The L'Anse sentinel. (L'Anse, L.S., Mich.) 18??-current, 1905-09-02
TO PREVENT ILLNESS
1T Is USUALLY OUR OWN FAULT
WHEN WE ARE SICK.
at Is Too Much Trouble to BE WelP
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. sANosTER.

/
per Sc a visitation from God. In nine
cases out of ten it is much more PROB
ably a visitation from the Evil One
And indeed, why blame the devil? We
need not be i'll as rule. We often
have ourselves to blame when we are. II
we avail ourselves of the beneficent pro-
visions of nature on every hand, and
| II VIC obey the laws of health we shall
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 a draft upon the physical cap
| ital that should he sufficient for long
| life.
We are i'll because 1t is too much
| trouble to be well. We are Ill because
we live amid unsaritary 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 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 flow
ers, the trees in stalwart beauty stand
in the village street, or encircle the
homesteads. Yet, in one house and
another and another, old and young
are stricken, and before long the viii
, 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 a mystic
rious scourge, 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 1t has, day after
day, seen neglected garbage decaying
in the sun.
Some years ago, in a small eastern
city, in single week, father and
five children in one house died Of diph-
tneria. The only members of the fam
lily who escaped were mother and a
nursing infant. The family was con-
spicuous 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
filled 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
a pestilence, and its population DESC
lated, not because that city was I'M
hygienic in itself, but because of its
filth and fetid corruption. Civic neg
lect and gross ignorance encourage
epidemics.
We are learning that there is now
neither occasion nor excuse for the
ravages once made by consumption,
that great White Plague which used
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 a sentence of
death, were carried the sons and
daughters Of that family, until the
venerable parents were left childless
beside their desolate hearth. One by
one the young people dropped and
faded. People thought 1t 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 1t was, should have
been Stunned like a pest house, and
that the old trees with their thick
branching shade should have been
Cut uOWn W ict thC uc
parents lived out their lives In grief
and solitude, perhaps because they
were naturally of stronger fiber than
their children, and perhaps because.
being older. they had taken less direct
care Of the suffers1s.
We fortunately know now that con-
sumption may be fought successfully
in the right climate by an open-air
life. and by nourishing food. and that
love does not require the sacrifice Of
every life in the household, II one be
stricken.
| lhcre are preventable illnesses
which nobody fears. For instance, the
commonest of all infections is q cold
The general opinion seems to be tina,
there Is no help II one takes cold. Yet
little care and forethought and much
living In the open air will make most
of us immune from this inconvenien,
and depressing malady. Note how
many people are desperately afraid Of
a -draught, how carefully they exclud,
night air from their sleeping rooms
| except during the warmest weather