The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-12-17
HOME HEALTH CLUB

HOW DID YOU GET IT?. Some time ago I told you of disease carriers; the, human kind I mean, for by the term carriers we understand a person Who carries the germ of a disease W1tnout having any singns or symptoms or the disease himself Thus a person may have diphtherta bacilli in the nose ana throat germs of pneumonia in the mouth, typhoid baci1li, or the germs of cholera or the hookwofm in tner intestinal tract, without showing man ifestations of the disease. s
 So-ca1Ied germ .carriers Sare cap able of injecting others, whosWiH have the active symptoms. Disease carriers are public danger, because they are usually not discovered until the m1s- chief has been done and they have spread the disease. It is only recently that attention has been attracted to this class of disease spreaders, and 1t has been found that there are persons capable of spreading these infectious germs for years
 Only recently there appeared among the patrons of certain restaurant in Chicago, over forty cases of typhoid fever The water was tested and found free from pollution also the milk, butter, and all other food supplies but the final analysis discovered young woman washing dishes who had re- gently come from St. Louis. She had what is called by many Walking Ty- phoid." She was carrier and was scattering the disease on everything she handled. The reason why all the pa irons who got the disease germs did not contract the disease was that their powers of resistance was greater They were sin comparatively perfect health, digestion and elimination in good order
 In another part of the city and at about the same time, the patrons or a, certain milknan were stricken with iI1- spected and found sanitary, but more careful investigation proved that the man himself was a "carrier"
 From many of the animals, S'artic- ularly domesticated animals, man con- tracts a number of infections. Thus plague from the rat, glanders from the horse, trichinosis from the hogs, an- thrax from cattle, malta fever from goats, food and mouth disease from cattle, tuberculosis, in part, from cattle, tapeworms and other animal parasites from meat of fish, fowl, and mammals. Various skin parasites are also contracted from lower animals, as ringworms from cats, feas from
 dogs, etc. The number of diseases and the extent of the ravages are,
 however much less than those con- tracted from man himself
 Now what's to be done about it, we can swat the flies, kill the cats,
 rats and mice and dispose of dis eased domestic animals in the same way, but what shall we do with Human Carriers,'? We may not kill
 them and no law justtftes' their de- tention OF isolation. we can refuse to employ them, but they must eat and most. of them want to work. Some of them will at once use every precaution against spreading the dis ease and others will do nothing. One carrier, a strong, rugged woman was confined several months by the auth critics, but they were finally forced to iberate her and she was just as much carrier as ever, because no rational treatment had been applied that was effective in overcoming the
 germs, although the means are simple
 and practical and readily available everywhere. ,za-r I will venture the assertion that there is not a Carrier among the thousands of Home Health Club mem bers in any part of the world.