Natural Wonders

by Edwin Tenney Brewster

The hardest battle we have to fight is with these living diseases. They kill more people in each year than have perished at the hands of the enemy in all the wars we have ever fought. During our war with Spain, the flies alone killed in camp four times as many of our soldiers as the Spaniards killed in battle. Every day of our lives in war and in peace, we are fighting for our lives against these unseen foes of pestilence and disease.

This is how we carry on the campaign. Our first line of defense is keeping clean. Every city now-a-days has men who watch its water supply. The surroundings of its ponds and reservoirs are carefully guarded. If necessary, the water is filtered before it goes into the street pipes. Always, if the city is half civilized, it filters all its sewage before turning it into the rivers. Thus, if there are any living animals or plants in the water, they get strained out. In many houses, where the people are especially careful, they strain or filter the water once more, or boil it till they kill every living creature therein.

Then every city has other men to look after its milk. Because milk, being good food for us, is good food also for other living creatures; so that if one single germ gets into a bottle, it will shortly grow to many millions, and play sad havoc with the family that uses it. Careful people, too, do not depend on the city to keep their milk clean, but see for themselves where it comes from; especially if there are children, for children not only drink much milk, but are peculiarly liable to catch the diseases which come in it.

Careful people, in addition, look out that all their food is clean. They see that none has been kept out where dust may fall in it, where rats or mice may brush against it, or where flies may track over it. In all these ways, the seeds of diseases may get sown in our food. One ought to make sure that there are no rats, mice, or flies in the house at all; and one ought to make sure also that all raw foods, like lettuce and celery are thoroly washed, for these often carry the eggs of certain animals, living eggs which will hatch out inside anybody who swallows them, and not be at all to his advantage.

That, then, is our first line of defense—keeping our food clean, lest the enemy enter through our mouths. Our second defense is to keep the air we breathe, clean and fresh and dust free, lest the enemy attack us by way of our lungs, and we die of pneumonia or consumption, or sicken of common colds and the grip. In all this, we are like a country with a powerful navy which can prevent the enemy from making a landing on its coast. So long as we keep these minute foes out of our houses, and still more so long as we keep them out of our cities, they cannot get near enough to us to do us any harm.

But when the enemy has broken through our first line of defense, and begun to lay siege to our bodies, we still have a second line of fortifications to protect us. One thing our skins are for is to stop germs. So long as we keep a whole skin, it is pretty hard for many sorts of germs to gain an entrance. And where the skin is thin, as it is inside the mouth and nose, there is always a somewhat thick and sticky mucous to catch the germs; while the eye has tears to wash them out. We are like fortified cities; and we must not let the enemy make a breach in the wall.

So we must be careful not to neglect even small cuts, sores, scratches, and the like, thru which the foe can enter. People sometimes get most loathsome and dreadful diseases by drinking from dirty cups when the skin of their lips is cracked in cold weather; while the little plant that causes blood poisoning, often gets in by way of a cut so small as to be hardly noticed. No child would ever die of lockjaw, if he did not first cut or blow a hole in his skin.

Strangely enough, a great many of the lesser catching diseases of children, measles and colds and the like, make their way into the blood because of holes in the teeth. A hollow in a tooth gets filled with food. A germ or two finds its way into this food, and grows there till it becomes many millions. So naturally, an assault by an army is more likely to be successful than an assault by a mere handful. Merely by keeping the teeth and mouth clean, and by having a dentist stop the holes in the teeth, one can cut down to less than half, the number of days’ sickness in a year. Some people go beyond this, and always after they have been in dust or bad air, wash out their noses with some fluid that will dispose of any of the enemy who have lodged there. In fact, people who have suffered almost continually from colds and grin are sometimes cured at once and completely, by merely a slight operation on the nose, which opens up to the fresh air some hollow in which the besieging hosts were wont to lurk.

Our second line of defense, then, is keeping skin and teeth and nose clean and whole, that the enemy may have no place wherein to hide, and no breach through which to enter. If this gives way, then we must engage the enemy hand to hand.

Then it gets to be a pretty even thing between us. The invaders try to poison us, and we try to poison them. We form an acid in our stomachs—the same acid, by the way, that tin-men use to solder with; one can buy it anywhere. Regularly, we use this to digest meat with; but if any living things get into our stomachs, we give them a dose of this acid, and usually bowl them over.