Sunlight and fresh air are deadly enemies to all germs except those
of venereal origin. If a smallpox patient has been confined to a room
and after being taken away the room is fumigated and then closed, the
chances are that the smallpox germs――some of them――will remain and
increase. Hence, to again occupy this room would be dangerous. But if,
instead of fumigating the room, if all the windows were open; if every
corner and floor could receive the rays of the sun for many days; the
last germ in the room would have to give up the ghost.
Don’t think that fumigating and washing clothes or other articles which
have come in contact with a diseased person make for absolute safety.
But do remember that SUNLIGHT and fresh air are deadly enemies to most
disease germs.
There are certain diseases which are carried around by persons in whom
you would never suspect danger. Typhoid germs, for example, may be
carried around in the intestines of a person who is in apparent health.
Now everywhere this person lives, or uses the toilet, the germs are
deposited, and if they happen to get into the drinking water――wells or
streams――or are carried by the flies’ legs to the food or milk, you run
great risks of getting typhoid fever.
Those germs of two horrible diseases which are to be found upon public
toilet articles, public drinking cups, upon the leaves of common
books――in fact everywhere man or woman is to be found, are _not_ killed
by sunlight or fresh air. This subject should be thoroughly understood
by every young woman, but it is of too great importance to be dealt
with here in a few paragraphs.
The breath of a consumptive patient will not carry directly the germs
of consumption to another person. Oh, I know that is what many of you
have been taught, but we are dealing with the facts as they are known
up to this very year of 1911. It has long been the general idea that
disease germs were carried from one person or thing to another person
or thing. Now this is not strictly true. All germs increase and thrive
in moist and dark conditions. The throat of a consumptive patient is
one of these conditions. The germs are sent out into the air of the
room in surrounding moisture. They land somewhere; on the tablecloth,
in the carpet, or hide in a dark corner. In these places they dry and
become dust――germ-laden dust. Now stir up this dust and then you have
the germs free to rush into the healthy lungs around them, and then a
person runs great risk of contracting consumption.
Don’t stir up a room by dusting if that room has been occupied by a
diseased person. Don’t wash the walls or floor of such a room and then
close it, unless you want to go into the business of breeding germs.
Knock out the windows of such a room――open it up for the sun’s rays to
penetrate and kill off the enemy. Take all carpets out and put them
where nothing but DRY air and sunshine can get at them. Do the same
thing with every movable object in the room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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