The General Problem of Keeping Well : Part 3

Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools
by Francis M. Walters

(Page 25 of 30)

Destruction of Infectious Material. - At times the housekeeping has to be directed especially toward hygienic requirements, such an occasion being the sickness of one of the inmates with some contagious disease. Unless special precautions are taken, the disease will spread to other members of the household and may reach people in the neighborhood. Not only must great care be exercised that nothing used in connection with the sick should serve as a carrier of disease, but germs passing from the patient should, as far as possible, be actually destroyed. All discharges from the body likely to contain bacteria, should be burned or treated with disinfectants and buried deeply at a remote distance from the water supply to the house.

After recovery all clothing, bedding, and furniture used in connection with the sick should be disinfected or burned. The room also in which the sick was cared for should be thoroughly disinfected and cleaned; in some instances the woodwork should to be repainted and the walls repapered or calcimined. The purpose is, of course, to destroy all germs and prevent, by this means, a recurrence of the disease.

Fumigation. - To destroy germs in the air or adhering to the walls of rooms, furniture, clothing, etc., fumigation is employed. This is accomplished by saturating the air of rooms with some vapor or gas which will destroy the germs. Fumigation is quite generally employed in the general cleaning after the patient leaves his room. This, to be effective, must be thorough. Formaldehyde is considered the best disinfectant for this purpose, and it should be evaporated with heat in the proportion of one half pint of the 40 percent solution to 1000 cu. ft. of space. Since formaldehyde is inflammable and easily boils over, it has to be evaporated with care. It should be boiled in a tall vessel (a tin or copper vessel which holds about four times the quantity to be evaporated) over a quick fire, the room being tightly closed (openings around windows and doors plugged with cotton or cloth). After three or four hours the room may be opened and thoroughly aired. Since formaldehyde is most disagreeable to breathe, one should not attempt to occupy the room until it is free from the gas. This will require a day or more of thorough ventilation.

Facts Relating to the Spread of Certain Diseases. - The problem of preventing disease in general often resolves itself into the problem of preventing the spread of some particulary disease. It is then of vital importance to know the special method by which the germs of this disease leave the body of the patient and are conveyed to the bodies of others. Some of these methods are novel in the extreme, and are not at all in accord with prevailing notions.

Malaria, or Malarial Fever. - This disease, so common in warm climates and also prevalent to a large extent in the temperate zones, is due to animal germs (protozoa), which attack and destroy the red corpuscles of the blood. These germs, it is found, pass from malarial patients to others through the agency of a variety of mosquitoes known as Anopheles. In sucking the blood of a malarial patient, the mosquito first infects her own body.(131) In the body of the mosquito the germs undergo an essential stage of their development, after which they are injected beneath the skin of whomsoever the mosquito feeds upon. For the spreading of malaria, then, two conditions are necessary: first, there must be people who have the disease; and second, there must be in the neighborhood the special variety of mosquito that spreads the disease. If either condition be lacking, the disease is not spread. The malarial mosquito (Anopheles) may be distinguished from the harmless variety by the position which it assumes in resting, as shown in Fig. 170.

Remedies against Mosquitoes. - The natural method of preventing the spread of malaria is, of course, the destruction of mosquitoes. This is accomplished by draining pools of water where they are likely to breed, and by covering pools of water that cannot be drained with crude petroleum or kerosene. The kerosene, by destroying the larvae, prevents the development of the young. In communities where such measures have been diligently carried out, the mosquito pest has been practically eliminated. Other methods are also under investigation, such as the stocking of shallow bodies of water with varieties of fish that feed upon the mosquito larvae.

Yellow Fever. - This scourge of the tropics is, like malaria, caused by animal germs. It is also propagated in the same manner as malaria, but by a different variety of mosquito. The stamping out of yellow fever in Havana, the Panama Canal Zone, and other places, through the destruction of this variety of mosquito, affords ample proof the correctness of the "mosquito theory."

Consumption, or tuberculosis of the lungs, spoken of as the "white plague," was among the first diseases shown to be due to bacteria. Consumption is now recognized as an infectious disease, though not so readily communicated as some other diseases. Several methods are recognized by which the germs are passed from the sick to the well, the most important being as follows:

1. By personal contact of the sick with the well, especially in kissing.

2. By the sputum, or spit, which, if allowed to dry, is blown about as dust and breathed into the lungs.

3. By means of objects (drinking cups, tableware, etc.) that have been handled by consumptives.

4. By infectious material associated with houses or rooms in which consumptives have lived.

These methods of spreading consumption suggest the necessity for the greatest care, on the part of both the patient and those having him in charge. The material coughed up from the lungs and throat should be collected on cloths or paper handkerchiefs and afterwards burned. The house where a consumptive has lived should be disinfected, repapered or calcimined, and thoroughly cleaned before it is again occupied. The inside woodwork should also be repainted. The approaches to the house where the patient may have expectorated should be disinfected and cleaned. Since the germs are able to live in the soil, fresh lime or wood ashes should be spread around the doorsteps and along the walks.

D.C. Heath and Co. - Publishers
Original copyright 1909