Produced by Larry B. Harrison, D. Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: Book Cover] HEALTH LESSONS BOOK I BY ALVIN DAVISON, M.S., A.M., PH.D. PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY IN LAFAYETTE COLLEGE [Illustration: Publisher Symbol] NEW YORK . CINCINNATI . CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY ALVIN DAVISON. ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL, LONDON. HEALTH LESSONS. BK. 1. W. P. 6 [Illustration: Exercise, clean air, and well-chewed food make a strong and healthy body.] 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.