The Child's Day Part 8

III. PROTECTING OUR FRIENDS

If you knew that some of your little friends were sick with an infectious disease like measles or scarlet fever, of course you would keep away from them, so as to avoid catching the disease. And if they knew that they had a disease that was infectious, of course they would want to let all their friends know of it, so as to prevent them from coming and catching it. But how can they let all their friends know?

Sick people don't feel like writing letters; and, even if they did, some diseases can be carried in letters. So that might not be at all a friendly thing to do.

This has always been the greatest difficulty in preventing the spread of infectious diseases--how to let other people know. So about fifty or sixty years ago, people got together and decided that the best thing to do was to appoint an officer known as a _Health Officer_, or a committee known as a _Board of Health_, in each town and in each county, whose business it should be to find out cases of infectious disease, and to warn other people against them.

These officers first ask all the doctors in the town to report to this Central Health Office, or Board of Health, every case of a patient with an infectious disease. Then, when the case has been reported, that office sends some one with a card on which the name of the disease is printed in large letters, and he tacks the card upon the front of the house or upon the fence around the lot, so that everyone who goes near the house may know that there is danger, and keep away from it. Then, sometimes, a messenger from the Board of Health goes into the house and talks to the family, and tells them how they can keep the patient in a room by himself, so as to prevent the rest of the family from catching the disease; and how they can best take care of the patient, and keep from carrying the infection through clothing or food or anything else.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ONE WAY IN WHICH THE BOARD OF HEALTH PROTECTS US]

Then, because anyone who has been sick with an infectious disease will still be shedding the germs of the disease and spitting or coughing, not only as long as he is sick, but for two or three weeks after he is beginning to feel better, the messenger will tell the family that the patient must stay either in his own room or within his own house or yard, for so many days or weeks. This is called keeping _quarantine_.

The word comes from the Italian word _quaranta_, "forty"; because in the early days when the practice was first begun, the patients used to be kept by themselves in this way for forty days. While sometimes this is very inconvenient and hard and troublesome, it is really the only safe way of stopping the spread of these diseases; and I am sure anyone of you would be willing to take this extra trouble sooner than let any of your friends catch a disease from you, and perhaps die of it. Quarantine is also the best and safest thing for the patient, because it keeps him quiet and at rest until he has completely recovered, and until all danger that the poison of the disease will attack his lungs or heart or kidneys is over.

In some of the best schools now there is an examination of all the children every morning, by a visiting doctor sent by the Board of Health. If the doctor finds any child that has red and watery eyes, or is running at the nose, or sneezing, or coughing, or has a sore throat, he usually sends him home at once, so that the other children will not catch the infection. The school doctor is not thinking only about what seems to be a cold, although, as you know, it is very important that anyone with a cold should take good care of himself and should not let others catch it from him. The doctor sends the child home because this is just the way in which several other infectious diseases may begin--_measles_, _scarlet fever_, _chicken pox_, _whooping cough_, and _diphtheria_. For most infectious diseases, as you will remember, are caught from germs floating in the air and breathed into the nose and throat.

The Board of Health takes care of the public in many ways besides these. It keeps a very careful watch upon the water supply of the town, or city, so as to keep the houses and factories from running their drainage, or _sewage_, into it; for this, as you already know, might cause the spread of typhoid fever and of other diseases of the bowels and stomach.

The Board of Health sends men to examine, or inspect, the milk the dairymen bring, to see that it is sweet and pure, and that there are no infectious germs in it. And it sends men out into the country to examine the dairy farms and see that the cows are properly fed, and that the barns in which they are milked are kept clean; and that the water in which the milk pans and bottles are washed comes from clean, pure wells or springs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHAT MILK INSPECTION MEANS

Clean barns, cows, pails, and milkers mean clean milk. The cows here stand in fresh, clean sawdust.]

Another thing that the Board of Health does is to send an inspector round to look very carefully at all the meat that is sold in the butcher shops, and at all the fruits and vegetables at the grocers'.

If he finds any meat that is diseased or tainted or bad, or any fruit or vegetables that are beginning to spoil, or any flour, sugar, or canned goods that have been mixed with cheaper stuffs that are not good to eat,--in fact, are what the law calls _adulterated_,--he may seize the bad and dangerous foods and destroy them, and summon to court the dealers who are trying to sell them. Then the dealers are fined or perhaps sent to prison.

So, you see, the Board of Health is one of the very best friends that you have, trying to keep your food pure and good, the water that you drink clean and wholesome, and the milk sweet and free from dirt or disease germs. You ought to help these officers and their inspectors in every way that you can. I know that it is sometimes troublesome to obey all their rules; and perhaps when you don't know what the dangers are which they are trying to guard you against, it seems to you that they are too particular about a great many things. But just see what they have done already to make our cities and houses healthier and pleasanter places to live in.

Only one hundred and fifty years ago, for instance, that terrible disease called _smallpox_ killed hundreds of thousands of people every year in Europe; and it attacked the eyes and blinded so many of those who recovered from it, that nearly half the poor blind people in the blind asylums had had their sight destroyed by it. In smallpox there is a terrible eruption, or breaking out, upon the skin, which is likely to leave it pitted and scarred; and even fifty years ago it was exceedingly common to see people who had been pitted by smallpox, or, as the expression was, "pock-marked."

Cows have a disease somewhat like this, but much less dangerous, called cow-pox. Years ago, before dairies were inspected as they are now, dairy maids often caught this disease from the cows they milked, so that their hands would break out with pock-marks.

About a hundred years ago, a Dr. Richard Jenner discovered that the dairy maids in the country district in which he lived, who had caught this mild infection from the cows they milked, never caught smallpox even when they were exposed to it. So after studying over the subject for some years, he took a little of the matter, or pus, from the eruption on the udder of a cow that had cow-pox, scratched the arm of a little patient of his, and rubbed some of the pus into it. Only a short time after, the family of this little boy was exposed to smallpox, and all the other children took it badly, but he escaped.

This was the beginning of what we call _vaccination_; and as soon as it was found that this scratching of the arm and putting a little of this _vaccine_ matter into it would cause only a few days of feverishness, and then after that give complete protection against smallpox, the Boards of Health all over the civilized world took it up and insisted upon everybody's being vaccinated when a baby.

As a result, smallpox has become one of the rarest, instead of the commonest, of our infectious diseases. Only a few dozen people die of it each year in Europe, instead of several hundred thousands; scarcely one one-hundredth of the people now in our blind asylums have been sent there by smallpox, and I dare say that many of you have never even seen a pock-marked person.

Another disease that used to be very dangerous to little children is _diphtheria_. It was not only very infectious, but very deadly; and nearly half of the children who took it died of it, and the doctors didn't know anything that would cure it. About twenty years ago, two great scientists, one a Frenchman named Roux--a student of the great Professor Louis Pasteur, of whom I am sure you have heard--and the other, a German, named Behring, discovered an _ant.i.toxin_ for diphtheria; that is, something to defeat the poison of the diphtheria germ. When this ant.i.toxin is injected into the blood, it will cure diphtheria.

The doctors and the Boards of Health took this up too, and insisted upon its being used in all cases; with the result that where the ant.i.toxin is used early, scarcely one in twenty of the patients dies, instead of eight or ten out of twenty, as before.

You know how careful we are all trying to be not to let consumption spread. By insisting that all houses shall be built so as to give plenty of light and fresh air to everyone; and by forbidding spitting upon the streets; and by insisting that food to be sold, especially milk, shall be clean,--by preventing the spread of the disease in every way, our Boards of Health have cut down the number of deaths from this disease nearly one half; and people in the United States, for instance, or in England, where these health laws are enforced, live now almost exactly twice as long on the average as they did one hundred years ago, or as they do now in India and in Turkey, for instance, where the people are ignorant and dirty and careless.

So you see that even if some of the health regulations do seem rather troublesome and fussy, it is well worth while to try to follow them and help the health inspectors in every way. Even little children can help very much in keeping the houses and the cities in which they live clean and healthful and beautiful.

WORK AND PLAY

I. GROWING STRONG

When school is over, out you go with a rush, into the open air. You have worked hard all day, and now you have two hours before supper to do just as you like.

Perhaps you will play tag, or prisoner's base, or stealing sticks, or town ball. They are all fine fun, and they exercise every muscle in your body and make your lungs breathe deeper and your heart beat faster, and make every part of you grow stronger.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BETTER TO TAKE THAN MEDICINE]

Perhaps you have a few ch.o.r.es to do or errands to run; but even these are almost as much fun as play and give you good exercise in the open air and, what is better still, a feeling that you are being of some use in the world, which is one of the happiest and most satisfactory feelings that you will ever have, if you live to be a hundred years old.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OUT FOR AN AFTERNOON IN THE PARK]

But when you have finished your work, you must not forget to play real, lively, jolly games out of doors--ball and tag and hide-and-seek, and all those games that children love.

Hide-and-seek is a good game, because, when you are caught, you can stand still a few minutes and rest. When you are hiding, you can take a good breath for the home-run you have to make. Most games, in fact, are planned like this--a run and a rest, and then another run. While you rest, some one else is taking his turn at the bat, or at being "It," or whatever is the hardest part of the work. This is one reason why games are so good for you to play.

You see, when you run, you are working your muscles and heart-pump very hard; and if you kept running all the time, you would burn up so much food in the muscles that the heart couldn't pump blood fast enough to wash away all the waste, and would just chug-chug-chug till it tired itself out. When you are tired, it is time to stop and rest; for being tired means that the poisons are not being carried away from the muscles fast enough, and that your heart is working too hard.

What is it in your body that gives it stiffening to stand upright, and makes levers in your legs and arms to move it about? When you feel your body and arms and head with your fingers, what are they like?

Isn't there something hard and then a soft kind of pad over it? We call the hard things _bones_. Your teacher will show you some. These are white and chalky looking; but when they were alive, they were a beautiful pinkish white color.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SKELETON OF A MAN]

So you have a pretty pearl-colored framework, the shape of your body.

This, which is called your _skeleton_, makes you stiff enough to stand up and walk about. Now bend your arm and turn your wrist and open and close your hand. You find that your frame-work is jointed. When you are tired standing, you can bend your joints and sit down. If you want an apple, you can close your fingers and pick it up.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MUSCLES OF THE ARM]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHEN THE MUSCLES SHORTEN]

What are the soft pads that you felt over the bones of your arms and legs? Stretch your right arm straight out in front of you and take hold of the upper part of it with your left hand. Now clench your right fist and bring it toward your shoulder. Can you feel the elastic pads, or bands, moving? What are they doing? They are pulling your hand up to your shoulder. When you walk, you can feel the elastic bands moving your legs along. So every move we make, these elastic ropes are at work pulling us about and letting us sit down and making us run and jump. We call them _muscles_.

You have perhaps seen jointed dolls. The strings and rubber bands on their joints help to make them move; but the dolls don't act as if they were alive. They have no telephone system to tell their bodies how to move.

If you will stop and think how many "moves" you make in a day, you'll know how hard your muscles have to work. They'd be quite tired out if they did not have plenty to feed on all the time and did not rest at least nine hours a day. I told you how the food is melted and carried about in the blood. It is the blood that brings the muscles their food and keeps them alive and makes them strong enough to move the joints and the bones.

What does all this playing do for you? It makes you grow not only big, but strong, too. What puny little things you'd be if you couldn't get out and run and play and make your muscles strong and your nerves do just what you tell them to do.

I know of ten or twelve little chickens that hatched a few weeks ago.

There are so many cats about, that the poor little chicks have to be shut up in the barn all day. At first they ran and played and jumped on their mother's back, but now they hump their shoulders and hang their heads and don't seem hungry and look sad and sick. They are not so big as some that hatched later. Can you tell me why? Of course you can. You know that it is outdoor exercise and play that chickens need, and that you need to make you grow big and strong, too. Of course, you will have to keep your backbone straight and your chest out and your head up; but all these things will be easy for you if you are perfectly well and strong.

The school tries to take just as good care of your health and growth as it can. Your lessons are short, and you change from one to another frequently, with perhaps drills or calisthenic exercises between, so that you need not sit still too long at a time; and the seats and desks are of different sizes so that you need not sit at a desk that does not fit you. When your teacher urges you to go out of doors and play at recess time, even if you do not want to, you must think to yourself, "It will rest me and make me grow big and straight and strong."

When you come home from school, go out of doors and stay out just as long as you can. Don't let dolls or toys or picture books tempt you to stay in the house. The pictures out of doors are ever so much prettier, as soon as you learn to see them. But some of you live in crowded cities. I hope you are near a park or a playground, where you can have a good romp with other children, and use the swings and see-saws and bars, and the skating pond in winter, and the swimming pool in summer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SKATING POND MADE OUT OF A GARDEN