The Child's Day by Woods Hutchinson
page 80 of 136 (58%)
page 80 of 136 (58%)
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windows in the summer time, and particularly to screen carefully any
place where food is kept or cooked; for we know that a great many cases of typhoid and of other diseases of the stomach and bowels, such as _summer sickness_, or summer _diarrhea_, and _cholera morbus_, are carried to our food by the dirty feet of flies. Many of the germs of "catching" diseases--most of them, in fact--are carried in the air, in scales that have rubbed off the skin of the persons sick with them, or in spray that they have coughed into the air, or in saliva that they have spit upon the floor. There is one sickness of this kind that I ought to tell you about, because it kills so many thousand people here in our own country every year. We sometimes call it the "Great White Plague." Its common name is _consumption_, and the doctors call it _tuberculosis_. I dare say you have heard of it and wondered what it meant. A few years ago people thought it could not be cured. They thought that children had it because their parents had had it before them. But now, the cheering thing about it is that we have found that Mother Nature herself can cure it with fresh air and sunshine and wholesome food. We have found, too, that people catch it from others who are sick with it, and need not have it just because their parents did. [Illustration: FRESH AIR AND SUNLIGHT ARE GOOD DOCTORS] This means, then, that thousands of people who have it need not die, but can be cured simply by living and sleeping out of doors and eating plenty of milk, eggs, and meat, nuts and fruit. There are camps for them in almost every state in the Union now. The fresh air gives them |
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