The hands should always be well washed before handling food. Persons neglecting to do this have caused much sickness because of the disease germs on their hands. One hundred and fifty persons were given typhoid fever in one city in Massachusetts by a man who handled milk without washing his hands. Dirt and disease are companions. You must be clean if you would be healthy.
The Kidneys.—The sweat glands do not take out of the blood one quarter as much waste matter as the kidneys. These are two bodies longer than the finger and more than twice as wide, and having the shape of a bean. One lies on either side of the backbone below the liver.
The blood coming to the kidneys is full of waste and dead matter picked up from all parts of the body. This is passed out through the thin walls of the thousands of little blood tubes into the many tiny tubes of the kidneys.
Fig. 49 —The blood tubes in a piece of skin as large as the head of a pin.
Water is required to keep the body clean within as well as without. For this reason you should drink more than a quart of water daily. A glass or two of water drunk a half hour before meals cleanses and rouses to action the digestive organs.
Alcohol and the Skin.—The skin of those who use much beer or whisky often becomes rough, red, and pimply. Any alcoholic drink is likely to injure the skin because it may hinder good digestion. The drunkard has a red nose and a dark-colored skin. This is because alcohol weakens the walls of the blood tubes and lets them become gorged with blood.
If a person takes a drink only once in a while, his face becomes red after each drink, and an hour or two later the effect of the alcohol passes off. The blood tubes have squeezed up to their natural size.
Alcohol and the Kidneys.—Taking several glasses daily of even such weak alcoholic drink as beer often causes the kidneys to become sick. Some of their working parts become changed to fat and some parts become hard. The cells which let the waste matter pass out of the blood get hurt by the poison of the alcohol so that they let some of the food also pass out of the blood.