82 



The Xeaver Hygiene. 



^^'ILFRED H. MaISTWABIXG. 



Instruction in the nature of infectious diseases, especially in the means 

 of transmitting these diseases from one person to another, is required by 

 law in all our public schools. This law is of great value ; for it is only 

 through the intelligent co-operation of a well-informed public that hy- 

 gienic and sanitary measures designed to control and stamp out infectious 

 diseases can be successful. A wide diffusion of this knowledge will go far 

 to make tuberculosis a thing of the past, and diphtheria and smallpox un- 

 known. 



In obedience to the legal requirement, there are taught, in our public 

 schools, certain elementary facts regarding the nature of pathogenic bac- 

 teria, and certain facts regarding the ways in which these bacteria are trans- 

 mitted from one person to another. These facts in themselves are of in- 

 estimable value, but they are insufficient. 



The presence of bacteria within or upon the human body, the trans- 

 mission of disease-germs from the sick to the well, is but one of the factors 

 tending to cause disease. To acquire a disease it is usually necessary, not 

 only to acquire the germs of that disease, biit there must be a lowering of 

 bodil.v resistance as well. 



Every fourth person in this room is carrying daily in his throat or 

 mouth virulent pneumococci. Yet he does not acquire pneumonia. And 

 why? Because there is an efficient defense against this disease in the 

 healthy human body. Some day this defense will be lowered and pneu- 

 monia develop. Most soldiers in the Philippines carry in their intestinal 

 canals virulent germs of dysentery ; and with no ill effects, till intoxication 

 or dietary excesses lower the intestinal resistance. We daily inhale germs 

 of tuberculosis. Some day, \^■hen our resistance is low. we will acquire the 

 disease. 



A knowledge of the Viody's lighting power against bacteria, a knowledge 

 of the ways in which that power can be increased or decreased by heredi- 

 tary inlluences and by modes of life, is therefore of hygienic importance. 

 It should form part of the curriculum of every public school. 



