An ounce of prevention : a practical little book to be used as a health guide for the prevention of diseases and prolonging life

Preface

The chief business of the modern physician is to prevent disease. The matter of treatment and cure should take second place. The physician who spends all his energies treating and curing diseases and, never teaches his patient how to prevent diseases is guilty of a great sin of omission.

But before any great degree of success can. crown the efforts of the physician who tries to teach the prevention of diseases the people must be educated along that line, otherwise they will not be able to understand and apply the teaching.

Ignorance and superstition are great hindrances to the teaching of hygiene and preventitive medicine, and these must be overcome before any. great and permanent good can be accomplished.

The writer of this little work has endeavored to leave out all difficult words and expressions and to present the facts in their simplest form. Having been written in the midst of a busy practice, between calls and sometimes on the road, a perfect literary production correct in every minor detail cannot be expected.

Should this little book be instrumental in causing some careless, thoughtless person to improve his hygienic surroundings and thereby prevent disease and premature decay, or should it be of assistance to some mother in, safeguarding the health and life of her infant, thereby reduce the rate of infant mortality, the writer will feel that his efforts have not been in vain.

Fayetteville, June, 1915. (4)

Entroduction.

Man is nothing more nor less than a skillfully constructed machine, perfectly adjusted, sc much so that we see in him the handiwork of God. Yet he is a machine, and for convenience we will call him an automobile that has been given the power to think and reason.

The more complicated a machine is the more skillful must be the one who has charge of it. The man who has charge of a railroad engine needs and must have greater knowledge of mechanics than a man who pushes a wheel-barrow.

Since the human body is the most complicated and most wonderfully constructed of all machines, the one who has charge of it should be intelligent and know the rules that govern it, otherwise great damage will be done in handling it.

Before a man is entrusted to handle an expensive, complicated machine, he must study and understand the different parts. He must know how each part works and what relation it bears to the whole machine. He must know how to prevent breakdowns, and excessive or unnecessary wear and tear.

The human body is the most important, most valuable and most complicated of all machines. How vastly important it is then that we should understand something about the parts that go to make up the body. How essential! it is that we know how these parts work and what relation

Introduction. 7 they bear to the whole body. How important it is that we should know how to prevent breakdowns and unnecessary or excessive wear and “tear. It is along this line that this book is written. People, as a whole, are far too ignorant and superstititious about diseases, their cause and prevention.

The good book says, that the way of the transgressor is hard. This is true physically as well as spiritually. When we transgress the laws of health, let us remember that the penalty is sure to come soon or late.

CHESTER A. FATON.

Contents

The Baby.

Great efforts are being made throughout the country to decrease the death rate of babies. The present death rate among children under two years old is a reflection on civilization; it is about three times too much among the more intelligent class of people and about five times too much among the ignorant class. The best way to cut down the death rate is to

teach the people how to intelligently care for the babies, and stop doing silly things because their grandmothers did such things.