Health on the Farm: A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene

Importance of Our Subject

Notwithstanding the extraordinary advances in a material way that have been accomplished in this country within the last few decades, it is a significant and most alarming fact that progress in hygienic matters has lagged far behind. Why this is, it would be very difficult to say,--for the reason that the causes are perhaps many. Chief among these, probably, is the fact that our progress along industrial lines has occupied the entire time of the majority of our best intellects, and it is also in no small degree the consequence of a fatalism that regards disease as a direct visitation of providence and therefore a thing which man may not avoid. Another cause in some instances is the pride of our people in their homes and respective localities, which causes them to repel with indignation the suggestion that any special measures are necessary in order to conserve the public health where they reside. Ignorant as the average man is of the causes that produce sickness and the means by which this result is accomplished, he is naturally not in a position to form a correct judgment concerning such matters, and as a consequence, sees no reasons for taking the precautions that are necessary in order to ward off disease. This ignorance, it must be confessed with sorrow, is in a measure the fault of the medical profession, which has not in the vast majority of instances lived up to its ideals in this connection. Petty and unworthy rivalry has played an extremely important part in this failure of medical men to do their duty in this particular--none of the physicians of a community being, as a rule, willing that others should instruct the public, however vital this might be for the general good. As a consequence, that class of vultures known as medical quacks has furnished to the laity by far the greater proportion of their instruction on hygienic subjects, with the result that the average man has a greater misconception and less real knowledge of such matters than of anything else in which he is vitally interested.

Another, and very curious explanation for our general disregard of the laws of health is that our strong belief in ourselves impels us to think that however much others may suffer from things generally regarded as unhygienic, we, ourselves, will be immune. This belief is fostered by the fact that in early life there often seems no end to our capacity to endure, and we find ourselves constantly defying without apparent harm, what we are told by others is directly contrary to all rules of proper living. But it is unfortunately true also that the reserve force and great power of resistance that enables us to do these things begins to wane towards the end of the third decade of life, and we, therefore, find ourselves sooner or later breaking down after we have become thoroughly convinced that we were made of iron, and that while other people might not be able to do as we were, it could not possibly result in evil in our own cases.

What a pity it is that the young will not learn from the experience of those who have gone before them! Could they only do so, how much suffering and woe could be avoided in this world. Unfortunately, however, there are few men so constituted that they are willing to be guided by the experience of those who have preceded them, and there is but a faint possibility, therefore, that any good can be accomplished by warning the coming generation of the troubles in store for them should they not heed the advice of those who have suffered before them. Notwithstanding this, the writer feels that these words of warning should be spoken to the young, since they, alas, are the only ones to be benefited by such advice.

As you value your happiness materially, and as you desire a healthy old age and a long life, inform yourselves as to the few simple laws that govern human existence, and attempt so far as lies in your power to follow them. If you do not do this, disaster will follow as surely as the night follows the day.

_Apathy of the Public as to Hygiene._--As a partial consequence, probably, of all the reasons mentioned, along with others, there exists in the popular mind a curious apathy concerning hygienic matters--an apathy so great that it is scarcely possible to get the average man to discuss, much less to put in practice the all-important laws that govern health. As a result of the work of the various State boards of health and of the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, this condition of affairs happily shows some signs of abatement, and we certainly have reasons to believe that the future promises great things along these lines. No sign of this change is more significant than the awakening of the press of the country to the vast importance of instructing the public in health matters, and their changed attitude toward the charlatans and quacks who live by promising the impossible. Largely subsidized by the infamous vendors of patent medicine, our newspapers and magazines still lend their columns to these human vampires who prey pre-eminently on the ignorance and credulity of the hopelessly-diseased poor; but within recent years some of our foremost journals show signs of an awakening of conscience, and a very few have even gone so far as to exclude advertisements of this character altogether.

It has been said, certainly with more or less truth, that we are creatures of our surroundings, but whether we accept this in its broadest sense or not, there can be no question that our well being is most intimately connected with those things with which we come into every day contact. Nothing is more important for us to recognize than that our diseases are contracted from neighboring subjects just in proportion as we are closely associated with them. From our fellowmen we contract, as everyone knows, a large number of diseases, either by direct contact or by means of the air that surrounds us. From the earth we get hook-worms and other animal parasites, either by coming directly in contact with it or through eating uncooked fruits and vegetables. From water we get typhoid fever, dysentery, cholera, and many other parasitic diseases. From our food we likewise contract dangerous maladies such as tapeworms from uncooked meats and fish and the deadly trichina from raw hog meat. With decomposed breads we take the poisons that produce pellagra, kak-ke, ergotism and acrodinia. From uncooked fruits and vegetables we get dysentery, typhoid fever, cholera, and parasitic diseases. Spoiled beans give us the deadly lathyrismus. From decomposed meat and fish we get ptomaine poisoning. Mosquitoes convey to us malaria, yellow fever and a parasite known as the filaria. The dreaded sleeping-sickness of Africa comes through the bites of a small fly; the bedbug is believed to be the means of conveying a frightful disease known as kala-azar, and the house-fly often brings to us the germs that produce typhoid fever, dysentery, and probably other diseases as well.

The bubonic plague, which is one of the most frightful diseases known, is conveyed to man by the rat and mouse.[1] Hydrophobia is usually contracted from the bite of the dog, and it is a well-known fact that this animal often harbors a minute tapeworm, a single egg of which, when swallowed by the human being, is often followed by death. Both dogs and cats probably convey diphtheria, and both unquestionably often have within their intestinal tracts tapeworms that occasionally infect children. With the exception of the rare disease known as glanders, the horse is not believed to be directly responsible for any of the maladies from which the human being suffers, but it is well established that fully 95 per cent. of house-flies hatch in the manure of these animals, and they, therefore, become indirectly responsible for some of the most serious diseases affecting the human being. It is thus seen that almost every object with which man comes in intimate contact is capable of conveying to him the poison of one or more diseases. If it were possible for us to separate ourselves completely from everything with which we are ordinarily associated there can be no question that the span of human life would be greatly increased, and that death from bacterial and parasitic diseases generally would no longer occur. All this is said not with the object of startling the reader, but to warn him of the dangers that surround him on every hand, and to urge a recognition of that which can so materially prolong his life. Fortunately these sources of infection may be almost entirely done away with by a few simple rules of life, and the health and longevity of mankind must necessarily be directly proportionate to the care with which we observe them.