440 SANITATION 



13. Why should dish cloths and dish towels be sterilized often? 



14. Find out when bread is delivered to a grocery in your neighbor- 

 hood, and watch the process. Write a description of the process, and 

 criticize it from the sanitary point of view. 



15. In the same way study and criticize the handling of milk in your 

 own house and in that of some neighbor. 



16. How is garbage disposed of in your neighborhood? Watch the 

 process of garbage collection, and criticize it. How could the house- 

 holder help in making the process more sanitary? How could the 

 collector help? 



429. Tuberculosis, or Consumption. Consumption is 

 due to a germ (the tubercle bacillus), and is "caught" by 

 one person from another. Most persons, perhaps 90 out 

 of every 100, are attacked, at some time or other, by the 

 germ. Usually the body is able to overcome the disease, 

 and we do not know that we have been attacked. But 

 if the body once yields to the disease, we become weaker 

 and weaker, and less able to shake it off. It is one of the 

 triumphs of modern medicine that we know we can over- 

 come consumption if we treat it in its early stages. We do 

 not, therefore, need to give up if we have the disease, but 

 can use simple, easy means to be cured. The chief things 

 we must do are to live in the open air, to be warmly clothed, 

 and to eat an abundance of simple, nourishing food (cf. 

 246; also Fig. 309). If one has a suspicion that he has 

 tuberculosis, he ought not to hide the fact, nor to try 

 patent medicine "cures," but to see a physician at once. 

 When a large area of the lungs has become diseased, it is, 

 of course, harder for us to be cured; it may be impossible. 

 The tuberculosis germ is usually expelled from the body 

 in the sputum, or "spit," which the consumptive coughs 



