The substitution of the frequently removed and easily cleaned rugs for carpets will greatly lessen the danger from the destructive moth and beetle grubs. Carpets laid on tight floors are much less liable to injury than where numerous cracks furnish safe retreats for the insects. Tarred paper under a carpet is an excellent preventive.
All clothes presses should be thoroughly cleaned at frequent intervals. The garments should be removed, aired and vigorously brushed. Any larvæ which are not dislodged in this way should be destroyed. It is a bad plan to keep odds and ends of woolen or other materials in attics where these pests can breed and thus spread to more valuable articles.
Spraying with benzine two or three times during hot weather is a good way of preventing injury to furniture or carriage upholstery and other articles which are in storage or not in use for a long time. If you are certain that woolens and furs are free from the pests they may be stored in safety by placing them in tight paste board boxes and sealing the covers firmly with gummed paper.
Both moths and carpet beetles are harmless at a temperature of 40 degrees Fahrenheit—a fact very well known to advantage by the large fur storage companies. They cannot survive furthermore a temperature of 120 decrees if subjected to it for about twenty minutes.
What Physicians are Doing.—It is desirable that the ordinary non-medical individual should know what the science of medicine is doing and what it is accomplishing.
During the past fifteen years the art of curing and preventing disease has taken on giant strides. The man or woman most ready to question the accomplishments and the ability of the humble family physician or the motive of the science of medicine, is the one who appreciates least that it is due to the skill and intelligence of the medical men of to-day that he owes his comfort, his health, and his freedom from pestilence, plague and disease. Unthinking people laud and praise some upstart whose ability lies in his faculty to fool the gullible, or they will rush to seek the false aid of some nondescript science, because it is popular and well advertised, while they pass by or ignore the men whose labors have made the world what it is, and who alone possess the ability to intelligently wage the battle in the interest of humanity against disease.
The medical profession has repeatedly pointed out that there are, on an average, six hundred thousand lives lost every year in the United States from preventable disease and accidents. Six hundred thousand lives which medical science has at hand the remedy to save, but which the medical profession sacrificed because of inadequate legislation. Few people can comprehend just what six hundred thousand lives mean. Let us put it in another way. There are destroyed by preventable disease and accidents every day American lives equal in number to the crews of two battle ships, equal in three months to more than the total combined numbers of the Army and Navy of the United States; equal in one year to more than the total number of lives lost in all our wars since the Declaration of Independence.
The Titanic disaster shocked the public for a moment, and seemed to impress them as though it was a terrible and unheard of waste of good human lives. Yet in the loss of life due to preventable causes we have in this country every day in the year a destruction of our citizens exceeding in magnitude that which occurred when the Titanic sank. Think of it! A Titanic disaster a day, and yet the public does not rise up and demand in a spirit of anger and determination that steps be taken at once to put an end to this appalling and unnecessary waste of lives.
Under modern hygienic conditions, the average length of existence for an individual in Great Britain has increased ten years in the last half century. Among all the enlightened and advanced nations, the expectation of the individual for long survival is greater. Since the appearance of uncheckable and epidemic disorders is less frequent and the percentage of cures is greater.
Since quarantine has been regularly established and the sewage system made efficient in large cities, and since the sanitary plumbing laws have been made compulsory, the general death rate has decreased enormously. These regulations have been the product of regularly educated medical or sanitary experts. No 'ism or 'ology has ever established any scientific principle which has contributed to the general welfare of the people. We no longer fear the plague, or typhus or yellow fever, cholera, diphtheria, typhoid, consumption, and other diseases which once were a constant menace to the race. The plague, for example, is practically limited to the Far East, where modern methods cannot evidently be introduced efficiently. At one time it periodically devastated Europe, where it cannot now get a foothold because of the introduction of sanitary systems and hygienic principles.