Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1899-07-27
HYGIENE TOPICS.

article contributed TO the Journal of
the American Medical association.
Summing up, he says % Inebriety is
most complex neurosis The causes
are equally complex, and include all
the various states of degeneration
which influence and disturb nutrition.
% Obscure indigestion begins, and
for this drugs and bitters containing
alcohol are used. The narcotism which
follows is so grateful that it is con-
tinued. 60 Dietic delusions are
fostered in the minds of parents and
children, and from this many different
forms of inebriety begin. ca Often the
most maniacal and chronic inebriates
are from these delusional dyspeptics.
60 Starvation is present In many of
these cases. The quality and variety
of foods are deficient, and defective
nourishment follows. CO. The uniform
ity Of taking foods and the quality and
variety are essential. This and
nutritional rest and mental anxiety
are important factors. CD The inebri-
iety following these conditions is
successfully treated by elimination of
the toxins and special correction of the
nutrition. (S) Nutrition is a very act
i've cause in the production of inc
study in all cases.
Seeking tG discover what property in
the air of unhealthy houses favors the
growth OF the tubercule bacilli, DR..
Ransom is said to have found a con-
dition which explains the problem of
this microbic vitality. Experiment.
ing on the air from the lungs of
healthy persons and consumptive pa
tients, and noting the character of the
air and vapors of clay soil, sandy soil
and town soils, he obtained, says the
London News, a liquid in each case.
The liquids were sterilized, and in
them were soaked pieces of filter pa
per and of ordinary wall paper The
papers We're intended to form breeding
grounds for the bacilli of tubercule,
and when the microbes were sown on
the paper they multiplied and -four
ished in each case. The outcome of
these most noteworthy experiments
has an important bearing on the pre-
vention of consumption and on the
general sanitary treatment of patients.
For they prove to us that the germs of
tubercule possess wonderfully elastic
constitution. They multiply, grow
in the lungs and in the other organs
Of our bodies, but they thrive equally
we'll in the organic matter which is
contained in the air we emit from
our lungs and in the foul vapors that
arise from unhealthy soils. They in
culcate the great lesson that dryness
of soil and light (and plenty of it) are
the natural agents to which we should
look for the destruction of the mi
crobes that convey tubercule to us.
Long ago Sir George Buchanan, and
DR.. Bowditch of Boston also showed
that, according to the dryness of the
soil produced by good drainage, the
cities in which such sanitary works
were carried out showed a marked de-
crease of the death rate from con-
sumption.
The subject of bedtime is thus dis
cussed by writer in Harper's Bazaar:
So many people are engaged all day,
and the dinner hour is necessarily, in
city life, deferred to so late an hour,
that families do not break up from
their quiet evenings until after 10. So
ciety pushes it's hours later and later,
and the votaries of fashion come near
having no bedtime at all, snatching
their rest when they can between one
gay rout and another. The invalid
and the aged person and the child
must perfOrce retire early. For those
steady-going persons who regulate
their lives by rule, and who habitually
rise at an early hour and breakfast
punctually at 7 O'Clock, 10 is certainly
a good bedtime hour. Brain-workers
would find their account in seeking
the repose of the couch and the dark
| ened and silent chamber, with pre-
ferably Opaque curtains to exclude the
light of the moon and street lamp
alike, at 10 o'clock. A long sleep
rests the mind as we'll as the body, and
it prepares one for the work of the
next day, whatever it may be. Far
! better than an opiate or a narcotic is
the habit of seeking the pillow at an
early hour, and quietly lying still
with closed eyes and relaxed limbs
until sleep, gently wooed, comes with
it's healing touch and softly weaves
its spells of balm Growing children
cannot too carefully be enjoined to gel
plenty Of sleep. The boy or girl who
has Lessons to learn must waken early
after a good nights rest, and this is
insured only by punctuality in retir'
ing. Eight o'clock is a good bedtime
for all young people under Is, and
should be insisted upon by parents.
In explaining the objects Of ventila-
ton in the London Lancet, DR.. JohI
Hartley says: 1t is to me difficult tt
resist the impression that an over
dose of waste products, whether o.
ones own or other peoples must gen
orally interfere with the metabolisn
of nerve tissue. Women as they grow
older are apt to live much indoors.
believe the fat, fabby, paunchy wo
man, whether purple or pale, with
feeble, irritable heart and 'inade
quate" kidneys, is usually thu
victim of rebreathed air. A "close'
room will infallibly give me an alb
dominal distention and borborygm
within half an hour, and l am inclined
to think the purity of air breathing by
the dyspeptic quite as important a:
his regime or his teeth. 1t must,
think, sooner or later, be recognized
that many of the increasing ills which