DISEASE GERMS
We have learned that the body is made up of cells, and that each
cell is alive. The cells in our bodies cannot live separately.
There are, however, certain animals and plants that are each made
up of a single cell. These animals and plants are called germs, and
some of them cause disease.
[Sidenote: Different germs cause different diseases]
These germs are so exceedingly small that we can see them only
with the aid of a microscope. They differ in appearance one from
another, as a pine tree differs from an ash, or an American child
from a Chinese child. When you plant your garden, you put sweet
peas in one place and asters in another, and you know that you will
have sweet peas growing where you planted the pea seeds, and asters
growing where the aster seeds were put. So it is with these little
germs; you will no more get tuberculosis from typhoid fever germs
than you would get asters from pea seeds.
Now, while there are many, many kinds of germs in the world, there
are only certain ones that cause certain diseases, and we have
learned where these germs like to live and how to kill them. We
also know that they come only from some person or animal sick
with the particular disease which they cause. Typhoid fever germs
are not given off by a person suffering with tuberculosis, nor
are diphtheria germs given off by a typhoid fever patient, but
the germ of each disease is given off by some person or animal
suffering from that particular disease.
[Sidenote: How sickness due to germs can be prevented]
If we kill all the germs that come from people sick with a certain
disease, no one else can catch that disease. Knowing this, it seems
unnecessary for anyone ever to be sick with disease that is caused
by a germ. This is literally true, and the only reason that we have
germ diseases is because we do not kill the germs that come from
the sick people.
Professor Irving Fisher of Yale University has said, "It is
entirely possible to wipe out consumption within a single
generation." It may not actually be done so quickly, but it is
certain that the disease can finally be wiped out, though it may
require many generations to accomplish it.
Why, then, are germ diseases allowed to exist? Simply because
so many people do not know the facts; and because many who do
know will not take the trouble to kill the germs, even when they
realize that some one else may get the disease as a result of their
carelessness. What do you think of a woman who said, "I do not care
if my neighbor's children do get scarlet fever from us; she is not
a friend of mine, any way"? A woman has been heard to make such a
statement to a health officer. It is just such people as this who
spread disease.
=Questions.= 1. How may germs be compared to seeds? 2. What do we
know about disease germs that will help us to get rid of them?
3. How is it possible for us to get rid of consumption and other
germ diseases?
=Remember.= 1. While there are many kinds of germs in the world,
only a few cause disease. 2. The germ that causes a certain
disease will cause that disease and no other. 3. It is entirely
possible to kill all the germs that cause disease.