Health Lessons, Book 1

BOOK I. By

BY ALVIN DAVISON, M.S., A.M., PH.D. PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY IN LAFAYETTE COLLEGE

NEW YORK · CINCINNATI · CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY ALVIN DAVISON.

ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL, LONDON.

HEALTH LESSONS. BK. 1. W. P. 6

PREFACE

Scarcely one half of the children of our country continue in school much beyond the fifth grade. It is important, therefore, that so far as possible the knowledge which has most to do with human welfare should be presented in the early years of school life.

Fisher, Metchnikoff, Sedgwick, and others have shown that the health of a people influences the prosperity and happiness of a nation more than any other one thing. The highest patriotism is therefore the conservation of health. The seven hundred thousand lives annually destroyed by infectious diseases and the million other serious cases of sickness from contagious maladies, with all their attendant suffering, are largely sacrifices on the altar of ignorance. The loving mother menaces the life of her babe by feeding it milk with a germ content nearly half as great as that of sewage, the anemic girl sleeps with fast-closed windows, wondering in the morning why she feels so lifeless, and the one-time vigorous boy goes to a consumptive's early grave, because they did not know (what every school ought to teach) the way to health.

Doctor Price, the Secretary of the State Board of Health of Maryland, recently said before the American Public Health Association that the text-books of our schools show a marked disregard for the urgent problems which enter our daily life, such as the prevention of tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and acute infectious diseases.

Since the observing public have seen educated communities decrease their death rate from typhoid fever, tuberculosis, and diphtheria from one third to three fourths by heeding the health call, lawmakers are becoming convinced that the needless waste of human life should be stopped. Michigan has already decreed that every school child shall be taught the cause and prevention of the communicable diseases, and several other states are contemplating like action. This book meets fully the demands of all such laws as are contemplated, and presents the important truths not by dogmatic assertion, but by citing specific facts appealing to the child mind in such a way as to make a lasting impression.

After the eleventh year of age, the first cause of death among school children is tuberculosis. The chief aim of the author has been to show the child the sure way of preventing this disease and others of like nature, and to establish an undying faith in the motto of Pasteur, "It is within the power of man to rid himself of every parasitic disease."

Nearly all of the illustrations used are from photographs and drawings specially prepared for this book. These, together with the large amount of material gleaned from original sources and from the author's experiments in the laboratory, will, it is hoped, make this little volume worthy of the same generous welcome accorded the two earlier books of this series.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. CARING FOR THE HEALTH 9

II. PARTS OF THE BODY 15

III. FEEDING THE BODY 21

IV. FOOD AND HEALTH 30

V. HOW PLANTS SOUR OR SPOIL FOOD 36

VI. MILK MAY BE A FOOD OR A POISON 41

VII. HOW THE BODY USES FOOD 47

VIII. THE CARE OF THE MOUTH 60

IX. ALCOHOLIC DRINKS 68

X. ALCOHOL AND HEALTH 74

XI. TOBACCO AND THE DRUGS WHICH INJURE THE HEALTH 78

XII. THE SKIN AND BATHING 85

XIII. CLOTHING AND HOW TO USE IT 94

XIV. BREATHING 100

XV. FRESH AIR AND HEALTH 111

XVI. THE BLOOD AND HOW IT FLOWS THROUGH THE BODY 117

XVII. INSECTS AND HEALTH 127

XVIII. HOW THE BODY MOVES 135

XIX. THE MUSCLES AND HEALTH 144

XX. HOW THE BODY IS GOVERNED 149

XXI. HOW NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS AFFECT THE BRAIN AND NERVES 158

XXII. THE SENSES, OR DOORS OF KNOWLEDGE 165

XXIII. KEEPING AWAY SICKNESS 174

XXIV. HELPING BEFORE THE DOCTOR COMES 183

INDEX 189

HEALTH LESSONS

CHAPTER I. Caring for the Health

CARING FOR THE HEALTH

=Good Health better than Gold.=--Horses and houses, balls and dolls, and much else that people think they want to make them happy can be bought with money. The one thing which is worth more than all else cannot be bought with even a houseful of gold. This thing is good health. Over three million persons in our country are now sick, and many of them are suffering much pain. Some of them would give all the money they have to gain once more the good health which the poorest may usually enjoy by right living day by day.

=How long shall you live?=--In this country most of the persons born live to be over forty years of age, and some live more than one hundred years. A hundred years ago most persons died before the age of thirty-five years. In London three hundred years ago only about one half of those born reached the age of twenty-five years. Scarcely one half of the people in India to-day live beyond the age of twenty-five years. In fact, people in India are dying nearly twice as fast as in our own country. This is because they have not learned how to take care of the body in India so well as we have.

The study which tells how to keep well is Hygiene. Whether you keep well and live long, or suffer much from headaches, cold, and other sickness, depends largely on how you care for your body.

=Working together for Health.=--One cannot always keep well and strong by his own efforts. The grocer and milkman may sell to you bad food, the town may furnish impure water, churches and schools may injure your health by failing to supply fresh air in their buildings. More than a hundred thousand people were made very sick last year through the use of water poisoned by waste matter which other persons carelessly let reach the streams and wells. Many of the sick died of the fever caused by this water. Although it cannot be said that we are engaged in real war, yet we are surely killing one another by our thoughtless habits in scattering disease. We must therefore not only know how to care for our own bodies, but teach all to help one another to keep well.

=A Lesson from War.=--The mention of war makes those who know its terrors shudder. Disease has caused more than ten times as much suffering and death as war with its harvest of mangled bodies, shattered limbs, and blinded eyes. In our four months' war with Spain in 1898 only 268 soldiers were killed in battle, while nearly 4000 brave men died from disease. We lost more than ten men by disease to every one killed by bullets.

In the late war between Japan and Russia the Japanese soldiers cared for their health so carefully that only one fourth as many died from disease as perished in battle. This shows that with care for the health the small men of Japan saved themselves from disease, and thus won a victory told around the world.

=The Battle with Disease.=--For long ages sickness has caused more sorrow, misery, and death than famine, war, and wild beasts. Many years ago a plague called the black death swept over most of the earth, and killed nearly one third of the inhabitants. A little more than a hundred years ago yellow fever killed thousands of people in Philadelphia and New York in a few weeks. When Boston was a city with a population of 11,000, more than one half of the persons had smallpox in one year. Within a few years one half of the sturdy red men of our forests were slain by smallpox when it first visited our shores. Before the year 1798 few boys or girls reached the age of twenty years without a pit-marked face due to the dreadful disease of smallpox. This disease was formerly more common than measles and chicken pox now are because we had not yet learned how to prevent it as we do to-day.

=Victory over Disease.=--Cholera, yellow fever, black death, and smallpox no longer cause people to flee into the wilderness to escape them when they occasionally break out in a town or city. We have learned how to prevent these ailments among people who will obey the laws of health.

Until the year 1900, people fled from a city when yellow fever was announced, but now any one can sleep with a fever patient and not catch the disease, because we have learned how to prevent it. Nurses and doctors no longer hesitate to sit for hours in the rooms of those sick with smallpox because they know how to treat the body to keep away this disease. By studying this book, boys and girls may learn not only how to keep free from these diseases, but how to manage their bodies to make them strong enough to escape other diseases.

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