Checking the Waste: A Study in Conservation

by Mary Huston Gregory

The question of fresh air in the home is one of the most important points to be considered. The bedrooms, the living-rooms, and the kitchen should have the air changed constantly, not once or twice a day. In order to prevent drafts, and that the house may not be kept at too low a temperature in winter, a board, eight to twelve inches in height, may be placed across the bottom of a window that is raised.

Many diseases, not only of the throat and lungs, but of the other organs, may be prevented by the constant introduction of fresh air into our rooms day and night.

Tuberculosis causes more deaths than any other single disease in America, and the sickness and disability continue longer than with most diseases. It is extremely contagious, being a germ disease, and not an inherited one, as was formerly supposed. It increased very rapidly for a few years but is now slightly decreasing, owing to better knowledge of its cause and cure.

Its prevention and its cure both lie largely in fresh air. Physicians say that no one who lives an open-air life with plenty of fresh air night and day will contract it. The cure which is restoring hundreds to health is to find a place where the air is pure, and live and sleep practically outdoors; to eat as much milk, raw eggs, and meat as can be digested and to observe the other rules of hygiene. Incipient cases, those in the earliest stages, may sometimes be cured while continuing at work by following the other rules as nearly as possible.

On account of the extremely contagious nature of tuberculosis, special care should be taken to prevent its spread. The sputum coughed up from the lungs is the principal carrier of the disease, and the person who, having tuberculosis, even in its earliest stages, spits in a public place, is an enemy of mankind, for he endangers the lives of hundreds of others. The only excuse for this is that he usually does it through ignorance, but the knowledge of the danger should be so impressed on all the people that no one could plead ignorance, and for a consumptive to spit on the street should be counted as much a crime morally as for a smallpox patient deliberately to expose others to the disease.

Great care should of course be taken in the home of a consumptive patient to prevent the infection from spreading through the family. Separate sleeping-rooms, thorough disinfection, and the use of paper napkins which are burned at once, to take the place of handkerchiefs, should be some of the means employed.

Pneumonia, pleurisy, bronchitis, grip, colds, and catarrh are some of the other ailments which may be largely banished by living the outdoor life. The method of treatment is medical, is different in each case, and should be decided by the family physician. The constant habit of breathing impurities, day after day and year after year, brings about a gradual change in the tissue of the lungs.

In the same way, simple food to take the place of the rich, heavy foods eaten in large quantities, will prevent many of the diseases of the stomach, liver, and kidneys, and improve the general health and strength. A diet of less meat and more eggs has been tried by football teams in training and found to give an equal amount of strength with greater endurance. A diet of milk, cereals, vegetables, nuts, and fruits, raw or simply cooked, with a small amount of animal foods, will perhaps give the best results in this climate. Food fried in fats, rich pastries and gravies are the hardest to digest, and better health will usually follow discontinuing them.

The purity of the food eaten should receive careful consideration. Artificially preserved foods are usually more or less dangerous, for although dealers urge that the poison contained in them is too small to do harm we must remember that it is not the single dose that does harm, but the many foods each containing a very small amount of poison, taken day after day.

Pure food laws, national and state, have done great good in driving adulterated and impure foods out of the markets by requiring all foods to be properly labeled.