How can we best take care of our eyes? Of our ears?
What tells us when we are hurt?
What is our duty toward our bodies?
CHAPTER VI.
PUBLIC HYGIENE.
One of the great questions in which governments in all countries are interested is how to keep down the death rate in great cities. In olden times there were many plagues and epidemics. These often destroyed thousands of lives. People did not understand why the plagues came; they used to think them punishments for sin, or sent by some evil spirit out of hatred to humanity. They did not know how to meet them or how to take care of those whom the plagues attacked, and so whole cities were sometimes emptied by disease before which the science of those days was helpless.
But now we have come to know that all epidemics have natural causes. An epidemic is always caused either by bad water or neglected sewers or poisonous gases arising from long-gathered filth. In Europe and in America every city has its system or systems of sewers, its boards of public health and of street cleaning. Great care is taken, and enormous sums of money are spent, to keep the cities clean, that the people may be as healthy as possible.
Manila, the capital city of the Philippines, is one of the largest cities on the Asiatic coast. It has been, in the past, in very bad condition because of filth. One of the first things the Americans began to do when they came here was to try to make the city clean, so that it would be more healthful. This was a very difficult thing to do, because of the dirt which had been allowed to gather during many years. It was also difficult because of the way in which the city of Manila is built. The ground is low and marshy. Two feet below the surface of the earth under the city, water is found almost everywhere. This keeps the earth damp. Those who built houses in the past knew this, so they laid cement floors in the basements of their buildings.
But the cement floors were not made as they should have been. Instead of digging down into the earth and filling in the excavation, builders spread the cement on the surface of the ground and then built their walls around this platform. The cement which has been used here is not the best for such a country as this. It is what is called Roman cement, very porous, and not hard and solid, as is the Portland cement in use in America. The walls of the houses, as well as the ground floors, were very often of this cement.
If you take a lamp wick and hold one end of it in oil, before long not only that end but the whole wick is wet with the oil. This is because the porous fibers of the wick have soaked up the oil. Now, these porous walls of the houses in Manila take up the moisture from the earth, so that many of them are completely soaked with water. When this is the case, mold begins to grow on the walls. It is not unusual to see walls quite overgrown with green mold and moss that always feels a little damp to the touch.