Part 66

“You’d have a fine row with the Board of Education, trying to persuade them to special action for any such cause as that,” remarked Mr. Clyde.

“There’s the measure of their intelligence, then,” returned the Health Master. “Sickness is sickness, just as surely as a flame is fire; and there is no telling, once it’s well started, how much damage it may do.”

“But a cold is only in the head, or rather, in the nose,” persisted Mrs. Sharpless.

“That’s where you’re wrong. Coryza is a disease of the whole system, and it weakens the whole system. The symptoms are most apparent in the nose and mouth: and it is from the nose and mouth that the disease is spread. But if you’ve got the cold you’ve got it in every corner of your being. You won’t be convinced of its importance, I suppose, until I can produce facts and figures. I only hope they won’t be producible from this house. But by the end of the season I’ll hope to have them. Meantime we’ll isolate Bettykin.”

Bettina was duly isolated. Meanwhile the active little coryza bacillus had got its grip on Mr. Clyde, who for three days attended to his business with streaming eyes, and then retired, in the company of various hot-water bags, bottles, and foot-warmers, to the sanctuary of his own bedroom, where he led a private and morose existence for one week. His general manager succeeded to his desk; likewise, to his contaminated pencils, erasers, and other implements, whereby he alternately sneezed and objurgated himself into the care of a doctor, with the general and unsatisfactory result that the balance-sheet of Clyde & Co., Manufacturers, showed an obvious loss for the month—as it happened, most unfortunately, an unusually busy month—of some three thousand dollars, directly traceable to that unconsidered trifle, a cold in the head.

“At that you got off cheap,” argued the Health Master.

It was three months after the invasion of the Clyde household by Bettina’s coryza germ.

“I’m glad somebody considers it cheap!” observed Mr. Clyde. “Personally I should rather have taken a trip to Europe on my share of that three thousand dollars.”

“Yet you were lucky,” asserted Dr. Strong. “Bettykin got through her earache without any permanent damage. Robin’s attack passed off without complications. Your own onset didn’t involve any organ more vital than your bank account. And the rest of us escaped.”

“Doesn’t it prove what I said,” demanded Grandma Sharpless; “that a cold in the head is only a cold in the head?”

“‘Answer is No,’ as Togo would put it,” replied the Health Master. “In fact, I’ve got proof here of quite the opposite, which I desire to present to this gathering.”

“This meeting of the Household Protective Association is hereby called to order!” announced Mr. Clyde, in the official tones proper to the occasion. The children put aside their various occupations and assumed a solemn and businesslike aspect which was part of the game. “The lone official member will now report,” concluded the chairman.

“Let the Health Officer of the city report for me,” said Dr. Strong, taking a printed leaflet from his pocket. “He is one of those rare officials who aren’t afraid to tell people what they don’t know, and may not want to know. Listen to what Dr. Merritt has to say.” And he read:—

“‘The death-rate of the city for the month of February, like the rate for December and January, is abnormally high, being a shade over ten per cent above the normal for this time of year. While the causes of mortality range through the commoner diseases, with a special rise in pulmonary troubles, it is evident that the increase must be due to some special cause. In the opinion of the Bureau of Health this cause is the despised and infectious “cold,” more properly known as coryza, which has been epidemic this winter in the city. Although the epidemic wave is now receding, its disastrous aftereffects may be looked for in high mortality rates for some months. Should a similar onset occur again, the city will be asked to consider seriously a thorough school campaign, with careful isolation of all suspicious cases.’”

“Did you write that, young man?” asked Mrs. Sharpless suspiciously.

“Why, no; I didn’t write it,” answered the Health Master. “I’ll go as far as to admit, however, that Dr. Merritt listens politely to my humble suggestions when I offer them.”

“Humph! Ten per cent increase. What is that in real figures?”

“Twenty-five extra deaths a month,” said Manny Clyde, a growing expert on local statistics.

“Seventy-five needless deaths for the three months, and more to come,” said the Health Master, “besides all the disability, loss of time and earning power and strength, and all the pain and suffering—which things never get into the vital statistics, worse luck! So much to the account of the busy little coryza-bug.”

“Can’t the Health Bureau do something?” asked the practical Mr. Clyde.

“Not much, until its public is better educated,” said Dr. Strong wearily. “The present business of a health official is to try and beat the fool-killer off from his natural prey with a printed tract. It’s quite a job, when you come to consider it.”

“What he ought to have, is the club of the law!” said Mr. Clyde.

“Precisely. The people won’t give it to him. In this household we’re better off, since we can make our own laws. Since Betty’s attack we’ve tried out the isolation plan pretty effectually; and we’ve followed, as well as might be, the rule of avoiding contact with people having coryza.”

He glanced up at a flamboyant poster which Mrs. Clyde, who had a natural gift of draftsmanship, had made in a spirit of mischief, entitling it “The Red Nose as a Danger Signal.”

“As much truth as fun in that,” he remarked. “But, at the best, we can’t live among people and avoid all danger. In fact, avoidance is only the outer line of defense. The inner line is symbolized by a homely rule, ‘Keep Comfortable.’”

“What’s comfort to do with keeping well?” asked Grandma Sharpless.

“What are your nerves for?” retorted Dr. Strong with his quizzical smile.

“Young man,” said the old lady plaintively, “did I ever ask you a question that you didn’t fire another back at me before it was fairly out of my mouth? My nerves, if I let myself have any, wouldn’t be for anything except to plague me.”