Every Fourth of July a great many entirely preventable deaths and minor accidents occur. The toy pistol has come to be considered almost as deadly as the larger variety. The tiny "caps" that are used in them are fired back into the hand of the person shooting them, tiny particles of powder enter the skin, burrowing into the flesh, and the skin closes over them, shutting out the air. If these particles carry with them tetanus germs, as is often the case, because these germs are found chiefly in the dirt of the street where most of this shooting is done, lock-jaw or tetanus, a severe form of blood-poisoning, results, and is usually fatal. The same results come less frequently from fire-crackers and other explosives, and in addition many accidents which injure hands, eyes, and other parts of the body, are the result of the use of the heavier explosives.
The Pasteur Treatment is saving many lives each year by treating cases of infection from "mad dogs" and other animals affected with hydrophobia.
Among the diseases which can be remedied by slight means are enlarged tonsils and adenoid growths back of the nose, both of which can be removed by a slight and almost painless operation, but which, if allowed to develop, often cause serious throat and lung troubles, deafness, and weakened minds. Slight defects of the eyes can be remedied by the wearing of glasses, but which if unchecked give rise to various nerve and spinal diseases as well as more serious eye troubles. It is believed now that most of the blindness of later life could be prevented by proper care of the eyes in early life and by prompt attention to slight defects of the eyes when they begin.
Doctor Walter Cornell, who has made a study of eye strain says, "Eye strain is the chief cause of functional diseases. It is almost the sole cause of headache, is the frequent cause of digestive diseases, of spinal curvatures, and indirectly of neurasthenia and hysteria."
Decayed teeth in children, slight in themselves, give rise to more serious troubles in later life,—ill-shaped mouths and jaws and crooked teeth result from teeth that have been drawn too early in life. Decayed teeth lead also to many stomach and digestive troubles.
Medical inspection in the schools shows a surprising number of children suffering from these minor troubles. About 80,000 children were examined, and the records show that out of every one hundred children examined sixty-six needed the services of a doctor, surgeon, or dentist, and some needed all three.
Forty out of each hundred had badly neglected teeth.
Thirty-eight had enlarged glands of the neck.
Eighteen had enlarged tonsils.
Ten had growths of the nose.