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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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 _antitoxin_ for
diphtheria; that is, something to defeat the poison of the diphtheria
germ. When this antitoxin 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
antitoxin 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.