come to it? Dirt on your hands and face not only does not look well, but contains a great many germs that may get into your food and thus find their way into your body and try to make you ill. ”

“ The cells of the body need oxygen, and the only way we can give it to them is by means of air. Every time we take air into our lungs we are giving oxygen to the red corpuscles or cells in the blood, which distribute it to the other cells in the body. ”

“ Why consumption is called the Great White Plague
Tuberculosis is called the Great White Plague. It is called the Great Plague, because it kills more people than does any other one disease; the White Plague, because people who suffer from it become so pale and white. ”

“ It will often get into a throat and grow a little, just enough to keep alive, but without making the throat sore at all. The person in whose throat the germs are will have no idea that they are there, but when he comes in contact with some one who has a delicate throat, he may give diphtheria to that person. The disease does not develop in some throats because the body cells are all healthy and doing their work so well that, when the diphtheria germs try to take hold, they are driven off and not allowed to grow. ”

“ These are not all the ways in which people disobey the orders of the health officer and of the doctor, but these are enough to show you that it is a very important thing to do just what they tell you. It is not always easy to follow all these rules, but it is far better to follow these, and many more, than to have to think that you have caused the death of either a friend or a stranger. ”

“ When the discharge from a tubercular sore becomes dried and blows about with the dust, the germs are inhaled into the lungs of other people, or fall into other sores and cause them to become tubercular. Since this is one of the most frequent ways by which this dread disease is spread, you will say at once, "Why, every particle of matter from a tubercular sore ought to be burned, so that there would be no possibility of the germs being scattered." ”

“ A campaign of education is demanded to arrest the enormous loss of life which is carrying so many to untimely graves, and the instruction given in this volume will be of inestimable value in teaching people how to avoid avoidable disease. ”

“ The little girl skipping rope is killing the body cells by overwork; she has skipped more than one hundred times and is exhausted.
Ways in which children overwork their bodies
You may think it is not work to go to a party, but it really is. You are working the muscles and the cells of your brain when you are playing games, and these get tired from play work just as they do from working. It is more fun to do play work than to do real work, but the cells are tired and need rest after either kind of exercise. When you go to a party and stay up until midnight, you do not get nine hours of sleep. ”

“ They do not want to believe in it because they know that the cows, if tested and found to have tuberculosis, will have to be killed.
The reason that dairymen sell us milk from tubercular cows is the same that makes the man with scarlet fever in his house fail to tell the health officer about it; the same that makes the butcher buy and sell meat from diseased cattle; the same that makes some people absolutely regardless of the welfare of others—it is selfishness. ”

“ We know that typhoid fever germs get into the body with food, but how do they get out? Once in a great while germs are found in the matter that the patient vomits, or spits up, but this is a rare occurrence, so rare that we need hardly consider it. The germs are present in the blood of the sufferer, but other people do not get his blood on their hands or in their food. There are two things that come from the patient that are loaded with these germs, and these are the urine and bowel discharges. ”

“ The health officer takes a culture by wiping the throat with a little cotton on a long stick, which he then puts down into a long glass tube containing some substance that diphtheria germs like to grow on. If there are any diphtheria germs in the throat, they will soon show on this culture material. Then the health officer will say, "No, we cannot let you out yet, for the germs are still in your throat." No person who has been staying in a house where there is diphtheria should be allowed to go out until a culture proves that his throat is free from the germs of diphtheria. ”