How to Live: Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern ScienceFisher, Irving
Science
How to Live: Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science
Fisher, Irving
Hygiene
Another measure for avoiding typhoid is to pasteurize milk. Food that is
liable to contain typhoid or other dangerous germs, such as raw oysters,
and milk from typhoid-infected localities, should be avoided.
[Sidenote: The "Typhoid-fly"]
In protecting the food against all kinds of impurities which injure the
body, we must remember that the carrier of typhoid fever, the common
house-fly, deposits typhoid germs on the food, through which the germ is
taken into the system. The most effective method of fighting flies is by
preventing their breeding. Their favorite places for this are
horse-manure, but they will breed in almost any mass of fermenting
organic material. Manure piles and stables should be screened, and the
manure removed at least once in seven days. Garbage-pails should be kept
tightly covered. Fly-paper and fly-traps should be used. Houses should
be screened, and, in particular in the pantry, the food itself should be
screened. Flies are usually thirsty in the morning. By exposing a saucer
of one per cent. of formalin solution, the flies will be tempted to
drink this morning cocktail and pay the death-penalty.
A fly-trap has been invented by Professor Clifton F. Hodge, of the
University of Oregon, Eugene, Ore., which any one is free to construct
and which, if used universally about stables early in the season, would
greatly help toward banishing the fly altogether.
Flies occasionally gain entrance to the house in spite of the most
careful screening. The fumes of burning Pyrethrum powder (Persian insect
powder), used in the proportion of 2 lbs. per 1,000 cubic feet of air
space, will either kill or stupefy flies and mosquitoes, so that they
may be swept up and effectually destroyed. It may be distributed in pots
and pans, and ignited after sprinkling with alcohol.
[Sidenote: Other Vermin]
Ticks should also be carefully exterminated, as they are sometimes
responsible for such diseases as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, African
tick fever, and other infections. The bedbug is also by no means the
harmless creature which it is generally regarded. To its credit are
placed such maladies as relapsing fever. The flea has been responsible
for such terrible diseases as the plague. It often operates by means of
rats as its carrier to the human being. The louse is one of the direst
offenders in the insect line, as it must take the responsibility not
only for many cases of typhoid fever, but for the dread plague of
typhus, which is ravaging the European armies.
[Sidenote: Hookworm]
Hookworm disease is to be avoided by not treading barefoot on ground
polluted by victims of the disease, by preventing soil-pollution through
the proper disposal of human excrement, and by screening all
water-closets.
[Sidenote: Cleanliness]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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