38 



chitls. tonsilitis and pneumonia or tuberculosis may follow, and we can 

 never be sure that an attack will pass oft" lightly. 



Now if we study the advertisements of patent medicines in the news- 

 papers we will tind that they vary in amount, that is in number and size, 

 being most common in the fall and spring and when the dust is at its 

 maximum, and least common in the summer— when the streets are 

 sprinkled and the sputum is sterilized Ity the hot rays of the sun. We 

 will moreover tind that three-fourths of the names of the ailments, not 

 to speak of diseases, mentioned in the newspaper advertisements are 

 simply synonyms of dust disease and are due to the inhalation of dust. 

 I will give a list: cold, hoarseness, throat trouble, sickening breath, foul 

 breath, catarrh, grip, sore throat, tonsilitis, pleurisy, a stitch in the side, 

 backache, kidney complaint, kidney disease, lumbago, stiff back, lame 

 back, rheumatism, muscular rheumatism, a touch of rheumatism, aching 

 joints, headache, sick headache, nervous headache, neuralgia, nervous 

 prostration, the blues, l)rain fag, neurasthenia, l)iliousness, bilious fever, 

 a touch of malaria. All of these names should of course be in quotation 

 marks. "We tind also the terms dizziness, faintuess, irritability, restless- 

 ness and sleeplessness given as names of ailments, and faeeache and car 

 sickness are mentioned as diseases. 



Now I do not mean to say that in every case of ill-health or of sick- 

 ness, where the above names are applied, the cause is to be traced to the 

 inhalation of infected dust, because something else may be at the bottom 

 of it, but I believe that most cases of such self-diagnosed ailments (and 

 where the aftlicted individual calls for an advertised nostrum at the drug 

 store) are simply cases of dust infection. Even stomach and bowel dis- 

 turbances in many instances come under the same head, that is, caused 

 by the dust— if not by inhalation, then by the dust which settles on food, 

 as the cold victuals of a dusty restaurant or on fruits and vegetables ex- 

 posed to the dust of the street. As a matter of fact there is a form of 

 dust infection which manifests itself mainly l)y a disturbance of the 

 gastric mucous membranes, Avith abundant secretion of mucus and often 

 accompanied by severe vomiting. 



Where one symptom, or its location in the body, dominates, it may 

 give character to the ailment and thereijy determine its popular name, 

 or its patent medicine name. For instance, if the secretion of mucus 

 or muco-pus is the chief symptom then we have "catarrh;" if the pain in 



