St. Tammany farmer., 1905-09-30
.I. Is Too Much Trouble to Be Well''
Family Of Six Killed by Decayed
Vegetable Matter - Consumption
Encouraged by Shade Trees Which
Shut Out Sunlight - Preventing
Colds - Poison from Defective
Plumbing.
BY MARGARET E. sANGsTER. .

Q8Ve ourselves 10 DlduAC WASA " y - - =
we avail ourselves Of the benefcent pro-
visions Of nature on every hand, and
If we obey the laws OF health we snail
keep well. Because we habitually neg
lect precautions and break laws we are
interrupted and laid aside by attacks
Of illness that might be prevented.
Every illness from childhood on
makes draft upon the physical cap
ltal that should be sufficient for q long
life.
We are i'll because it is too mucn
trouble to be we'll. We are i'll because
we live amid unsanitary conditions, or
willfully surround ourselves with
death-dealing germs. Take. for exam
pie, the familiar experience OF an
epidemic Of diphtheria, typhoid fever,
or dysentery in a country village, in
the later summer. Apparently every
thing in the place tends to health.
The skies are bright, the air is clear,
the fields and gardens wave with How
ers, the trees in stalWart beauty stand
in the village street, or encircie the
homesteads. Yet, in one house and
another and another, old and young
are stricken, and before long the vii
lage is in mourning. In this and the
other home, now the strong man and
now the little child has breathed his
last. Why? Not in the least because
Divine Providence has sent mystic
rious seourge, but because with unpar-
donable and wicked heedlessness, the
contents Of cesspools have been al
lowed to percolate through the soil,
and trickle into wells, and poison
drinking water, or because when the
front of the house has blossomed like
the rose, the back OF it has, day after
day, seen neglected garbage decaying
in the sun.
Some years ago, In a small eastern
city, in a single week, q father and
five children in one house died OF diph-
tneria. The only members Of the fam
lily who escaped were q mother and q
nursing infant. The family was con-
spicucus for brains, Intelligence and
eminent purity. Yet they had been
away from home for nearly three
months, and had come back in goou
health to open their closed house.
When the premises after the tragedy
were examined by the board Of health.
1t was discovered that the cellar was
filed with enough disease germs to
poison the whole street. All sorts Of
kitchen debris and decaying vegetable
matter had been sealed up there dur
ing the weeks Of sitting summer.
Many time a city has been swept by
q pestilence, and its population DESC
lated, not because that city was un-3
hygienic in itself, but because of its
ilth and fetid corruption. Civic neg
.ecr and gross ignorance encourage
epidemics
We are learning that there is now
neither occasion nor excuse for the
ravases once made by consumption.
that great White Plague which used
to carry off piecemeal entire families.
I knew beautiful old mansion built
Of stone, standing well back from the
road, and shaded by oaks and elms,
that had been growing during the
lives of three generations. The walls
were thick, the shade was dense, little
sunlight penetrated into the stately
rooms. Across that threshold at In
tervals of Is months or two years,
with regularity that was like the
formal execution of sentence OF
death, were carried the sons and
daughters of that family, until the
venerable parents were left childless
beside their desolste hearth. One byI
one the young people dropped and
faded. People thought it strange and
mysterious and wondered how 1t was
that the children of that household
had so little stamina. The truth was
that the very walls and furniture
reeked with Infection, that the man.
sion, beautiful as it was, should have
been Stunned like pest house, ana
that the old trees with their thick
shade should have been
cut down to let the sunlight in. The /
parents lived out their lives in grief
and solitude, perhaps because they /
we're naturally of stronger fiber than !
their children, and perhaps because,
being older, they had taken less direct |
care of the sufferers.
We fortunately know now that con
may be fought successfully
in the right climate by an open air
life, andfby nourishing food, and that
love does not require the saerfffti ~ 555sof Of I
every life in the household, If one be
stricken.
there are preventable illnesses
which nobody fears. For instance, the
OF all infections Is a ccld.
The general opinion seems to be- tina.
there islno help II one takes cold.x yet
! little care and forethought and much
living III the open air will makesmost
of us immune from this inconvenient
ind depressing malady. Note how
many people are desperately affAid Of
! drausht, how carefully they exclude
night Dir from their sleeping fooms,
except during the wafmest weather.
We live by the air we breatle, and
we ought not to be afraid of N It u
impossible to take cold merely through
breathing fresh air. II the boly is III
good condition and properly clothed,
We m{y defy pure air to do Il harm.
Men and women too, go bn long
.rampb through the woods, 1leep on
he g1Ound with rubber shset under
hem. and only = tent between them
ind the akv and faLo M hs&.r, f1,,r 4
uxurhs make Us effeminate and are
It TIP back Of many c&d which
.ome4 out Of space, We know not how,