Primer of hygiene

Front matter

Goipght N ° 1 ^ ' i

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.

Open air school, San Diego County

Preface

In comparatively recent years a new knowledge that is able to save man from a great part of the sickness that has heretofore afflicted him has come into the world. This knowledge reaches the people but slowly, however, and there are yet at all times in the United States three millions of people who are seriously ill, one-half of them suffering from ailments that are easily preventable.

The writers of this text have felt that the greatest immediate service our schools can render is to teach the facts that will enable the people to shake off the great burden of preventable disease that they are now carrying. They believe that hygiene should be faith¬ fully taught in every schoolroom in the land, and that the object of teaching it should be the prevention of sickness. He who would seek the motive of this small volume will therefore easily find it; for the single purpose of the authors has been to select those facts that have been shown by modern science to be vital in health conservation, and to present these facts in the simplest form possible.

It is believed that those familiar with our crowded school curricula will appreciate the slim compass into which the matter has been brought, and it is hoped that this little book may serve a useful purpose in the hands of those earnest teachers who are leading their pupils and their communities into the Era of Health that lies before us.

iii

TO THE TEACHER

The teacher who uses this text will find Allen’s Civics and Health (Ginn & Company, Boston), Shaw’s School Hygiene (The Macmillan Company, New York), McVail’s The Prevention of Infectious Diseases (The Macmillan Company), Lloyd and Bigelow’s The Teaching of Biology (Longmans, Green & Com¬ pany, New York), and Hutchinson’s Preventable Diseases (Houghton, Mifflin & Company, Boston), most useful in giving a background for the teach¬ ing of the subject. McKenzie’s Exercise in Edu¬ cation and Medicine (W. B. Saunders Company, Philadelphia), Harrington’s Practical Hygiene (Lea and Febiger, Philadelphia), and Jordan’s Principles of Bacteriology (W. B. Saunders Company), are books of a more advanced nature, but they can be profit¬ ably consulted by even the non-technical reader. Ritchie’s Primer of Sanitation and Human Physiology , the second and third books of the series which includes this text, will furnish more detailed infor¬ mation in regard to many of the topics discussed, and the Gulick Hygiene Series (Ginn & Company) will be of service to the teacher. These or other similar books should be at the command of the teacher, for there can be little doubt of the truth of Spencer’s dictum that hygiene is the most im¬ portant subject in the schools and that it should yield to no subject in the care with which it is taught or in the time devoted to it.

iv

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Importance of Keeping the Body in

Health . i

Chapter One The Importance Of Keeping The Body In Health

Fig. i. When we have health we find the world a beautiful place in which to live.

All of us know that this is a beautiful and a pleas¬ ant world. We enjoy the songs of the birds and the beauty of the flowers. It gives us pleasure to feel the soft winds of spring and to watch the green come back on the trees. We love to watch the clouds sail through the sky and the snowflakes fall through the air. Everywhere we turn we find many things that give us happiness and content¬ ment, and make the world a beautiful place for us to live in.

Why is it that we cannot spend all our time en¬ joying the pleasant and beautiful things of life?

Why must we take life so seriously? Why must older people work, and why must children study and prepare themselves for work? We will tell you the great reason why every one who wishes to enjoy the pleasant things of life cannot give all his time and thought to these same beautiful and pleasant things. It is because we must have health to enjoy the world , and we must work to care for our bodies and to keep them in health .

The health of the body important. Nature has given to each of us a body, and in these bodies we must live as long as we are in the world. When our bodies are well and strong, we rejoice in them, and we see and feel the beauty of the world. But when sickness and pain come upon us, we can get little pleasure from all the things that have been provided for our enjoyment. This is why we must care for our bodies if we would enjoy the pleasures of life and do the work that is waiting in the world for each one of us.

Work required to keep our bodies in health.

To care for the body is not easy, for it must have food, it must be protected from cold, and it must have many other wants supplied. Indeed, so difficult is it to supply all the needs of our bodies that the hu¬ man race spends most of its time working to secure those things that are necessary for life and comfort. Yet our bodies must be cared for; otherwise we can neither get out of the world the happiness that it

KEEPING THE BODY IN HEALTH ought to hold for us, nor give to others the pleas¬ ure that our lives ought to bring to them.

Hygiene important because it teaches how to care for the body. It is the purpose of this book to teach you how to care for your body and keep it in health. The study of this subject is called hygiene . It is a most important sub¬ ject to you — so important that if you cannot afford to take time to study it and understand it, there are few things that you can afford to take time to do.

Questions : i. Why cannot we give all our time to enjoy¬ ing the pleasant things of the world? 2. Explain why it is so important for us to care for our bodies. 3. What is hygiene? 4. Why is the study of hygiene important?

Suggestions and topics for development: Let the teacher and pupils keep an account of the number of days that are lost by the school or grade during the year on account of sickness.

When any one is ill, record the cause of the sickness and deter¬ mine if possible whether or not it could have been prevented. At the end of the year count up how many days of sickness could have been prevented by reasonable care.

The teacher should secure from the Secretary of the Committee of One Hundred on National Health, New Haven, Connecticut, Professor Irving Fisher’s “ Report on National Vitality, Its Wastes and Conservation.” This pamphlet contains a wealth of infor¬ mation in regard to the whole subject of health and disease pre¬ vention. It is important that both teacher and pupil understand that in a young person health is the natural condition; that sick¬ ness in such a person is unnatural; and that the cause of sickness in a young person should at once be looked for.

humerus

Fig. 2. The skeleton.

Chapter Two The Human Body And The Great Laws Of Health

A great engine is made of many different parts all put together to make one machine. So is the human body made of many different parts all joined to¬ gether to make one whole. The engineer must know when his engine needs coal and water and how to supply them. So we must understand the needs of our bodies and how to satisfy these needs. The engineer must know how to keep sand and dirt out of the working parts of the engine and how to oil these parts so that they will not wear each other away. So we must know how to keep out of our bodies the germs that cause disease and how to give our bodies the exercise and rest that are necessary for their health. In this chapter we shall study the parts of the body, the needs of the body, and the great laws we must observe to keep our bodies in health.

The parts of the human body. The human body is composed of a head, a trunk, and two pairs of limbs. It is supported by a strong framework of bones on which the whole body is built. The muscles to move this framework of bones are stretched over it in strong bands, and the skin forms a tough covering over the whole body.

The organs of the body. The bones and muscles form a thick wall about a large cavity in the trunk of the body. In this cavity are found 5 many of the organs that do the work of the body. In the upper part of the cavity we find the heart and lungs. In its lower part are the stomach, the

Fig. 3. The principal organs of the body. The left lung has been removed and the edge of the right lung turned back to show the heart and blood vessels more clearly.

intestines, the liver, the kidneys, and some other organs. In Figure 3 the organs are shown as they lie in place in the cavity of the trunk.

THE HUMAN BODY

The uses of the organs. Each part of the body has a work to do. The bones give shape and strength to every part. Without them we should be as limp and shapeless as bags of sand. The muscles move all the body parts, and without the muscles we should be as motionless as trees or stones. The stomach and intestines take in food and prepare it for use; the heart keeps the blood moving through the body; and the lungs take in oxygen from the air. The hand has a work that the foot can¬ not do, and the eye has a work that the tongue cannot do. In the same way each part of the body has a work of its own that can be done by no other part.

The great laws of health. For an engineer to understand the importance of taking care of his en¬ gine is not enough; he must also know how to do it. So, if we hope to have strong, healthy bodies, we must not only understand the importance of keep¬ ing the laws of health, but we must know what these laws are and how we can keep them.

One of the great laws of health is that the body must have a proper supply of food. Another is that it must have an abundance of fresh air. A third is that the body must get rid of its poisonous wastes; a fourth law is that it must be sheltered from the weather so that it will not be too hot or too cold; and a fifth, that it must have exercise, rest, and sleep. Still another law, and a very important one, is that disease germs must not be allowed to get into the body and poison it.

Every one of these laws must be followed if we are to keep our health and our strength; for so surely as an apple falls to the earth when its stem is separated from the tree, so surely is your body in¬ jured when the great laws of its life are broken. In later chapters of this book we shall discuss each of these laws and' point out how each may best be followed.

Questions: i. Name the principal divisions of the body. 2. What forms the framework of the body? 3. What is stretched over the framework of the body to move it? 4. With what is the body covered? 5. What organs are in the upper part of the cavity of the body? 6. In the lower part? 7. What is the work of the bones? 8. Of the muscles? 9. Of the stomach and intestines? 10. Of the heart? n. Of the lungs? 12. Name some other organs of the body and tell what they do. 13. Give some of the great laws of health. 14. What will happen to us if we break these laws?

Suggestions and topics for development: Develop the idea of the interdependence of the body parts. Use the fable of the hands that grew tired of seeking food for the lazy stomach, but found that when the stomach was not supplied with food, the hands and all the other parts of the body became weak and helpless.

Chapter Three Foods And Their Uses In The Body

Figs. 4, 5, and 6. Foods furnish the body with building material, heat, and strength.

When a person goes without food for more than a few hours, he feels hungry. This means that his body needs food and is calling for it. If the person cannot get food, he will soon become weak and his body will waste away. Without food we cannot keep our health and strength. Without food we cannot even live.

Do you ever wonder why it is that you want to eat? Why one food is sometimes better for us than another food? Why a proper amount of food will give strength to the body and too much food will make the body ill? Why physicians are continually telling us to be careful about what we eat and in¬ sisting that a great part of our sickness comes from improper food? These questions are most impor¬ tant to us, and we shall therefore study foods and the uses that the body makes of them.

Foods necessary for building materials. Scrape the skin of your arm with a knife. Do you not find 9

Hy—2 dead, dry scales on the knife? This dead material is all the time falling away from the skin, as parti¬ cles of bark drop from the outside of a tree. The inner parts of your body also are wasting away. Yet your body does not become lighter and thinner. On the contrary, with young persons the body grows larger and becomes heavier year by year. This is because every particle of substance that wastes away in heart or muscle or brain or skin is re¬ placed by new materials, and at the same time new substance is built up for making the body larger. This new material is formed from the food that we eat. One great use of food is to furnish building mate¬ rial to the body.

The building foods. Among the more impor¬ tant building foods are lean meats, milk, and eggs. Bread and grains also contain large amounts of building materials, as do peas, beans, oats, and corn. These foods give the body warmth and strength, but their main use is to furnish material for growth and repair. They can do this because they are composed of materials like those which make up our bodies. Only such materials can build up our bodies. It would be just as sensible to try to mend a broken window with bricks or to repair a wornout engine with lumps of coal as to try to repair the body with materials different from those of which it is made. Every day we must eat some building food, for night and day, whether

FOODS AND THEIR USES IN THE BODY II

we are asleep or awake, our bodies are wearing away.

Foods necessary to give heat to the body.

The body is warmer than most of the objects around it. It is kept warm by the food that we eat just as a stove is kept warm by the wood or coal that is burned in it. A second use of food is to furnish heat for warming the body.

Foods necessary to give strength to the body.

You have seen a great engine driving hundreds of machines, or you have watched a locomotive as it flew across the country pulling a train behind it. An engine gets its power to work from the coal that is burned in it. In the same way, when you lift something or when you run, your body gets its strength and its power from the food that it uses. A third use of food is to give the body strength and power to work.

The heating and strengthening foods. The

second class of foods is the heating and strengthen¬ ing foods. These are the foods that contain the starches and sugars, the fats and the oils. We take sugar into the body mainly in fruits and in the foods to which we add it to improve the taste. Molasses, honey, syrups, and other sweet foods also contain large amounts of sugar.

Starch forms more than three fifths of our food. We eat it mainly in potatoes and in the foods made from grains — wheat bread, corn bread, macaroni, rice, and breakfast foods. Some starch is found also in such vegetables as,turnips and cabbages.

The fats we get chiefly in meats and in butter and milk. We also get fat in food cooked with lard or cotton-seed oil and a little fat in fruits and

Fig. 7. We should eat plain, substantial foods that will supply the body’s needs and keep it in health. We should learn in youth to eat these foods, for to a great extent we carry through life the habits of eating that we form when we are young.

vegetables. From a pound of fat or oil the body gets twice as much heat and strength as it gets from a pound of any other kind of food.

Selecting foods that will supply all the body needs. We should eat some building foods and some heating and strengthening foods, so that all the needs of the body may be supplied. Some persons eat so much meat that their bodies have more build¬ ing material than they can use, while at the same time they have very little starch and sugar. Some

FOODS AND THEIR USES IN THE BODY 13

persons dislike fat meats and butter and take only a little fat in their food. It is believed that these per¬ sons are more liable to certain diseases, especially to consumption, than are persons who eat a reason¬ able amount of fat. A few persons seem able to live and keep in health on nuts and fruits, but these foods do not contain enough building material for most persons. Eating too much meat, not eating enough fat, and not eating enough building mate¬ rial are the three most common mistakes in selecting foods.

Learning to eat many different kinds of foods.

Nearly all of us like the things that we eat as chil¬ dren, and to a large extent we keep through life the habits of eating formed when we are young. You should therefore eat many different kinds of foods and learn to like them, and guard against falling into the habit of eating only a few things and refusing to taste anything else.

Questions: 1. Name the first use of foods to the body. 2. Why must the body have building materials? 3. Name the more important building foods. 4. Give two other uses of foods in the body. 5. What materials do these foods contain? 6. Name some foods that contain starch. 7. Name some foods that contain sugar. 8. Name the foods from which we obtain fat. 9. For what is fat especially valuable in the body? 10. Name some common mistakes that people make in selecting their food.

Suggestions and topics for development : Whether an animal that stays outdoors in the winter or one that is kept in a warm stable needs more food, and why. The kind of food eaten by the inhabit¬ ants of cold countries, and why. The kind of foods needed in es¬ pecially large amounts by growing animals and children. Where a chick in an egg gets the lime for building its skeleton. The minerals needed by the body and where they are obtained. How food is stored in the body. Why a person is thin after sickness. What a frog or a bear lives on while it is sleeping through the winter. Why a person who is doing hard work needs large amounts of food.

The teacher should learn as much as possible about the eating habits of the pupils, and if any of them are given to eating large quantities of sweets or lean meats, or are falling into other errors of diet, they should have clearly presented to them the fact that the body demands a balanced ration and that it will not receive such a ration from a diet of this sort.

The teacher who understands chemistry will find profit in reading Chittenden’s The Nutrition of Man, published by Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York.

Chapter Four Buying Foods

Fig. 8. Showing the comparative amounts of building material that a given sum of money will buy in different foods.

During a strike in Chicago a poor woman spent her last ten cents for lettuce to feed her hungry family. If she had bought dried beans, she would have had seventy-one times as much food for the same money; or by spending five cents for bread and five cents for milk she could have taken home to her children forty-one times as much nourish¬ ment. She did not understand that the body must have a certain amount of building material and a certain amount of food for heat and strength, and that the various food materials are not equally valuable for these purposes. She had not learned that in mutton a pound of building material costs $1.50, while in corn meal it can be bought for 27 cents; that the amount of heating and strengthen¬ ing material that can be bought in sugar for 6 cents costs 54 cents in cabbage; that the amount of fat that can be bought in fat salt pork for io cents costs in butter 6i cents; that one pound of oatmeal will give as much heat and strength as seventeen pounds of tomatoes or nearly seven pounds of bananas.

How to select foods. It is often a mistake to buy beefsteak at twenty-five cents a pound when for half the money cheaper cuts of meat can be bought that will give as much nourishment or even more. A man who does hard work must have a great deal of the food that gives strength. It is not necessary for him to get his strength from expensive foods like meat and eggs when he can get the same strength at much less cost from bread and potatoes. With only a small amount of money a housekeeper can provide good food for her family by finding out what cheap foods will supply the necessary building ma¬ terial and strength, and then learning how to cook these foods so that they will be pleasant to the taste and will agree with the digestion.

The tables on pages 15 and 17 show the amount of building material and of heat-giving and strength¬ giving material in some common foods, and the cost of these materials in the different foods.

Questions: 1. What mistake do people often make in buying their food? 2. From the table on page 15 name some foods that contain large amounts of building material.

BUYING FOODS

1 7 □

Corn meal

Oat meal

Sugar

Dried beans

White bread

I

Rice

White potatoes

Peanuts

Butter

Prunes

Building material Heating and strengthening'material

Fig. 9 . Showing the comparative amounts of nourishment that a given sum of money will buy in different foods.

3. Name some foods that are valuable for giving heat and strength to the body. 4. Name some foods that are valu¬ able for building material as well as for heat and strength. 5. What do potatoes supply to the body? 6. What food could a person eat with potatoes to give his body building material, heat, and strength? 7. If a person lives on fruits and vegetables, what does his body lack? 8. From the tables on pages 15 and 17 select a number of foods which furnish building materials at a low price. 9. Select some foods that will furnish heat and strength to the body at a low price. 10. Select foods that will furnish both building materials and heat and strength at a low price, n. Which should you consider the cheapest food in the list on page 17? 12. The most expensive?

Suggestions and topics for development : The value of break fast foods; not a substitute for other foods, but an agreeable addition to the regular diet. Discuss with the pupils the nutritive value of commonly used foods. Many American families are under¬ fed, and the pupils should be made to understand the possibility of supplying the needs of the body with low priced foods. Keep in mind the value of those foods that enable us to eat with them large quantities of other cheap foods like bread.

Obtain from the Secretary of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., Far¬ mers’ Bulletin No. 391, on the Economical Use of Meat in the Home. In the Appendix to Ritchie’s Human Physiology (the third book of this series) the analyses and costs of a number of foods are given. A very complete list of the analyses and comparative costs of foods will be found in Bulletin No. 28 of the United States Department of Agriculture. This may be obtained by sending five cents to the Superintendent of Public Documents, Washington, D. C.

Chapter Five Cooking Foods

It would be hard to think of an article of food more pleasant to the taste and more certain to agree with the digestion than warm, crisp, brown toast, made from light, well-baked bread. It would be hard to think of an article of food more disagreeable to the taste and more ruinous to the health than rolls baked only until the outer part is slightly browned while the inner part of each roll is still a sticky, doughy mass.

Yet the toast and the rolls are made from the same materials. The difference is in the way they are cooked.

The importance of well-cooked food. It has

been said that the greatest difference between the food of the rich and the food of the poor is in the cooking. There is much truth in this, for to a very considerable extent we all live on the same foods. It would take a whole book to discuss fully the subject of cooking, and we cannot attempt to do this here. There are, however, two points in regard to cooking that are so important that every one should understand them.

Fig. io. This man’s work is so important that he some¬ times receives a larger salary than is usually paid a lawyer, doctor, minister, or teacher.

The cooking of starchy foods. Raw starch is in little hard grains that are digested very slowly. When placed in hot water, these grains swell up into a soft mass. This softened starch can then be easily digested. Oatmeal or com meal that has been cooked for only a short time is very difficult to di¬ gest, but if these foods are placed in a double boiler and cooked for several hours they are very easy to digest. Thoroughly baked bread is the “staff of life,” and every healthy person can digest it. But half-baked bread, with the starch grains in it al¬ most as hard as little bits of wood, is ruinous to the digestion of any one who is forced to eat it. Vege¬ tables like potatoes, turnips, and cabbages are val¬ uable chiefly for the starch that is in them, and they should be cooked until they become soft and the starch grains in them are broken up.

The use of fats in cooking. Fat is a most val¬ uable heating and strengthening food, but, like every other food, it may injure the body if it is taken in a wrong way or in too large amounts. When fat has been made very hot, as often happens when food is fried, acids that injure the stomach are formed in it. Also, when foods are coated with fat, the digestive juices cannot get at them and they are digested very slowly. For this reason many foods are much harder to digest when fried than when cooked in other ways. Greasy crullers, pancakes, fried pies, and other fried foods are injuring the digestive or-

COOKING FOODS gans of many people, and the health of many families would improve at once if their frying pans were thrown away.

Questions : I. Why should starchy foods be well cooked? 2. Name some starchy foods. 3. What injurious sub¬ stances are formed in fat when it is heated very hot ? 4. Why are fried foods harder to digest than foods that are cooked in other ways?

Suggestions and topics for development: One teacher who has come to the attention of the writers of this book has done much for the community in which she is working by discussing with the girls of her school the best ways of cooking different foods, bringing samples of her own cooking to school and having the girls do the same, and in general by showing that she is interested in the best methods of preparing foods for use. Many good books on the sub¬ ject may be obtained and there are persons in every locality whose methods of cooking are worthy of study and imitation by others. It is not necessary for a teacher to wait for a department of domes¬ tic science before making a beginning in this work, and the fact that the teacher considers the subject of sufficient importance to re¬ ceive serious consideration will in itself have a most wholesome effect on the mental attitudes of the pupils. Discuss methods of cooking some of the cheaper foods so that they will be acceptable substitutes for those that are more expensive. Farmers’ Bulletins from the United States Department of Agriculture that will be found useful are No. 34 on Meats: Composition and Cooking; No. 112 on Bread and Bread Making; No. 256 on the Preparation of Vegetables for the Table; No. 359 on Canning Vegetables in the Home. These Bulletins will be sent without cost to anyone who applies for them.