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1YGIENE SERIES

GOOD
HEALTH

BY FRANCES GULICK JEWETT |

THE GULICK HYGIENE SERIES

BY

LUTHER HALSEY GULICK, M.D.

THE GULICK HYGIENE SERIES

BOOK ONE

GOOD HEALTH

BY
FRANCES GULICK JEWETT

GINN & COMPANY

BOSTON • NEW YORK . CHICAGO . LONDON

COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY LUTHER H. GULICK

ENTERED AT STATIONERS* HALL

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

A 910.3

THE
GULICK HYGIENE SERIES

FIVE-BOOK SERIES
Book I. Good Health. 40 cents
Book II. Emergencies. 40 cents
Book HI. Town and City. 50 cents
Book IV. The Body at Work. 50 cents
Book V. Control of Body and Mind. 50 cents

TWO-BOOK SERIES
Good Health. 40 'cents
The Body and its Defenses. 65 cents

JDrcss

GINN AND COMPANY • PRO-
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A.

INTRODUCTION

In planning a series of text-books for elementary
school use I have borne in mind the fact that the main
object of physiological instruction should be to aid in
the establishment of good hygienic habits. I have also
remembered that habits are more often established in
the individual by social custom and wont, by example
and precept, than by logic and reason.

It is recognized that mere knowledge of an intellec-
tual character is ineffective. We all know much better
than we do. Only that knowledge is effective which is
related to doing, — knowledge which we actually put
into practice. The effect of knowledge upon action is
an important, even if not the ultimate, criterion of its
value. It is relatively useless to teach children about
the body, unless the teaching is done in such a way as
to lead them to desire to form their lives accordingly.

The purpose of this series, then, is to introduce that
atmosphere, both of intellectual comprehension and of
social custom, which shall result in the unconscious as
well as the conscious development of wholesome hygienic
habits. In order to so arrest the attention that convic-
tion may follow and right habits be started, I have

iv GOOD HEALTH

realized that children should be instructed not by methods
of dogmatic assertion but rather by knowledge of the
facts on which such assertions rest. I have also been
convinced that, in so far as possible, the facts should
relate to the child's own life and environment; in other
words, that children should be taught through experi-
ment and personal experience. This, therefore, is the
plan of the series.

The present volume gives detailed instruction in mat-
ters of personal health: what to do in caring for eyes,
ears, teeth, finger nails, hair, etc.; why we keep clean;
how to get pure air into a room and impure air out of
it; why this is needed, as proved by experiment, etc. In
each case the child himself is made to demonstrate the
need. This method of instruction is indeed a dominant
characteristic of the series as a whole. Each book has
been prepared with the conviction that children are influ-
enced by facts which result in definite courses of reason-
ing. Assure a child that unwashed people, crowded into
unclean rooms, breathing impure air, and drinking im-
pure water are more likely to be ill than clean people in
clean rooms, breathing pure air, and drinking pure water,
and he may or may not believe you ; but explain to him
the nature of those microbes which endanger life through
water, air, and food ; show by actual facts how the death
rate has been raised and lowered ; demonstrate by indi-
vidual example the laws of contagion, and we shall con-

INTRODUCTION V

vince the child by the same facts that have convinced
his elders.

The current notion has been, " a little book for a little
child." To me it seems so true as to be almost axiomatic,
that the younger the child the more often must a fact be
told and the more fully must it be elaborated. The
capacity to profit by generalized statements comes only
with age. For this reason, in the present series, even on
the subjects of alcohol and narcotics, dogmatic assertion
and the easy moral have been avoided. Treatment of
subjects by this method necessarily increases the size
of the text somewhat, but it also rouses and holds the
interest of the reader.

Although I have thus planned the series myself, the
work of writing the separate volumes has been done by
others. And it is but just to the author of each book to
say that in preparing the facts for presentation no pains
has been spared to secure acquaintance at first-hand
with the work of the original investigators upon whose
authority the facts rest. An illustration of this is found
in the study of pure water as given later in the series
when typhoid fever is under discussion. The author not
only visited the experiment station in Lawrence, Massa-
chusetts, where more scientific work has been done in
sewage filtration than elsewhere in the United States,
but also made careful study of water conditions in New
York, London, Pittsburg, and other important cities.

vi GOOD HEALTH

Other subjects in the books are treated with similar
thoroughness. In fact the reference lists given with each
volume, although representing the best available material
for the use of teachers, gives but part of that which was
actually used in the preparation of the books themselves.

During the past few years important contributions
have been made to the fund of material bearing upon the
effects of the use of alcohol. These contributions have
come partly from scientific work in America, England,
and Germany, partly from recent careful investigations
concerning the interrelations of drink with crime and
pauperism, and partly from practical anti-alcohol require-
ments on the part of large business corporations. The
facts so contributed, together with those more generally
known, furnish a story of such exceptional vividness and
power that, in regard to scientific instruction on the sub-
jects of alcohol and narcotics, we cannot but be faithful
to the demands of school law in the various states.

LUTHER HALSEY GULICK

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. BREATHING AND PURE AIR i

II. PURE AIR AND THINGS THAT SPOIL IT 6

III. TOBACCO AND PURE AIR 11

IV. HOW THE AlR MOVES AND HOW MUCH WE NEED . . l6

V. How TO GET FRESH AIR. DRAFTS 21

VI. VENTILATION OF THE BUILDING You ARE IN ... 27

VII. A LITTLE LESSON ABOUT LITTLE THINGS. MICROBES. 29

VIII. MICROBES AND KEEPING CLEAN 34

IX. DUST AND CLEANLINESS 38

X. TOBACCO CHEWING AND CLEANLINESS ...... 43

XI. WHY AND HOW WE NEED TO SLEEP 47

XII. SOME RULES ABOUT SLEEPING 52

XIII. HABITS OF SLEEPING 57

XIV. DANGERS TO THE EYESIGHT 62

XV. READING, BOOK PRINT, AND GLASSES 70

XVI. ANIMALS AND ALCOHOL 77

XVII. ANIMALS AND ALCOHOL (continued') 83

XVIII. THE EAR THAT WE CAN SEE 90

XIX. THE EAR WE CANNOT SEE 95

XX. THE WAY TO TREAT THE FINGER NAILS 101

XXI. CARING FOR THE HAIR 108

vii

viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

XXII. THE HEALTH OF THE SKIN 114

XXIII. ALCOHOL AND COLD WEATHER 121

XXIV. ALCOHOL AND WARM WEATHER 127

XXV. SOME FACTS ABOUT THE NOSE 131

XXVI. OUR LUNGS 137

XXVII. LUNGS, DUST, AND TOBACCO SMOKE 142

XXVIII. TEETH 14?

XXIX. EATING 153

XXX. ALEXIS ST. MARTIN AND ALCOHOL 159

XXXI. THE EXERCISE WE NEED 165

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST i?1

GLOSSARY i?3

GOOD HEALTH

CHAPTER I

BREATHING AND PURE AIR

Go and watch the baby when he is asleep. See how
his chest rises and falls, then rises and falls again.

He does not know what he is doing, but he breathes
as perfectly as the oldest and the wisest man in the
world. He began to breathe when he was born, and he
will not stop until he dies ; still he does it without think-
ing about it.

There is a special kind of machinery in each of us
that takes care of our breathing even when we are
asleep. Nobody has to be clever or old or good to
know how to breathe, though each of us can stop our
breathing if we care to try.

See how long you can hold your breath and be
comfortable.

In some places men dive in the ocean for pearls. They
pick up the shells that hold the pearls, and the longer
they stay under water the more pearls they can find.
For this reason they hold their breath as long as they

2 GOOD HEALTH

possibly can. Yet even these pearl divers cannot go
without breathing for over four minutes at a time.

In fact, there is no way for any of us really to stop
breathing for a long time and keep alive. It is the same
with animals.

If you should hold a bird in your hand, and if he were
perfectly quiet and did not even breathe, you would know

BREATHING WHILE HE SLEEPS

that he was dead, for breathing is as important for birds
and animals as for children and men.

No one needs to tell us that what we breathe every
minute of every day is air. It is around us everywhere,
like a wonderful ocean that we cannot see. It also
stretches so far above us and above the clouds that,
try as we may, we cannot get outside of it.

BREATHING AND PURE AIR 3

Now this ocean of air is made up of several kinds of
gases mixed together. Each is different from all the
others, though not one of them is the gas that lights our
houses. Indeed, the gas we use for lighting is different
from the gases of the air in three ways :

1. It will kill us if we breathe much of it.

2. It has a smell.

3. It will burn.

Still we find that air gases are like this deadly gas
in two ways:

1. We cannot see them.

2, We can feel them when they blow against
us, or when we run through them.

If you blow on your hand, you feel the air even though
you cannot see it. So, too, when the wind blows, you do
not see it, but you feel it rushing past.

There are men who can take a bottle full of air, sepa-
rate it into its different gases, and study each gas by
itself. Just now, however, you and I need to pay attention
to only two of them, — oxygen and carbon dioxid.

If I should put a mouse into a jar with a good deal
of oxygen in it, he would act so merry that you would
think he had never before in his life felt so happy. If
I should then fill another jar with carbon dioxid and
put the same small mouse into it, he would surely die
in a minute unless I pulled him out again as promptly
as possible.

4 GOOD HEALTH

This shows the difference between oxygen and car-
bon dioxid: one is our friend, the other our enemy.
Fortunately, in fresh, outdoor air there is always much
oxygen and little carbon dioxid.

A change comes, however, in the rooms where people
live and breathe, for when you take a deep breath of sweet,
pure air the lungs use up a part of the oxygen at once ;
and when you expel the air from your lungs, carbon
dioxid is there in place of the oxygen. The exchange
is made inside the lungs.

It is plain, then, that breathing takes oxygen out of the
air and puts carbon dioxid in its place.

If a man is in a very small room, and if no fresh air
can get in from anywhere, his breathing will change the
air in the room so much that if he stays there long enough
he will die. One of the saddest cases of this kind was in
India when the British and Hindoo soldiers were fight-
ing each other. Finally the Hindoos captured one hun-
dred and forty-six British prisoners and put them into
a room that was about twenty feet square. It had two
small windows, so that a little air did manage to get
in; but there was not enough of it for so many people.
Fresh air could not enter fast enough to give the men
the oxygen they needed, and the air that was in the
room grew worse and worse until everybody suffered
and gasped for breath, and when morning came only
twenty-three of the men were alive. The rest had died

BREATHING AND PURE AIR 5

for lack of oxygen. Ever afterwards, in memory of that
terrible night, the room itself was called the Black Hole
of Calcutta.

It is fortunate for us that air does not often get so bad
as that in any room.

QUESTIONS

1. How long can a man go without breathing?

2. What difference is there between the air we breathe and the gas
we burn?

3. Which gas in the air keeps us alive?

4. What would happen to us if we could get nothing but carbon
dioxid to breathe?

5. What happened in the Black Hole of Calcutta?

CHAPTER II
PURE AIR AND THINGS THAT SPOIL IT

Sometimes when you get up in the morning you feel
happy and rested and good-natured. When your shoe
string breaks you laugh, and when a button comes off
you think it quite a joke. Then perhaps the very next
day everything goes wrong from morning until night;
it is hard to be good on such days, and harder yet to be
cheerful.

Of course the reason is not always the same, though
you will often find that you slept in pure air the first
night and in impure air the second night. In fact, that
is always enough to make a great difference in our feel-
ings the next day. In pure air our lungs get more oxygen
and we sleep well ; if we sleep well we are rested, and
when we are rested, it is the easiest thing in the world
to be kind and cheerful. On the other hand, when we
are not rested we can hardly help feeling cross.

The same is true about learning our lessons and
reciting them well, though even teachers forget this
sometimes.

I can think of two schoolrooms. In the first the

children look unhappy; their eyes are dull and their

6

PURE AIR AND THINGS THAT SPOIL IT 7

cheeks are flushed, though some of them have pale faces
instead. Only a few sit up straight, while none of them
look as if they enjoyed studying. One class is reciting a
spelling lesson, and I notice that several of the children
miss the easiest words. In this room the air is wretched.
I look around and cannot see any place for fresh air
to enter.

The second room is of the same size, and although it
holds the same number of children, still everything here
is different. Both the girls and the boys look as if they
enjoyed studying, most of them are sitting up straight,
their eyes are bright, they do not often miss the easy
words, and nobody looks cross. As might be expected,
enough fresh air is coming into the room all the time to
keep it fresh and pure.

If you should put very many dogs or other living crea-
tures into a room, and then shut every door and window,
the animals would use up the air as fast as children do ;
and if they could get no more, they would die as those
men died in the Black Hole of Calcutta.

Last summer a ten-year-old friend of mine caught a
mouse by the tail and put it under a tumbler. She was
afraid it would not get air enough, so she slipped a
pencil under one edge of the glass to hold it up and let
the air get in. She was so careful of the health of the
mouse that it lived merrily, until one day the glass tipped
over and it ran away.

8

GOOD HEALTH

Turn now to grass and trees. Notice the green leaves
as they flutter in the sunshine. You would not suspect it,
but even while you watch them they are at work. Each
separate one is indeed taking carbon dioxid from the air
and is uniting it with water to make food for itself ; and
later the food becomes part of the plant. Also, while
these changes go on, the plant gives
off some of the oxygen which is freed
from the carbon dioxid.

Now this part of plant life goes on
only in the light. But continually, by
night as well as by day, plants also
breathe by taking in oxygen and by
giving off carbon dioxid. The truth is,
that even though they have no lungs,
breathing is as necessary to plants as
it is to ourselves; for, whether they
are in the sunshine or in total dark-
ness, they depend on oxygen as much
as we do. Other things use oxygen too.

Light a small candle, set over it a glass jar that fits
down flat on the table, and watch the flame. At first
it will burn as brightly as ever; then it will grow more
and more dim, until at last it will go out entirely. If you
should now put a mouse or bird into the jar, it would
die at once, because the oxygen in the jar has been used
up by the candle.

USING UP THE OXYGEN

PURE AIR AND THINGS THAT SPOIL IT 9

This is not all. Men have tried experiments with gas
jets, and they find that when one of them is burning it
uses up more oxygen than three people ; that is, it will
use up the air three times as fast as you or I do.

The next time you are in a lecture hall or a church in
the evening, count the gas jets that are lighted. If there
are one hundred of them, be sure to tell yourself that
they are using up the oxygen as fast as if there were
three hundred more people present.

This is bad enough, but it is worse yet to have a gas
jet open when the gas is not lighted, for nothing spoils
the air faster. People who do not know the danger
sometimes make the terrible mistake of blowing the gas
out instead of turning it off when they go to bed.

In December, 1903, in San Francisco, during one
night, six people in six different houses died because
the gas escaped into their rooms. They died because
they breathed this gas instead of oxygen.

If you ever notice the odor of gas in a room, be sure
to find out where it comes from and turn the gas off. In
some cities the gas has no odor, and this makes it more
dangerous.

Besides the odor of gas, other bad smells almost
always show that something is spoiling the air.

Sometimes these unpleasant smells come from garbage
cans and wagons. Sometimes they stream out of an un-
clean cellar or a basement, or from soiled rags tucked away

10 GOOD HEALTH

somewhere, or from food or meat that is spoiling. Such
things should never be left where they can change the air.

In some cities more people die in one part than in
another, and often the whole trouble comes from impure
air. Those who breathe it are not as strong as they
would be if they breathed only pure air, and on this
account it is easy for them to become ill. Worse yet,
when such people are once ill, if they have to keep on
breathing the impure air, they are far more likely to
die than if they were breathing pure air.

Let us do all we can to breathe pure air every day, so
that we may feel well and be well, and learn our lessons
with as little trouble as possible.

QUESTIONS

1. What difference does it make with our feelings whether we
sleep in pure air or impure air?

2. Describe the two schoolrooms.

3. If a room should be filled with animals, and if they should get
no fresh air, what would happen to them?

4. What do leaves take from the air ?

5. What do plants do with carbon dioxid ?

6. Which gases do plants use in breathing ?

7. How can you show that a candle uses up oxygen?

8. How much more oxygen does one gas jet use than one man?

9. If a gas jet is open and not lighted, what harm does it do to
the air of a room?

10. Why should we keep air free from smells of every kind?

CHAPTER III

TOBACCO AND PURE AIR

When I was a child one of the most interesting
things every summer was to watch my uncle smoke his
bees. He had ten hives and he thought he ought to

PREPARING TO ROB THE BEES

have some honey. But the bees wanted it themselves,
and for this reason they were ready to sting him when-
ever he came to get it, — even as your father would
shoot any burglar who came to rob him.

12 GOOD HEALTH

But my uncle knew a way to manage. He took a
pipe, filled it with tobacco, and smoked it into each hive.
At first the bees were excited and flew around as a man
might do if his house were on fire. Nevertheless they
had to breathe smoke instead of pure air, and it soon
made them so dull that they could not fly and could not
even sting. They stood still, or walked around slowly,
and my uncle brushed them from one place to another
and took as much honey as he wanted.

When the air in the hive became pure again the bees
felt better and hurried off to visit the flowers. They
wanted to get honey enough to fill their little barns
again so as not to be hungry in the winter.

That story is just to show what tobacco smoke does
for bees. It makes them rather stupid for a while, but it
does not kill them.

Here is another story.

The other day I went to see a friend of mine who has
a greenhouse. Everything was growing well, and I
said, " But how do you manage to keep off the bugs
and the worms ? "

"Ah!" said he; "tobacco smoke does it." This sur-
prised me, until he showed me great bundles of stems
of tobacco leaves that looked like small twigs. He said
he bought a ton of the stuff at a time. He also told
me that the soft part of each leaf is used for chewing
tobacco, for pipe tobacco, and for cigars, but that the

TOBACCO AND PURE AIR 13

stems are saved for greenhouses all over the country.
It seems that once every two weeks he himself uses
these stems for small bonfires up and down all the
straight rows of his greenhouse.

He takes an armful for each fire, spreads it out a
little on the ground, lights it, and shuts every door and
window to keep the smoke in.

After a while the room is so full of smoke that he
cannot stay in it a minute himself because it makes him

^^^yipPI
*•*%-•• •

p

SMOKING OUT THE INSECTS

deathly sick. But the bugs and the worms have shorter
legs ; they cannot run away. When, therefore, the stuff
is burned up and the fires have smoked out, and the man
goes in again, he generally finds the insects all dead. If
some are alive, he gives them another big smoke the next
day, and they never live to eat any more. Smoke from
an ordinary bonfire would not do this.

14 GOOD HEALTH

Both of these stories show what tobacco smoke does
for insects. But it is more important for you and me to
know whether it can do us any harm. I met a man the
other day who used to smoke sweet fern and grapevine
stems when he was a young boy. He says smoking was
great fun in those days and that it never made him sick,
until once when he thought he would try a real cigar.
He then took his pennies, bought the biggest cigar he
could find, lighted it, and smoked about half an inch.
He said he was so sick for five hours afterwards that
he thought he was going to die. He went into the barn,
lay down on the hay, and wished he could be a cow and
not suffer so. When his father found him he felt better,
but after that he never wanted to smoke again.

It is the poison in tobacco smoke that makes it so dif-
ferent from any other kind of smoke. It is this that
made the boy sick when he tried to smoke the cigar,
and it is this that killed the insects.

In another case the boy was not to blame. He was
three years old and had a father who was a great smoker.
This man played with his son, petted him, held him in
his lap, and often they slept together; but he also
noticed that whenever he stayed at home for several
weeks his son grew pale and weak and did not care to
eat. Later he noticed again that when he went out of
town and stayed away from home for a good while the
boy grew merry and strong and as well as ever. This

TOBACCO AND PURE AIR 15

seemed so strange that he asked the doctor about it.
Without any hesitation the wise man told him that the
trouble all came from the smoke of the tobacco that he
used. He said the boy could not get well unless the
father stopped smoking, or unless he went away from
home and stayed away. This put the matter so clearly,
and the man loved his son so much, that he stopped
smoking at once and the boy got well. From that time
on he stayed well, and even the father himself was in
better health.

If you should walk through a train of cars with your
eyes shut, you would know the smoking car by its smell.
Indeed, the odor of the tobacco smoke is so strong that
even if no one had smoked in that car for weeks, the
smell would remain and tell the story. It is also so dis-
agreeable to some people that men who are traveling,
and wish to smoke, have to do it in a car by themselves,
for even the smell of the smoke sometimes makes
women and children car-sick when they travel.

QUESTIONS

1 . Describe the robbing of the bees.

2. How did the man treat his greenhouse bugs and worms?

3. What is done with the different parts of a tobacco leaf?

4. How does the first smoke sometimes affect a man or child?

5. What is it in the tobacco that does the harm?

6. Tell the story about the boy and his smoking father.

7. Why do men have to travel in a separate car when they smoke?

CHAPTER IV

HOW THE AIR MOVES AND HOW MUCH WE NEED

Look at the trees when the wind blows, and see the
clouds fly. They show that the air is moving fast, and
we say, " The wind is blowing." But in the house the

MOVEMENT OF THE AIR

air moves more quietly, though even here the warm air
and the cold are always changing places.

Put a soft feather above a lighted lamp or gas jet and
see it fly toward the ceiling. Hot air is lighter than
cold air, and it gets so very hot around the lamp that
it goes up with a rush, taking the feather with it. Soon,

16

HOW THE AIR MOVES AND HOW MUCH WE NEED 1 7

however, the air grows cooler as it leaves the lamp, and
the feather comes down again.

Breathe on your hand, and you will see that your
breath is warmer than the air in the room. You will
know from this that your breath rises, too.

Since all this warm air goes to the top of the room as
fast as it can, the air up there must be warmer than it is
on the floor. To find
out about this, you
might set a thermom-
eter on the floor for
fifteen minutes and see
how high the mercury
goes. Now put the
same thermometer on
top of the bookshelves
for another fifteen min-
utes and look at the mercury again. In winter you will find
quite a difference between the two places, for at that time
hot air is sent into the room and it rises to the ceiling first.

In summer, wrhen the windows are open, there is not
so much difference between floor and ceiling air as during
the winter.

I stopped my writing just now to make an experiment
in the warm room where I sit. I opened the door into
the cold hall a narrow crack, then lighted a match and
held it close to the crack in the door, near the floor.

DRAFT INTO THE ROOM

i8

GOOD HEALTH

Instantly the flame was bent far over into the room.
This showed that down there the air was hurrying from
the cold hall into my warm room.

Next I held the lighted match against the open crack,
near to the top of the door. Thereupon the flame went
through the crack and tried to get out into the hall.

From this I knew that up
there the warm air was going
out into the cold hall as fast
as it could squeeze through
the crack of the door. The
whole experiment shows how
the air hurries back and forth
through any crack it finds.

Since the air moves so easily
in one direction and another,
it is never hard to get fresh

air into a house from out of doors, and it is no harder
to send impure air out of doors from any room or any
house. All we have to do is to keep the matter in mind
and arrange for it.

We must also remember that in any room impure air
mixes with pure air fast enough to spoil the whole of it
in a very short time. We cannot tell the condition of
the air by the looks of the room because we cannot see
the air itself, but a little experiment with ink and water
will help us out,

DRAFT OUT OF THE ROOM

HOW THE AIR MOVES AND HOW MUCH WE NEED

Put ten drops of ink into a glass of water and it will
mix so quickly that you will have rather poor stuff for
drinking. Put in fifty drops and the water will be so
black that nobody would think of drinking it. This is
about the way that impure air from the lungs of fifty
children mixes with
pure air in a school-
room and spoils it for
breathing. As this
mixing goes on all the
time, we need to know
just how much fresh
air we ought to have
to keep the whole of it
pure enough to breathe.

You might measure
something that is one
foot long, one foot high,
and one foot wide. A
box as big as that will hold one cubic foot of air.

Now men who know about it say that, if possible, a
child should have two thousand cubic feet of fresh air
every hour. This means that, if you could use the box for
a spoon, you would have to put two thousand spoonfuls of
air every hour from out of doors into the room where you
are. More than that, you would have to make room for it
by dipping just as much impure air out of the room.

THIS HOLDS ONE CUBIC FOOT

20 GOOD HEALTH

Each child needs as much as you do, and grown people
need more. This shows how much air must come and
go every hour to supply the fresh air needed in a room
full of school children.

In almost every city there are old schoolhouses where
the rooms do not get fresh air enough ; but in New York
City the new schoolhouses are made in such a way that
each child has eighteen hundred cubic feet of fresh air
every hour.

QUESTIONS

1. What signs show that the air out of doors is moving?

2. What experiment shows that warm air rises?

3. How do you know that your breath is warmer than the air in
the room?

4. How can you find out that the air at the top of a room is
warmer than the air near the floor?

5. Why is there a greater difference between the air of floor and
ceiling in winter than in summer?

6. Describe the experiment with a match at the crack of a door
and tell what it proves.

7. What does the ink experiment show about pure and impure
air?

8. What does breathing do to air in a room?

9. How big a box would you need to hold one cubic foot of air?
10. How many cubic feet of air does each child need?

CHAPTER V
HOW TO GET FRESH AIR. DRAFTS

Some people think that we do not need to trouble our-
selves about ventilating a room when it is large. They
believe that there is air enough in it to last a long time.
But this is a mistake. To be sure, the air lasts a little
longer in a large room than in a small one ; still after an
hour or so the people in it need to have just as much
pure air come in and impure air go out as if they were
in a small room.

Whenever you go into a house from out of doors
take special pains to notice how the air smells. Notice
it when you first go in, because each one of us gets used
to air after we have been in it awhile, and then we can-
not tell whether it is pure or impure. If it really has any
odor, or if it does not seem pleasant as compared to the
air out of doors, you may know that it is not pure.

Do not make a mistake and think that air is impure
when it is only warm, for warm air may be pure air too.
Sometimes you will have to go by the odor that you
find when the room " smells close," as we say.

Yet, after all, the great and useful thing for us to know
is just what to do to get pure air in and impure air out
of our homes.

21

22

GOOD HEALTH

If the house is old-fashioned, probably the only way is
by opening doors and windows. This is a good deal of
trouble sometimes; nevertheless, it must be done. To

show how little time it

&'"' takes to change the air,

%,. ":%^ "') suppose you shut all

'"^:C=: ':;%..-, -(": :; the windows of your

t .... %J^Y.<" J$? room and light a joss-
stick. See how quietly
the smoke floats around here and there.
Soon the room is quite full of it. Now
open windows on opposite sides of the
room and see what happens.

If a breeze is blowing in the right
direction out of doors, you will fine
that it pours in at one window whil<
the smoke streams out of the othei
and the room is cleared in almost n<
time. Of course the impure air is pour-
ing out of the room with the smoki
and the pure air is coming in just
fast, though we do not see it.
Stop just here; look around the room you are in an<
see whether you can tell how the fresh air gets in an<
how the bad air gets out. You may have to judge b;
the windows. Notice which are shut and which ai
open, and see if the wind is blowing; then try to decid<

CIRCULATION OF AIR
IN A ROOM

HOW TO GET FRESH AIR 23

whether or not enough air comes in to supply all who
need it.

If everything is shut you are breathing impure air
and you ought to do something about it.

Nobody can tell exactly how wide open windows
d to be, because all depends on the size of the room

DRIVING AIR OUT OF A ROOM

and the number of people in it; also on the size of
the windows and the direction of the wind. When a
breeze blows, an opening of an inch or two may be
enough, but on a quiet day in summer the windows
should be wide open.

Some people think that the hall door will give all the
air they need, yet they do not take pains to see that
the hall itself is getting outdoor air.

GOOD HEALTH

When a room has to get its air from windows, there
is always danger from drafts. Now a draft is like a small
wind in a room, that is, we say there is a draft when the
air is moving fast enough for us to feel it. If a window
is open on each side of the room where you are sitting,

and if you are be-
tween them, you are
probably in a draft,
and I am afraid you
will catch cold.

It is curious, but
true, that it is easier
to catch cold in a
draft in a room than
in the wind out of
doors, even when
that wind is blowing
hard enough to break
the branches of trees.
The reason is that a draft is very uneven. It cools pai
of the body at a time, and when this is the case the
machinery that regulates body temperature does not
work well. It does better when the whole body is warm
or the whole body cold than when it is warm in on<
spot and cold in another.

Perhaps the best way with windows is to open them
at the top. Then the air blows across the upper part

AlR LEAVING THE ROOM

HOW TO GET FRESH AIR 25

the room, and not low down where we are sitting; or
one window might be open at the top and another open
at the bottom.

In any kind of house a fireplace helps more than
anything else to keep the air pure.

Perhaps you are in a house that is heated in the best
way. In such houses the heat comes from steam pipes
or hot-water pipes in every room. Besides that, fresh air
is heated in the basement and pours into each room
through a register. Then too, there is a ventilator or
a fireplace in each room and the impure air escapes
through these.

When heating and ventilating are managed in this
way nobody need be anxious to open and shut windows,
and there is no danger from drafts.

In your own room to-night decide just what is the
best way to supply yourself with fresh air while asleep.
Fortunately there is always so much of it out of doors
that all we have to do is to give it a chance to get into
our rooms. When we let it in by the window at night
must be careful to have bedding enough, and we
must never sleep in a draft.

QUESTIONS

1 . How can you tell whether the air in a room is pure or impure ?

2. In an old-fashioned house how would you get fresh air?

3. How is ventilation secured in the room where you are now?

26 GOOD HEALTH

4. How wide open should the windows be?

5. Can you always get enough fresh air by leaving the door open
into the hall?

6. If the door is opened into the hall what else should be done?

7. How can you tell when there is a draft in a room?

8. Why is a draft dangerous?

9. How can you open the windows so that there will be no draft?
10. What is the best way to heat and ventilate a house?

CHAPTER VI

VENTILATION OF THE BUILDING YOU ARE IN

Your teacher will take you to the basement to-day, if
she can, and you will see the furnaces, the hot-air pipes,
and the fresh-air shafts, — provided a furnace is used.

Be sure to ask questions about anything you do not
understand.

Find out whether the school building is warmed by
stoves, by hot air, by steam, or by hot water. If hot
water or steam is used, notice whether or not fresh air
gets into the building at the same time.

Your teacher will show you how the air comes in at the
basement, how it goes up to each room, and how it then
enters through the registers. Notice whether there are
one or two large registers or several small ones in your
schoolroom. Notice the same thing about the ventilators.

If there are no registers and no ventilators, your
teacher will tell you how the room is ventilated.

If stoves do the heating, see if windows are open to
let the air in, and notice whether they are open at the
top or at the bottom.

Decide whether there are any dangerous drafts blow-
ing across anybody.

37

APPARATUS THAT WARMS A SCHOOLHOUSE

28

CHAPTER VII

A LITTLE LESSON ABOUT LITTLE THINGS. MICROBES

The dot at the end of this sentence is about as big as
a water flea looks when we see him without a microscope.

He is indeed so small that when he
jerks along in the water we cannot be
sure that he has head, tail, or legs. In
fact, we hardly notice him at all unless he
moves. By looking at him through a mi-
croscope, however, we see that he is the
fine animal that the picture shows ; and
now we can study his wonderful swim-
ming legs, his queer tail, his rounded
head, and his long, jointed feelers that
reach around under his body.

Evidently, although our eyes are
rather keen for some things, they can-
not see everything. There are millions upon millions of
tiny living creatures in the world that we cannot even
catch a glimpse of without a magnifying glass.

Some of them are plants, some are animals, and we
know most of them by what they do. They are so small

that the water flea must look like a fearful giant to them,

29

A WATER FLEA
Greatly magnified

30 GOOD HEALTH

and perhaps they, in turn, seem to him quite too small
to notice ; or it may be that he is so much bigger than
they are that it is as hard for him to see them as it is for us
to see him. Whatever the case may be, and though they
are so very small, still we know that some of them can do
more harm than mad dogs, while others are more danger-
ous than whole armies of soldiers in the enemy's country.
They are around us everywhere, — in the air we breathe,
in the water we drink, in the food we eat. At the same

time they are of so many
shapes and kinds that hun-

!

dreds of men study them

d yv ' f i^

* from one year's end to the

FORMS OF BACTERIA ,, -, , r

other and learn strange facts

a, grippe ; b, bubonic plague ; c, diphtheria;

if, tuberculosis; *, typhoid fever; about them. They also give

^ spiral types' them different names,— the

yeast plant, the mold, and the bacteria. Some people
speak of them all as germs, but the name that fits every
kind best is microbe, meaning " small life."

Most microbes do us neither harm nor good. Multi-
tudes of them are indeed the best friends we have,
yet very many others are our worst enemies. It is
the microbe that spoils our meat and sours our milk
and gives us moldy bread. They rot the fruit after it
is picked, and turn sweet grape juice into -wine and
vinegar. In all this they are so successful that we might
call a piece of spoiled meat or fruit a microbe city,

A LITTLE LESSON ABOUT LITTLE THINGS 31

for millions of microbes are living there together and
working as fast as possible. They are also ready to go
from such a city to a new place, and there the new
colony grows fast.

Take a sound apple and a rotten apple. Crack the
skin of the sound one, press the rotten one against it,
and leave them close together for a few days ; then exam-
ine them and you will see that even the sound apple has
begun to spoil. A few microbes promptly went across
from the rotten to
the sound apple and
made their home
there. After that
nothing can save an yy]

apple except to cut
off every bit that is
spoiled; but even WRERE M]CROBES MAy CROSS

then it will not keep

long, for the skin is broken and other microbes from
the air can get into it easily.

This is true of every kind of fruit, and also of meat
and milk, in fact, of anything that can decay. Microbes
move fast and they start new homes in whatever is near
by. Cooks who know this are careful to protect their
food from microbes if they can. They never put fresh
meat near meat that is spoiling, nor new milk into a
pitcher with old milk.

32 GOOD HEALTH

Cooks also know that microbes work fastest in warm
places and slowest where it is cold, and for this reason,
when they want milk to sour in a hurry, they put it in
a warm place; when they want it to keep sweet, they
put it in the ice chest. They know that it will surely
keep if it is frozen. They also know that meat, if it is
frozen solid, will keep long enough to be carried to the
North Pole and back again, though on a warm summer
day, in a hot kitchen, it may begin to spoil in a single
afternoon.

To understand this we must know that microbes do
not die when they are frozen. Instead, they can endure
more cold than the strongest man. It is true, of course,
that while they are frozen they can do no more work
than a frozen man, but the difference is that when the
freezing is over the man is dead, while the little microbe
is as sprightly as ever and ready for business.

Since they are so plucky about cold, it seems as if
they ought to endure great heat too. Yet this they can-
not do, for fire, or water that is boiling hot, actually kills
them. This then is our good fortune, for we manage to
save some of our food by boiling the microbes that get
into it.

There are two sides to the secret of keeping things
from spoiling:

1. Kill the microbes.

2. Put the food where no microbes can get to it.

A LITTLE LESSON ABOUT LITTLE THINGS 33

All this tells about our food, — how it spoils and how
to keep it sweet. But you and I are far more important.
We send microbes into our lungs every day with the
air we breathe; we put them into our mouth with our
food and our drink ; we gather them on our hands and
our face from anything we touch. Though many of
these microbes do us good, some of them do us great
harm. They may give us sore eyes, typhoid fever, con-
sumption, or any one of a long list of other diseases
that make us miserable, put us to bed, or kill us out-
right. They are the smallest and the strongest enemies
we have, and we need to know how to protect ourselves
against them.

QUESTIONS

1. What instrument does a man use when he studies microbes?

2. Where do microbes live?

3. Do they help us or do us harm?

4. What do they do to milk, meat, fruit, and other things?

5. Describe what happens when you put a rotten apple against a
sound one.

6. Do microbes work faster in cold or warm places?

7. What does freezing do to microbes?

8. Why do we boil fruit and vegetables before we can them?

9. What is the secret of keeping things from spoiling?
10. Can you mention any disease that microbes give?

CHAPTER VIII

MICROBES AND KEEPING CLEAN

Last winter, in the town where I was staying, there
were large red cards fastened to the houses on almost
every street. More than that, on each card there were
seven letters so long and so black that people who
walked on the opposite side of the street had no trouble
in reading the word "measles." Everybody also knew
what the sign meant, for it was as if the doctor had
called aloud : " Measles are in this house. If you come in
here, you will be in danger. You 'd better stay away."

After the sign had been put up, I noticed that the
neighbors obeyed the warning, for very few people be-
sides the doctor himself went in and out of the house.

The fact is that the air in places where people have
had certain diseases contains so many microbes of that
disease that we are never willing to breathe it if we can
help it. We are also most careful not to touch the
people themselves, for we know only too well that
microbes go as easily from a sick child to a well child
as from a rotten apple to a sound one. It is a more
serious matter, too, for the child ; for though we can
cut off a piece of apple that is getting rotten to save

34

MICROBES AND KEEPING CLEAN 35

the rest of the apple, still it would be rather hard to cut off
a piece of a child for the sake of saving the rest of him !
It is easier and pleasanter not to let the microbes get
a start in the first place. Children do, however, save
themselves from a good deal of danger every day.

I sometimes wonder what a room full of children
would say if I should ask them why they try to keep
clean. Perhaps one would answer, " Mother makes
me." Another might say, " I hate dirt " ; and another
yet, " Nobody likes me when I am dirty." These are
pretty good reasons, although the teacher in the same
room would probably say, " I keep clean because I want
to keep well " ; and this, in fact, is the most important
reason of all.

Hands and faces and clothes that are not clean have
more microbes on them than clean hands and faces and
clothes. I wash my hands before I eat because, if I do
not wash them, the microbes will go from my fingers to
my bread or to anything else I touch. They will enter
my mouth with my food, and I shall swallow every one
of them. If disease microbes are there, they will go
down just as easily as the others, and they may give me
great trouble afterwards.

As we go from place to place in the city every day
our hands touch things that other people have touched,
and we do not know who those people were. We grasp
the iron railing of a car to keep ourselves from falling

GOOD HEALTH

but we never suspect that a man with some kind of
disease microbes on his hands may have just let go that
same rail and left his microbes there.

We push a shop door open with both hands ; yet who
knows what sort of woman with what sort of disease may

have pushed it open
two minutes before we
came? Thus in a hun-
dred ways we may
gather up the worst of
the city microbes. We
may then reach home
barely in time for din-
ner and, if we forget
to wash our hands, we
give all sorts of mi-
crobes from all sorts of
people the chance to
go into our mouths
with our food.

Wearing gloves is quite a help, although even those
who wear them are sometimes very careless. I have
seen a gentle-looking, well-dressed woman with gloves
on slip a penny between her lips for a moment. It was
a dangerous thing to do, because who could tell what
hand had held the penny before she held it, or what
kind of microbes might be on it ?

WHERE MICROBES MAY BE EXCHANGED

MICROBES AND KEEPING CLEAN 37

If her lips had been cracked or chapped, and if the
microbes on the penny had been of the dangerous kind,
she might have caught a dangerous disease. Lips that
are slightly cracked are like apples that have their skins
broken ; if disease microbes get against them, they settle
there at once and cause trouble.

We must not forget that most microbes are harmless,
but we must be sure to remember that some of them do
us such great harm that the safest thing is not to run
any risks. It may be that the well-dressed woman whom
I saw had never heard of microbes, for some people are
quite behind the times in this matter.

Clothes need to be clean as well as hands, — also houses,
schoolrooms, cars, and churches. The cleaner such places
are, the safer we shall be; for wherever people live or
go, wherever they breathe the air or die, there we are
likely to find things that are soiled and microbes that
are multiplying. Since we know all this we must try to
keep clean every day; we must live in clean houses for
the sake of keeping well.

QUESTIONS

1. What does a warning sign on a house sometimes seem to say?

2. Why are we careful not to touch certain people?

3. What is one great reason for washing our hands and keeping clean ?

4. How may microbes get from the hands to the mouth?
5- Mention ways in which microbes may be exchanged?

CHAPTER IX

DUST AND CLEANLINESS

When the wind blows, clouds of dust whirl down the
street, and it seems as if you could hardly draw your
breath.

You turn your head away, press your lips together,
and try not to breathe much, even through your nose ;
yet, in spite of all that, so much dust is in your mouth
that you almost taste it, and so much is in your eyes that
they ache and grow red. Tears run down your cheeks
even though you are not crying. You cough and use
your handkerchief, and after you reach home you may
feel as if you had caught a hard cold.

There is reason for this, for many kinds of dust have
edges and corners and rough sides. A speck of coal
dust from the engine really scratches the delicate inside
skin of the eye with its corners, though the hands and
face cannot feel them. As for the lungs, they are so
much more delicate that even ordinary dust in an
ordinary home is bad for them.

If you want to know whether or not there is dust in
the air you are breathing, look at a band of sunshine as

38

DUST AND CLEANLINESS

39

it streams in through the window. In almost every room,
in this sunshine, you will see hundreds and thousands
of dust-specks that look like tiny air ships floating up
and down on the sunbeam, — fairy ships of shining gold.

A DUST STORM

Now pick up a corner of the rug and shake it, or draw
a heavy curtain back and forth on its pole, and look at
the band of sunshine again. Suddenly the little fleet is
ten thousand times as big. Thousands and thousands of
those air ships are crowding each other and racing on
the stream of sunlight. It is a beautiful sight, although,

GOOD HEALTH

of course, it is not good for any pair of lungs to inhale
such air as that. We must remember that dust is just as
thick everywhere else in the room as it is in the sunshine.
(/: ,/>v.r After all, however, the worst thing

about dust is the microbes that are
in it ; and it is easy to see that they
are always thickest where the dust
is thickest, for instance, in the streets
of a city. People who know this are
the ones who take the greatest pains
to keep dust and microbes out of
their lungs and out of their homes.
They know that any wind
strong enough to whirl the
least dust along is quite strong
enough to carry whole armies of
microbes from one place to another.
These microbes get into the air
from the skins of
people who have
skin diseases; they
are blown by mil-
lions from every
heap of dry rubbish
that you see, from garbage cans and sewers, from dead
animals and soiled clothes. In fact, they multiply fastest
in unclean places.

STIRRING UP DUST AND MICROBES

DUST AND CLEANLINESS 4!

Microbes that give consumption are thick in the saliva
of men and women who have that disease. These peo-
ple are often careless. They spit on the street, where
the saliva dries after a while ; passers-by step on it and
crush it ; ladies brush it around with their skirts ; it gets
into the air ; the wind blows it through our streets into
our homes and our schoolhouses ; it settles in our car-
pets and our curtains; we breathe it into our lungs,
and if we are not very healthy the microbes stay there
and end by giving us the disease itself.

This is such a dreadful prospect that some cities have
made laws against spitting in public places. Some
people still do it, however, and that is why we should
not breathe the dust in the street, and why we should
banish it from our schoolrooms and our homes.

Nevertheless, in spite of all we can do, it will get in
sometimes ; then comes the important question of dust-
ing. Some people have a queer way of doing it. I have
seen them go round switching things with a feather
duster. The dust flies up at once and floats in the sun-
beam, while the woman herself breathes it until it settles
down again. If the windows are open some of it gets
out of doors; otherwise it stays here and there in the
room. It is scattered, that is all.

A soft, damp, dusting cloth is better than a feather
duster; but if this is likely to injure anything, use a dry
cloth and shake it out of the window very often.

42 GOOD HEALTH

In a certain school in Worcester, Massachusetts, there
is what they call the " Health Brigade." Here the chil-
dren take turns in wearing the uniforms and in doing
the dusting. They wait eagerly for their turn to come
around, and they keep the rooms so clean with their
damp dusting cloths, that in 1902, when they did their
work, fewer children were ill than ever before since the
beginning of the school.

Damp dusters and school children did better work in
that school building than feather dusters and janitors.

QUESTIONS

1. What happens to people caught in a dust storm?

2. Why does dust in the eyes start the tears?

3. How can you see whether or not there is dust in the air of a
room?

4. If it is thick in the sunshine, what do you decide about the whole
room?

5. Why should rugs be shaken out of doors?

6. What is the worst thing about dust?

7. How do microbes get into the air?

8. Why is there a law against spitting?

9. What is the best way to dust?

10. Tell what the " Health Brigade " of Worcester did.

CHAPTER X

TOBACCO CHEWING AND CLEANLINESS

Last winter, on a very cold day, a friend of mine met
a farmer who had just driven in from the country, and he
saw a brown icicle a quarter of an inch long hanging from
each end of his mustache. It did not make the man look
handsome, and it showed what he had been doing.

Several years ago I knew an old man who had been
quite a dandy when he was young, but even then he
chewed tobacco. He was so careful and neat about it,
however, that no one thought he did it for a moment,
not even the woman he married. Still as he grew older
he grew careless too, and when I knew him he was such
an untidy old man that he showed every one of the
chewing signs. His dreadful tobacco breath matched
the looks of his few wretched teeth, and the stains on his
shirt front looked as if they came from the brown edges
of his twisted mouth. An old man who is not tidy is
certainly one of the most unattractive things on earth.

tA plug of tobacco is brown and dry, and it is pressed
into a square, hard block which men carry around in their
pockets. When they hold it in their hands or bite off a
piece it does not look as if it could do any more harm than
"

44 GOOD HEALTH

a piece of chocolate ; but thousands of young men have
grown into untidy old men because they have used it.

The places where they do their chewing are no cleaner
than the men themselves. Indeed, they match them
exactly. Ask your father to take you to such a place for
a moment sometime. Perhaps it will be a crowded room
in a city, or a country station, or a back-alley store.
Wherever it is, look at the floor. In such places you
will see great damp spots which tell the story at once.
Men who gather in such places generally use tobacco,
and everybody knows that men who chew have to empty
their mouths constantly. The tobacco makes them do it.
For this reason, wherever a tobacco chewer sits or stands,
there you see the signs of his occupation. The floor
shows it and the spittoon shows it, though the man him-
self is not often ashamed. Ladies who walk that way
have to hold up their skirts to keep them clean, but he
keeps on with his untidy work of spitting tobacco juice.

There is one great difference between the man who
chews his plug and the cow that chews her cud. The
cow is neat and clean about it and the man is not. The
cow does not soil the floor or use a spittoon ; she has no
brown spots at the corners of her mouth and her breath
is sweet and clean.

Spitting is so disgusting that even the word itself is
disagreeable and we hate to use it. Still there is no other
word that is quite so easy to understand.

TOBACCO CHEWING AND CLEANLINESS 45

A few years ago those who used tobacco were a
nuisance everywhere. No law had been made to check
them, and people who wanted to keep clean put spittoons
in every public place, — in railroad stations and business
places, in beautiful homes, in the House of Representa-
tives, in the courthouse where the judge sat, and in the
jail where the prisoner went. There were spittoons all
over America, and every one. of them was untidy ; yet
for years this was all that could be done.

Some people do not understand why you and I object
to their use of tobacco and they think that if they need to
empty their mouths very often, we should not try to stop
them. The truth is that we object to the man and to
what he does because we cannot keep the air clean when
he is around.

Our chapter on Dust and Cleanliness explained this.
Often a spittoon is tipped over, and what is left on the
floor dries after a while. It is trampled on, turned to
powder, blown into the air, and you and I cannot help
ourselves ; we have to breathe it. We have to take into
our clean lungs the dried tobacco juice that has come
from the mouth of the unclean tobacco chewer.

At last, however, some cities have passed laws against
spitting. Better yet, these laws are printed in large
letters and pasted up in railroad stations and in electric
cars, so that now people cannot empty their mouths
everywhere whenever they please. In New York City

46 GOOD HEALTH

men are fined or put in prison for spitting on the floor
of trains and stations and other public places.

What I am going to tell you now is n't very important,
but it is interesting. There are tribes in Africa that eat
their enemies if they get a chance, but I have been told
that these cannibals do not like the flesh of a man who
has used tobacco. They say it has a dreadful taste. Per-
haps it tastes as his breath smells. It is not necessary for
us to know this, for there are no people in America who
eat human flesh.

QUESTIONS

1. What are some of the signs of a tobacco chewer?

2. As the tobacco chewer grows older does he seem to grow more
tidy or more untidy in the way he uses tobacco ?

3. How does a plug of tobacco look?

4. Why do we object to having a man chew?

5. What have some cities done about spitting?

CHAPTER XI

WHY AND HOW WE NEED TO SLEEP

Once in a great battle on the river Nile some British
soldiers had to be awake so long and work so hard by
day and by night that at last some of them fell asleep
on the deck of the ship in the midst of the fighting.

They wanted to keep awake and they tried not to
sleep, but they could not help themselves.

In another battle the captain of a man-of-war fell asleep
too, and the strange part of it was that although a great
cannon was firing all the time only six feet away from
him, he slept two hours and did not hear a sound.

Soldiers have done even stranger things than that.
They have fallen asleep while they were marching along,
and they have walked several steps while they were
asleep. Of course, they wakened very soon, but they did
march and sleep at the same time.

Children who work in factories often have just as
much trouble about keeping awake when they are very
tired. They try with all their might not to go to sleep
while they are working, because they know they will be
punished if they do ; but suddenly, before they know it,
they are fast asleep.

47

48 GOOD HEALTH

Now the soldiers, the captain, and the children all
had the same trouble. They had worked too hard and
slept too little ; the brain was tired out, and under such
circumstances it sometimes goes to sleep even when we
tell it not to. Whenever we say we are sleepy we mean
that the brain needs to rest.

Ask your father to open and shut his hand as fast as
he can, and beg him to keep on doing it as long as he
can. After a while he will tell you that his fingers are
stiff, and you will notice that they move more and more
slowly. Then he will say that he is getting very tired.
If he keeps on long enough, at last his hand will be so
tired that his fingers will not obey him. They will not
move even if he tries with all his might to make them.
The brain behaves in just this way when it is very tired ;
it cannot keep on working even if we want it to.

We all know that thinking is the work that the brain
does. It begins when we first wake in the morning, and
it does not stop until we go to sleep at night. It does not
rest an instant all day unless we take a nap; for from
first to last it is thinking about toys and play, about
school and kites, dolls and balls, and all about our duties
and our fun. No wonder it gets tired. No wonder we
have to sleep a great deal to give it the rest it needs.

The truth is that we spend more time in sleeping than
in eating or playing or studying ; and we are wise in this
because the work the brain does is more important than

WHY AND HOW WE NEED TO SLEEP

49

the work of any other part of the body, and sleep is the
only thing that rests it.

If you lie down and are not asleep, the brain is
not really resting. If you dream, it is working a

Too TIRED TO STAY AWAKE

little; but it rests perfectly when you sleep perfectly.

While the brain stops working the rest of the body is
not idle. In fact, one of the important things to remem-
ber is that children grow fast while they are asleep.

You can prove this by noticing how much a baby
sleeps and how fast he grows.

50 GOOD HEALTH

If you have a chance, you might visit the same baby
once a month for a year. Each time you will see that he
is bigger. His mother will also tell you that he does
nothing but sleep and eat, and from this you know that
he must be growing fast while he sleeps. It is a fact,

1

A GOOD POSITION FOR SLEEPING

indeed, that babies who sleep the most grow the fastest,
and, as a rule, this is true of all children.

Though we can sleep even when we are not lying
down, still we get the best rest when we are stretched
out on a comfortable bed.

Several things about the bed must be looked after.
It should be flat and smooth. The pillow should not be
large, because the higher the head is raised the harder
the heart has to work to send the blood into it, and we
ought to give the heart as little work as possible at night.

WHY AND HOW WE NEED TO SLEEP 51

Some people use a thin hair pillow, and others who are
quite as wise use none at all. Most people understand
the laws of oxygen and carbon dioxid so well that they
never cover their heads with the bedclothes when they
sleep. They wish pure air and plenty of oxygen instead
of impure air and little oxygen under the bedding.

While we are sleeping we have a grand chance to help
decide whether our backs shall be straight or crooked.
If we always lie as we should we shall be helping our
backs to be straight, because children's bones are not
very hard, and the oftener we bend them in one particular
way the more likely they are to stay in that shape. But a
boy who is sure that he wants a straight body will help
himself even while he is asleep, and when he has grown
to be a man he is sure to be as straight as a soldier.

QUESTIONS

1. What happened to tired soldiers on the river Nile?

2. What happens sometimes to tired-out children?

3. Why do people sometimes go to sleep when they don't wish to?

4. What sort of work does the brain do?

5. When does the brain rest?

6. Why do we need to spend more time in sleeping than in eating,
playing, or studying?

7. What does the body of a child do while he sleeps?

8. In what position can we sleep the best?

9. Why should the pillow be low?

IO. Why do we leave the head uncovered?

CHAPTER XII
SOME RULES ABOUT SLEEPING

Sleep is so important that when a man is ill the doctor
often tells the nurse not to waken him even for his
medicine or his food. He says that sleep will do him
more good than anything else.

A doctor in Stockholm, Sweden, studied the health of
children and found that those who did not sleep enough
were ill the oftenest, while those who slept the most were
generally the healthiest. It is the same with children in
other countries.

Ask the members of your class about it, and I think
you will find that the ones who read and spell and
learn their lessons best are the ones who sleep the most.
You might see what they say about it. Perhaps you
have noticed that you yourself are always happiest and
bravest and kindest, that you learn your lessons the
easiest and recite them the best, and that you have the
most fun with games of all kinds after you have slept
well. It is so with everybody; we do everything best
after we have slept best.

But there are some people in every town and city who
cannot sleep much, no matter how hard they try.

52

-

SOME RULES ABOUT SLEEPING 53

I knew a woman once who had only slept five hours
that week, and she said nobody knew how she suffered.
When she did sleep again she was the happiest woman
you ever saw.

There are certain things that help many people to go
to sleep. The patter of rain on the roof is one, the rustle
of leaves is another, and the gentle singing of a lullaby is
still another. All these things help because they keep on
without much change. They are what we call monotonous.
The sound goes on in the same tone, and it is soothing.
But when the sound stops the people waken at once.

Perhaps you have seen how quickly an old man
stiffens his neck and sits up straight when the minister
stops preaching. It is the same with a baby too some-
times. He sleeps while the nurse is singing, but when
she stops he wakens and begins to cry.

People know that monotonous things make them
sleepy, so when they are excited or tired and cannot
sleep they try all sorts of schemes that are monotonous.
Sometimes they count slowly from one to one hundred ;
then they count backwards from one hundred to one.
Sometimes they repeat a verse of poetry over and over
again, or they say to themselves,/' Sleep, sleep, sleep,"

Intil at last they go to sleep.

Once when I could not sleep I learned to say the
alphabet from both ends to the middle, like this : a z b y c
xdwevfugthsirjqkplomn. At the same time

54 GOOD HEALTH

I learned to say it from the middle out again, like this:
mnlokpjqirhsgtf uevdwcxbyaz. That
seems a foolish business now, but it helped me to go to
sleep many times in those days.

Children do not lie awake very often. For them the
principal questions are when to go to bed and how long
to sleep. Or we might put it this way: if a man or a
child wants his brain to work for him in the best way it
can, and as fast as it can, how many hours ought he to
sleep each night ? Merely to be in bed is not enough.

Babies need more sleep than young men, and people
who are feeble need more than those who are strong.
From this we see that there can be no very definite
rules. Here are some pretty good ones, however.

1. Children four years old need to sleep
about twelve hours.

2. Children seven years old need to sleep
about eleven hours.

3. Children eight and nine years old need
to sleep about ten and a half hours.

4. Children ten and eleven years old need
to sleep about ten hours.

5. Children twelve years old need to sleep
about nine hours.

Even grown-up people are healthier as a rule and can
use their brains and bodies better when they sleep seven
and a half or eight hours a night.

SOME RULES ABOUT SLEEPING ^ 55

By using this table you ought to be able to decide for
yourself how many hours of sleep you need each night.
Notice whether you are wide-awake or sleepy when it is
time for you to get up in the morning. If you are
sleepy, you must go to bed earlier; you need more
sleep, and the time to get it is in the evening, not in
the morning.

Probably you are nine or ten years old. In this case
you ought to sleep ten hours or more every night.

If you are healthy and strong, and if you are wide-
awake in the morning so that nobody has to waken you
for breakfast, then perhaps ten hours will be enough.
Let your father decide about that.

I know three children who go to the grammar school.
They are about the best scholars in their classes, but
they never have any " home work " to do. They do all
their studying in the schoolroom. When they are not
in school they are generally playing out of doors in the
pure air. One reason why they get along so well with-
out doing " home work " is because they sleep so much.

Elizabeth is nine years old. She sleeps ten and a half
hours almost every night. James is eleven, but he is
strong, and after he has slept nine and a half hours he
is wide-awake. He cannot sleep any more and his
father lets him get up. Fred is thirteen. He is not
quite so strong as James, so he sleeps ten hours and he
is getting stronger every month.

56 GOOD HEALTH

All three children are healthy, and are growing fast;
they are good students and they are full of fun too.
They think that sleeping is like putting money in the
bank of health. I think so too.

I shall now give you three rules.

1. Sleep all you can. This will make you
brighter and bigger.

2. Go to bed and get up at regular hours.
This will help you to get sleep enough.

'3. Unless you are ill do not lie in bed many
minutes after you wake in the morning.

QUESTIONS

1. What does a doctor sometimes advise about sleep?

2. What did a doctor find out about school children in Stockholm?

3. What do your classmates say about sleep?

4. When do you feel best, after much or little sleep?

5. What sort of things help to put people to sleep?

6. If a child or a man wants his brain to be as useful as possible,
what important thing must he see to?

7. According to the rules, how many hours' sleep do you need every
night?

8. Tell about the three children who slept so much and had no
" home work " to do.

9. Give the rules of sleep that end the chapter.

CHAPTER XIII

HABITS OF SLEEPING

Next door to where I am sitting and writing there is
a little girl seven years old. She cannot go to sleep
unless her mother sits in the room with her and unless
the gas is burning. If her mother is not there, she lies
awake and screams.

Just across the road in another house is a boy five
years old. Every evening when bedtime comes his
mother says, " Now for bed." Generally he looks un-
happy because he likes to play; but he trots along.
His mother puts him in bed, tucks him in, says good
night, turns out the gas, and goes away, and in five
minutes he is fast asleep. He never lies awake to
scream for his mother, and he cannot sleep if there is
a light in the room.

Some mothers hold their babies, and rock and sing
them to sleep. They do this so regularly that after a
while it turns out that such babies cannot sleep unless
the mother does hold and rock and sing to them. Other
mothers put the baby into a comfortable bed, give him
a little pat, smile at him, and go away ; and these babies
fall asleep just as soon as the others. It almost seems

57

58 GOOD HEALTH

as if there must be different kinds of babies in different
families. But this is not so ; the real secret of the sleep-
ing is that we get used to things and then we find it
hard to change.

That is why the little girl next door needs her mother
and the light to help her sleep. She is used to them. It
is the same with the boy, with the baby that needs to be
rocked, and with the baby that goes to sleep quietly on the
bed. Their mothers have trained them, and each has his
own particular habit. Older people train us when we are
babies, but when we grow older we must train ourselves.

You might try this plan. Go to bed every night at
exactly the same 'hour and see whether you don't fall
asleep more quickly each night.

Captain Barclay was a man who walked a thousand
miles in a thousand hours. Of course every moment
was precious and he did not want to waste any time
getting to sleep. So he trained himself until he found
that he could fall asleep the moment he lay down. As
soon as he wakened he began walking again.

We can help ourselves to waken in the same way.
In some families the first thing you hear in the morning
is a loud call at the foot of the stairs: "Children!
Children! It's time to get up." Then after a while
somebody says: "I don't see what's the matter with
those children. I suppose I must go up and shake them
all out of bed."

HABITS OF SLEEPING

59

Some children have to be spoken to and shaken and
called over and over again before they are awake enough
to get up. Other children waken at the first call and get
up without any trouble. Perhaps one child has not slept
enough, but very often the
real reason is that they have
different habits of waking.
If any one gets into the
habit of hearing the first call
and getting up at once, he
will always hear it; but if
he pays no attention to it,
and stays in bed, and takes
another nap, after a few days
he will not hear it at all.

It is easy for any
man, woman, or child
gradually to form this
habit. I have done it
myself.

Every winter when
our man Crosby goes
to the basement and shakes the furnace with all his
might for the first time, I waken with a jump and think
that the world is coming to an end. Then I remember
what is happening and go to sleep again. The second
morning I am not so frightened, and I fall asleep at

FORMING A HABIT

60 GOOD HEALTH

once. The third morning I only half hear the noise in
my dreams, and after that I sleep through all his shaking
and poking without so much as turning over.

Now if I had stayed awake those first few mornings, I
should have started the habit of waking at five o'clock,
and this would have kept me miserable all winter; but
instead, I made myself go to sleep, until now that is my
habit and I like it. I trained myself to it.

It is the same with an alarm clock. If you go to sleep
again each time after the alarm has sounded, in a few
mornings you will train yourself not to hear it at all. In
that way children train themselves not to hear the first call
to get up. If they have slept long enough, they ought to
get out of bed at once. Still, all I am trying to show
just now is that we can make our own sleep habits. We
can train ourselves in the opposite way too.

If we heed the alarm clock, and stay awake, and get
up, it will always awaken us.

It is strange, but we can train ourselves to hear some
noises and not to hear others. The things we attend to
are the ones that awaken us. A good nurse may sleep
through a thunderstorm, or a dreadful fire alarm, but
when her patient groans, or when she only whispers her
name, the nurse wakens in an instant. She has trained
herself to listen to that one particular sound.

Some people are trained by the place where they live.
I have a friend who cannot sleep when she goes to the

HABITS OF SLEEPING 6 1

country. She said one day, " You see it is so awfully
quiet out here in the country, that it keeps me awake."
In Boston she sleeps soundly, but her home is on a noisy
street. She misses the noise just as a baby misses his
mother's singing.

A man once lived near a noisy mill that ran at night,
and after a while he could not sleep unless the mill wheel
was going.

It is the other way with most of us. We need the
quiet for our sleep. When country people go to the
noisy city it is often many nights before they sleep well.

From all this we learn that after doing a thing in one
way for many times something within us seems to decide
that we shall do it in the same way every time. That is
why it is so important for us to start our sleep habits in
the right direction.

QUESTIONS

1. Describe the different ways in which children go to sleep.

2. What is it that makes the difference?

3. What did Captain Barclay train himself to do?

4. What difference is there in the way children waken?

5. Why do some children waken promptly while others have to
be called over and over again?

6. How can I train myself to sleep?

7- How can I train myself to waken at the slightest sound?

8. What is a good nurse able to do about waking and sleeping?

9. Why should we have good habits of sleep?

CHAPTER XIV
DANGERS TO THE EYESIGHT

If any one should ask what you considered the worst
thing that could happen to you, you might say blindness.

Think what it means, — to lose the sunlight, the sky
and the clouds, the birds and the flowers ! Never to see
the faces of friends again ; never to see kites fly, or dolls
shut their eyes ; never to be able to read, or play ball or
top, or skip rope !

Words could not tell our loss, yet blindness comes
suddenly sometimes.

To be sure, there is the bony eye socket like a mountain
range around the eyeball to protect it ; and it is true that
it stands guard like a faithful sentinel by day and by night ;
nevertheless, every Fourth of July of every year toy pistols
and cannon firecrackers blow their way past the sentinels
and bring darkness to hundreds of shining eyes.

Scissors, knives, and sticks in careless hands do th<
same thing. A college student friend of mine even fell
on a barbed-wire fence in such a way that a sharp poinl
pierced the eyeball. Since then neither darkness nor
daylight has made any difference with that eye. It is

stone blind.

62

HE CANNOT SEE
63

64 GOOD HEALTH

On the Fourth of July and every other day let our
watchword be " Carefulness." Toy pistols and cannon
firecrackers should never be used. Remember that a
ruined eye will never grow again.

Bones are not the only guardians of the eyeball, for
there are the eyelids besides — the most wonderful cur-
tains in the world.

You do not have to pull a string, or lift a latch, or
give a command to make them move. On the contrary,
they act as if they did their own
thinking. If dust blows, the curtain
drops low and the fringe of the eye-
lash falls in such a way that you can
peep through it even while it keeps

the dust out.
EYELASHES THAT KEEP TC .. . t • ,

THE DUST OUT If any hght 1S to° bright, the cur-

tain slides down just far enough to
let in what you need ; if you are sleepy, it shuts down so
tight that not a ray of light can get in ; while if anything
comes quickly toward your open eye, the curtain falls
like a flash to protect it.

Think of your eyelids for a moment. Guess, if you can,
how many times they rise and fall every minute. They
never grow weary ; they are always diligent and they teach
us that even light itself should be kept out sometimes.

I have never seen an eagle gaze at the sun without
winking, although I have heard that he can do it. Not s<

DANGERS TO THE EYESIGHT 65

with us, however. Tears come to our eyes and we grow
dizzy when we try the experiment. These signs prove
what harm a very strong light
does. Japanese mothers do not
know this, I suppose, for they
carry their babies as if they
thought they had the eyes of
an eagle.

When a Japanese baby falls
asleep strapped on his mother's
back, the small head bobs over
backward, the face is turned
toward the sky, and sunshine
streams down on his eyes. Doc-
tors think this is one reason why
so many people in Japan have
trouble with their eyes.

Notice the first baby carriage
you meet on the street. If the
sun is shining, the cover should
shade the baby's face, and should

have a dark lining to keep out

, ... . ., , JAPANESE BABY ASLEEP

as much light as possible.

Babies should not gaze at a bright sky, at a window that
is very bright, at a lighted lamp, or at the fire in the grate.
Even we ourselves should not do these things for any
length of time. A shade over our eyes when we read in

66

GOOD HEALTH

the evening, or a shade over the lamp, will keep the light
out of our eyes and throw it on our work where we need it.
Yet there is the opposite danger of too little light.
Thousands of women ruin their eyes by sewing in rooms
that are too dark, while thousands of both men and

women injure their sight by
reading in the twilight or by
dim lamps. It is not safe to
do these things. Eyes are too
precious to be strained either
by too much or too little light.
After all, however, the great-
est danger to children's eyes is
from microbes. Indeed,
some of these microbes
can do as much harm
I as a Fourth of July
explosion.

Several years ago, in
a city of Germany,
there was a great epi-
demic of eye disease.
The first anybody knew about it was that thirteen
children in one schoolroom had the trouble. Then it
went from room to room and from schoolhouse to
schoolhouse until four thousand children were suffering
in that one city alone.

SHADING THE BABY'S EYES

DANGERS TO THE EYESIGHT

67

The same disease is found in other cities in different
parts of the world, and it always spreads if it gets a
chance. •

One of these eye diseases is so terrible, and it spreads
so fast, that the government of the United States is very
strict in trying to keep it out
of the country. For this
reason there are officers that
examine the eyes of every
immigrant who wishes to
land. If then any man,
woman, or child has that
particular eye trouble, the
officers either send him back
at once to the country he
came from, or else they see
that he is cured before they
let him go around among
other people.

It is the easiest thing
in the world for children,
through their ignorance of microbes, to help eye diseases
along. One child may have sore eyes in the first place.
They feel queer; he therefore rubs them and gets
microbes on his hands. Next he takes hold of the hands
of other children, or of some book or plaything that they
are going to touch, and microbes are left in those places.

THROWING LIGHT ON THE BOOK

68 GOOD HEALTH

Later yet, the well children touch those books and play-
things, get those same microbes on their hands, rub their
eyes, and leave the microbes there to go to work at once.
The only place where these special microbes can do
harm is in the eye.

In this way disease microbes may be passed from eye
to eye and from schoolhouse to schoolhouse, until there
is an epidemic.

In some schools the children all wash in the same
bowl and wipe their hands and faces on the same
towel. This is most unfortunate, for nothing helps
eye disease to spread faster. Always be careful not to
use any water, or wash cloth, or towel that any one else
has used.

Teachers are more particular about such things than
they used to be. They know the danger, and when they
see children with red eyes, or when they notice that the
edges of their eyelids look rough and sticky as if they
had been fastened together by something, they either
send the children to a doctor at once, or send them
home lest they communicate the disease to the other
children.

" Pink eye " goes in just this way from child to
child. It also travels so swiftly that if the first child who
has it is careless a whole room full of boys and girls may
soon be afflicted by it. He who has " pink eye " should
therefore be as thoughtful for others as for himself.

DANGERS TO THE EYESIGHT 69

If the doctor says that you have any sort of eye
disease, you must be as careful as possible about two
things.

1. Don't rub your eyes with your hands.

2. If you have put your hands to your
eyes, don't touch anything that other people
may touch afterwards until after you have
washed your hands.

If others have sore eyes and you want to escape, be
careful about two things.

1 . Never touch anything they have touched.

2. If you have touched those things, keep
your hands away from your own eyes after-
wards.

QUESTIONS

1. What pleasures should we lose if we could not see?

2. What is the use of the eye socket?

3. What sort of accidents happen in spite of the eye socket?

4. What does the eyelid do?

5« How should we protect the eyes of babies?

6. Is it possible for our eyes to receive too much light?

7» How can we save our eyes from too much light?

8. How do people ruin their eyes by too little light?

9. What does the greatest harm to children's eyes?

10. Describe the eye epidemic in Germany.

11. How do school children give eye disease to each other?

12. If you have the disease, what will you do to save others?

13. If others have the disease, what will you do to save yourself?

CHAPTER XV

READING, BOOK PRINT, AND GLASSES

If a carpenter is hammering nails into the wall, or if a
shoemaker is sewing leather to make a shoe, it does

not matter very much how
the light falls, because his
work is so big that he can
see it well enough in any
part of the room; but if a
man is writing a lecture, or
if a boy is studying his les-
sons, it makes very much
difference where the light
comes from. People who
use books and pens every
day have to be specially
careful about the way the
light shines on their work.
Look around your school-
room and see where the
light is brightest. Every
house gets its light either from daylight through the win-
dows — which is the very best to use — or from lamps,

70

BOOK IN THE SHADOW

READING, BOOK PRINT, AND GLASSES 71

gas, or electricity ; but whichever kind of light it is, the
way it slants toward our book or our work is a matter
of great importance to the eyes themselves.

Take a book, stand with your back toward the win-
dow, and try to read. Your shadow falls all over the
page and makes it
almost as bad for your
eyes as if you were in
a dark room.

Now turn squarely
around and face the
window. This is un-
comfortable, too;
because if you hold
the book slanting up-
ward, as you ought
to do, the page is

in the shadow again, while the bright light is in
your eyes. Of course this is as wrong as possible.
Try again.

Stand with your right side toward the window. This
is quite fine, you think; the light is on the page and
your eyes are in the shadow. Yes, that is very well for
reading; but if you were writing, the shadow of your
hand would fall across the page and bother you a little.
Put your hand up as if you were writing on the page,
and see what I mean.

GOOD HEALTH

There is just one other way. Stand with your left
side to the window. Now everything is perfect for read-
ing and for writing too. The light shines on the white

page; it is reflected

up to your eyes and

I^iB^^^-JMI '••

m you see the words

easily. You do not
face the light, and if
you are writing, the
shadow of the hand
falls where it does not
cover anything.

Whatever kind of
light is in the room,
the rule about the
right way to sit is
always the same.
Desks should never
face the window, and
blackboards ought to
be opposite the win-
dows and not between
them. This not only
saves the eyes from being dazzled but makes it easier to
read what is written. Notice all these points for yourself.
You should never strain your eyes ; that is, everything
you read in the schoolroom should be easy to see.

LIGHT OVER THE RIGHT SHOULDER

READING, BOOK PRINT, AND GLASSES

73

Write a sentence on your slate. Write the same sen-
tence on paper with your pen. The last one is so much
easier to read that we know at once that it is the best for
the eyes. Ink should always be jet black, even when it
is first put on paper. Blackboards and slates should be
clean that the writing may
show plainly. Dim marks
hurt the eyes. The easier
it is to see a thing the bet-
ter it is for the eyesight.
This is just as true of
books and newspapers as
of blackboards and writ-
ing paper.

Here is a newspaper. I
pick it up from the table
and I notice several inter-
esting points about it.
Some of the letters are
large and some are small ;
some of the lines are near

together and some are far apart ; some of them are short
and some are long. On the first page of this special paper
there are seven columns and most of the letters are
no larger than these in this book. On the second page,
however, there is but one column. It is a monstrous
advertisement with large letters and lines far apart.

As THE LIGHT SHOULD FALL

74 GOOD HEALTH

I learn from all this that when the letters are small
and the lines near together it is best not to have long
lines. In fact, the smaller the letters are the shorter the
lines ought to be. Notice the length of the lines on this
page. How many words do you find in each line ?

It is easy to see that if the page you are reading were
as wide as a newspaper, if the letters were small, if the
lines were packed together closely, and if they stretched
across the whole page from one side to the other, it
would be hard for the eye to jump back from the end of
one line to the beginning of the next. With large letters,
therefore, each line may be much longer than when the
letters are small.

People who print books usually think of these things.
They use white paper and black ink ; they do not crowd the
lines together ; they leave a good margin around the edge
of the page ; they do everything that will help the eyes and
save them from doing hard work when they use books.

If you wish to make a little examination of your own
eyes you may use the newspaper again in a different
way. Pin it to the side of the room and step as far from
it as will let you see the large letters easily. Read with
both eyes first. Now read with one eye at a time. While
you are using one eye leave the other one wide open, but
cover it with something black or with your hand.

If you find that you can read better with one eye than
you can with the other, there is some trouble and your

READING, BOOK PRINT, AND GLASSES 75

father should take you to the oculist. Probably you need
glasses.

When you read this page, if you do not see each line
and each letter distinctly, or if you have a tired feeling
in the eyes, you should tell your father or your teacher.

We call people nearsighted when they have to hold
their books very near to the eyes to read ; we call them
farsighted when they have to hold them too far away.
Neither kind of sight is quite right. If you have to
hold this book nearer to your eyes than twelve inches,
or farther off than seventeen inches, you may need
glasses. The oculist will tell you.

Many children need glasses for a few years only and
are able to go without them as they grow older ; whereas
if they do not have them when they need them, they
surfer later. For this reason, if you have any trouble,
your father should take you to the oculist once or twice
a year.

QUESTIONS

1 . How are houses lighted ?

2. Why is it best to have the light fall over the left shoulder
on the page?

3. What objection is there to having it in front? behind? on
the right?

4. Why should blackboards be opposite the windows and not
between them?

5. Give some of the rules about paper and ink, blackboards
and slates.

76 GOOD HEALTH

6. Why should everything be plain and easy to read?

7. Tell what you can about newspapers, long and short lines, large
and small letters?

8. When ought the lines to be short? When long?

9. How can you find out whether your eyes see alike?

io. What difference can you mention between nearsighted and far-
sighted eyes?

CHAPTER XVI

ANIMALS AND ALCOHOL

Sometimes men mix rum and molasses together in a
shallow dish and set it where flying insects may see it.
These little creatures are so fond of sweet things that
they smell the molasses for yards around and hurry from
all sides to get it. Possibly they like the rum too, for
they seem to enjoy the whole mixture and drink it up
eagerly. But imagine what happens afterwards. Before
long the insects are intoxicated. Then they lie around
so helpless that men catch them without even a net.

Did you ever hear of beautiful drunken butterflies?
In South America there is a certain tree from the
flowers of which a sweet juice trickles, and hosts of
butterflies use this juice for food. Unfortunately, how-
ever, while it is still on the tree, it sours and ferments.
Now butterflies do not seem to be quite bright enough
to know that they take great risks when they use this
juice after it is sour. In fact, they are so ignorant that
they run their long tongues into the flowers and suck
it up as merrily as ever. Then they feel queer, and
stagger, and act as some men do on the sidewalks late
at night. They cannot fly, they act half-witted, and

77

78 GOOD HEALTH

when their enemy comes they are helpless and cannot
get away.

The enemy is the bird. When he sees these butterflies
in this sad plight he is delighted, and picks up one after
the other, swallows them joyfully, and looks around for
more. If he could talk about it, I suppose he would say
that alcohol is one of the best things in the world because
it helps him to get a hearty meal every day.

No doubt many a man who sells alcohol thinks so
too. But what about the butterflies? And what about
the men ?

Dr. Hodge is the professor of physiology in Clark
University, Worcester, Massachusetts. He is also a
student of animals. For this reason, a few years ago, he
was asked to find out whether alcohol does human beings
any harm in certain directions. He was sure that the
quickest and best way to go to work was to press various
cats and dogs into this useful service, for he knew, as
we do, that things that are unwholesome for animals
are usually unwholesome for people, and that food which
nourishes animals will generally nourish men too ; that
is, poison that kills a dog will kill a man, and food that
fattens a dog will probably fatten a man.

In this way, then, animals sometimes pass most useful
lives. By being rather uncomfortable and not very ener-
getic for a while they have taught careful, scientific men
lessons which will end by saving thousands of human

ANIMALS AND ALCOHOL 79

beings from living miserable lives and dying miserable
deaths.

In this particular case Dr. Hodge secured the help of
several young kittens. He picked out two that were
happy and healthy, and tried to make them take milk that

ALCOHOL-DISEASED KITTENS, JUNE 4, 1895; CHARACTERISTIC ATTITUDE

When the photograph was taken, 5 P.M., all the normal kittens
were playing actively

had a little alcohol in it. But the kittens would not touch
it ; they acted as if they would rather starve first.

He therefore opened their mouths very carefully and
fed the milk to them, a little at a time. It did not please
them, but they swallowed it. Dr. Hodge did this regularly
for ten days, and day by day he noticed how it affected
the kittens. The result was certainly not favorable, for

8o GOOD HEALTH

although they did not suffer the slightest pain, still they
were changed. They stopped playing, did not grow,
and did not keep their fur clean and smooth as healthy
kittens always do. They did not even care for mice,
or feel the slightest interest in any dog. Indeed, they
seemed to be dull and indifferent to everything.

All the other kittens acted as usual. They grew bigger
every day, played and caught mice, bristled up their tails
at any dog that came in sight, purred, and kept their fur
in good order.

The picture shows how the alcoholic kittens looked
while the others were playing. They did not suffer, but
they were dull and half asleep, and had no energy what-
ever. Finally, however, they were actually ill, and by
this time Dr. Hodge concluded that they had taught
him at least one great lesson. They had proved that
alcohol prevents kittens from growing and robs them
of their energy. Accordingly he stopped giving the
stuff to them and turned his attention to dogs.

This story is much longer, and I must only begin to
tell it to-day.

On Washington's Birthday, February 22, 1895, four
puppies were born in two different kennels. Two were
brothers and the other two were sisters. They were fine,
strong, healthy, young animals, and that was one reason
why Dr. Hodge specially needed their help in his
important work.

ANIMALS AND ALCOHOL

8l

Two of the dogs were a trifle more energetic than the
others, and he picked these out for his experiment. He
wished to see whether a little alcohol every day would
make them at all different from the other dogs who were
not to take any.

Each pair of dogs was put into a separate kennel, and
each kennel was in a large yard full of sunshine. These

BUM TIPSY NIG TOPSY

Photograph taken November 27, 1895

houses were kept clean and neat, while the dogs had all
that the heart of a dog could wish, — plenty of good food,
dog biscuit, fresh meat, eggs, and milk, with bones enough
besides, so that they could gnaw to their heart's content.
Of course they also had fresh drinking water two or
three times a day.

82 GOOD HEALTH

The four dogs were treated exactly alike, except in
one important respect. Every day Dr. Hodge mixed a
little alcohol into the food that went to one of the ken-
nels. The dogs liked their food better without it, but
they had good appetites and ate whatever was given
them. On the other hand, not a drop of alcohol went to
the second kennel. This did not seem to make much
difference at first, for all four dogs grew equally fast,
and all looked equally strong and healthy.

The dogs had to be named, and Dr. Hodge called one
pair Bum and Tipsy, because they took alcohol; the
other pair, in the other kennel, he named Nig and Topsy.
The first Topsy died soon after the experiment began,
and Topsy number two took her place.

The next chapter will tell a little about the history of
these dogs. All four were cocker spaniels.

QUESTIONS

1. What happens to certain butterflies in South America?

2. What do the birds do to the butterflies?

3. What was Dr. Hodge asked to find out?

4. Why did he decide to get the help of cats and dogs?

5. What did he give to the kittens with their milk?

6. How did the alcohol affect them?

7. When were the four puppies born?

8. How many puppies were put into each kennel?

9. What were the names of the puppies?

10. What food did they have?

1 1 . Which two dogs received a little alcohol with their food ?

CHAPTER XVII

ANIMALS AND ALCOHOL (continued}

When the four dogs were two years old an epidemic
of dog sickness broke out in Worcester, and it was then
that Dr. Hodge hoped to discover whether or not alco-
hol was doing any special harm to Bum and Tipsy.
Indeed it was just at this point that they were able
to be especially useful, for when the epidemic of dog
sickness appeared they were among the first to take it.
More than that, they were so very ill for two weeks that
Dr. Hodge says he " hardly expected either of them to
live from day to day."

For a week they would not eat anything and he " had
to drench them with hot milk and eggs at frequent
intervals " to keep them from starving.

Of course, without a moment's hesitation, Dr. Hodge
:opped giving them alcohol while they were ill, and at
same time everything in the world was done to
take them comfortable and to cure them as speedily
possible.

In spite of every care, however, they did certainly have
hard time. For several days both dogs were blind, and
iey grew exceedingly thin. Nevertheless they were so

83

84

GOOD HEALTH

well cared for that little by little they recovered. From
that time on, however, Tipsy was blind in one eye.

Dr. Hodge says that both Bum and Tipsy were just
as ill as they could possibly be and live. On the other
hand, the dogs that took no alcohol hardly seemed to
have the disease at all. They did not feel as comfortable

BUM

TIPSY NIG TOPSY

Photograph taken October, 1896

as usual for several days, but they did not lose their
appetite, they did not suffer, and they did not grow
thin; in fact, they were hardly disturbed enough to
be called ill.

Naturally Dr. Hodge decided that dogs that have alco-
hol in their food get sick more easily, stay sick longer,
and suffer more than dogs that do not have it.

ANIMALS AND ALCOHOL 85

This then was the first great lesson which Bum and
Tipsy taught the scientists. But this was not enough;
there were other lessons to be learned. For this purpose
Dr. Hodge now made some delicate little machines and
strapped one of them to the collar of each dog. By this
machine he could tell from day to day just how much
exercise each dog took. He wished to find out which of
them did the most running and jumping and playing,
because this would show which dogs felt the most
vigorous.

Some people think that alcohol makes men spry, but
it turned out the other way with the dogs. These
machines showed that although Bum and Tipsy had now
recovered from their illness, and although they were
cheerful and had good appetites, still they were not so
active as Nig and Topsy ; in fact, the machines proved
that they did only about half as much running around
as the other two dogs.

Dr. Hodge then made another test in the same direc-
tion. While Bum and Tipsy still continued to have a
little alcohol in their food every day, he took all four
dogs to the gymnasium of Clark University in Worces-
ter and trained them to run after a rubber ball and bring
it back to the starting point.

The room was three hundred feet long, and he threw
the ball one hundred times for each game of practice.
He threw it fast, made the dogs work hard, and kept

86

GOOD HEALTH

TOPSY
Photograph taken in November, 1895

careful count, for the sake of finding out which dog
brought the ball back oftenest. The result was the same

story over again. No
matter how hard Bum
and Tipsy worked, Nig
and Topsy beat them
every time, for they
brought the ball back
twice as often. Yet
even though they did
not do so much, when
the game was over Bum
and Tipsy were always more tired than Nig and Topsy.
This showed that dogs that take alcohol every day are not
so strong as other dogs.
Through all these
days, and in these dif-
ferent experiments,
Bum and Tipsy were
not suffering in any
way. Indeed, they felt
quite well and happy;
but they made it very
plain that when dogs
take alcohol regularly
they are not so vigorous as dogs that go without it. Com-
pare the second picture with the one at the end of the

TIPSY
Photograph taken in November, 1895

ANIMALS AND ALCOHOL

NIG

Photograph taken in November, 1895

last lesson, and see whether you think Bum and Tipsy
look brighter or more dull than when that was taken.

While Dr. Hodge
was studying this sub-
ject he noticed another
great difference: Nig
and Topsy always be-
haved like any other
well-fed, healthy, jolly
creatures. When any
stranger spoke to them
they were friendly,
and wagged their tails cheerfully. When anything hap-
pened that they did not understand they were curious
about it and bravely went to investigate. When whistles

sounded and bells rang
furiously they barked
furiously too, but they
did not act afraid. Just
here, then, was the dif-
ference. Bum and
Tipsy were timid and
frightened over every-
thing and over nothing.

Photograph taken in November, 1895 TTT1

When strangers came

they went off to some corner of their kennel and crouched
there. When whistles blew and bells rang they yelped as

88 GOOD HEALTH

only frightened dogs can, and sometimes they seemed to
be terribly frightened when nothing at all was in sight.
Perhaps they were having a sort of dog delirium tremens,
but nobody knows about that. All we do know is that
Bum and Tipsy always seemed timid and afraid where
Nig and Topsy were brave and full of fun.

These separate pictures of Bum and Nig and Tipsy
and Topsy show the difference between the dogs very
well.

After Bum and Tipsy had been taking alcohol for
about three years Dr. Hodge decided to see whether
they could recover and be vigorous again like other dogs.
He therefore stopped the alcohol. Tipsy died soon
afterwards, but Bum lived on. He grew stronger every
day until he was almost as strong as Nig, his brother.
He played as much and could bring the rubber ball back
almost as fast and often. Even yet, however, he was
rather timid. He was not taking alcohol now, and every-
thing was being done to increase his health and vigor.
Yet during the winter of 1900 a sad thing happened:
he began to have trouble with both eyes. They grew
worse and worse, and by spring, Bum was totally blind.

Later came another calamity. He had a painful and
terrible skin disease, which lasted a long time, and after
that he looked like a poor old, blind, feeble dog, but Nig
was strong and healthy and happy. He did n't seem old
at all, though he was Bum's twin brother.

ANIMALS AND ALCOHOL 89

What difference do you suppose Dr. Hodge discov-
ered in the puppies of the four dogs? During those
four years Bum and Tipsy had twenty-three puppy
children, but so many of them were deformed, and so
many were dead when they were born, that only four
lived to grow up. During the same years Nig and Topsy
had forty-five puppies. Four of them were deformed a
very little, none were dead when they were born, and
forty-one lived.

So this is the end of the story of Bum and Tipsy.

Let us cherish their memory, for the lessons they
:aught may save thousands of human lives.

QUESTIONS

1. What happened when the dogs were two years old ?

2. Give the history of Bum and Tipsy while they were ill.

3. What change did Dr. Hodge make in their food ?

4. How did the same disease affect Nig and Topsy ?

5. What did Dr. Hodge decide about dogs that have alcohol in
icir food?

6. What did Dr. Hodge do to find out which dogs took the most
exercise every day ?

7. What gymnasium did the dogs have to practice in ?

8. Which dogs were always the most active ?

9. Which dogs were bravest when whistles sounded and bells rang ?

10. Which dogs were most cordial to strangers ?

1 1 . How long did the dogs take alcohol ?

12. After Tipsy died what was the history of Bum ?

13. How did Nig seem at the same time ?

CHAPTER XVIII

THE EAR THAT WE CAN SEE

There are men and women on islands in the Pacific
Ocean who look as if they thought their ears were made

on purpose to hold flowers
or tobacco pipes. They
prick a hole through the
flesh of the ear, stretch it
and pull it, and put one
small rolled-up leaf after
another into it until the
hole is large enough to
hold their pipe or their
flowers. Sometimes, in-
deed, it is so large that a
man may slip his hand
and arm through it to his
elbow.

These people feel very

fine when they look like
A STYLISH MICRONESIAN ,1 • • ,

the man in the picture.
He is in the height of fashion, and other people envy him.

Many women in America used to be almost as foolish.

90

THE EAR THAT WE CAN SEE

91

But earrings are not the fashion now, so these women
go without them.

Look around . at the ears in the room where you are
and see what each one is like. Just a piece of flesh and
gristle with ridges in it, and a hole in the middle, — that
is all you will see. It is not always beautiful, but it is
useful, and if you did not have any
ears on the sides of your head you
would look queer enough.

Yet ears have different shapes.
Some are large and some are
small; some are long and some are
short ; some grow close to the head
and some stand off like little sails. If
you want your ears to be flat against
your head, be careful not to sleep
with them doubled over; be careful To CATCH THE WAVES
also not to press them out of place
either with your bonnet strings or by crowding them
down with your cap. For the sake of our friends who
have to see us, it is well to do what we can to have
bodies that are pleasant to look at.

To tell the truth, a well-shaped ear improves the looks
of any one. It also helps to catch sounds from every
direction and send them into the hole in the middle of
the side of the head. This hole is indeed far more
important than the rim itself.

GOOD HEALTH

Poke your finger in and see how small it is ; cover both
ears at once with your hands and notice how little you
can hear. If you should stop it up entirely you would
hardly hear anything at all, for it is the outside end

THROWING LIGHT ON THE EARDRUM

of the tube that carries sound from the world for us
to hear.

It is about one inch long, and the deeper it goes the
narrower it gets. Wax and a few hairs do what they
can to keep the insects out ; yet it is this very wax that
troubles us sometimes. The best way to get rid of it is
to use a soft, damp cloth over the end of the finger.

THE EAR THAT WE CAN SEE

93

Never use anything sharper or harder than that, for the
drum itself is at the opposite end of the hole, — the
smallest drum and the busiest drum in the world.

The hole is so small and the tube is so narrow that
you see no sign of this drum, even if you put your eye
close to the opening and look in as far as you can.
Doctors know another way, however. First goes in a
silver tube ; then a reflector, as the picture shows. This

nds light to the bottom of the tube and shows the
it of skin that we call the eardrum. It is stretched

ross the round bottom of the tube and fastened tight
n every side.

A man may use the brightest light he can get ; he may
send it down as far as it will go ; yet he will see nothing
beyond the eardrum, for it hides everything on the other
side. It never opens unless something enters and breaks
it, or unless some disease injures it. Thousands of people
do not know how easy it is to break the eardrum.

Yesterday I saw a full-grown man put a pointed pencil
into his ear and turn it slowly round and round. He
acted as if he were giving himself a good scratching.
Some day his hand may not be steady, or a neighbor
may hit his elbow; the hard point may then break its
way through his eardrum and damage it forever.

Strangely enough, boxing the ears may do the same
thing. You know how it is when you hit a paper bag
full of air: the paper is sure to split from end to end

94 GOOD HEALTH

with a bang. Quite in that way it happens sometimes
with an eardrum. An angry man brings his hand down
hard on a boy's ear; more air crowds in than the ear
can hold, and the drum splits like a paper bag. Shout-
ing in the ear may do it, too ; even a kiss on the hole of
the ear may break the drum.

Avoid all these things. Think how careful men are
to keep dust out of their watches. Remember that ear
machinery is more precious than any watch machinery
that was ever made, and that dust may damage it through
a hole in the eardrum.

QUESTIONS

1. How do some people treat the fleshy part of the ear?

2. What is the outside ear for?

3. Why is the hole important?

4. How long is it?

5. What is the wax for?

6. How should we remove it?

7» Why should we never put anything hard or sharp in the ear?

8. Why is it dangerous to box a boy's ear?

9. What other things should be avoided ?

IO. If the drum is broken, what happens to the ear machinery?

CHAPTER XIX
THE EAR WE CANNOT SEE

Several years ago a man examined the ears of hundreds
of children in Europe and found that about one quarter
of them were a little deaf.

These children did not know it themselves; they
thought they could hear as well as anybody. The teachers
thought so too, only they were quite sure that those
special children were the dull ones in the school. No
doubt they were rather surprised when the man who
examined them found that generally the dull ones were
also the deaf ones.

The same man next went to a school in Scotland
There he asked the teachers to pick out seventy bright
children and seventy dull children for him to examine.
Strange to say, he found about twice as many deaf
children among the seventy who were dull as among the
seventy who were bright. Naturally enough, with such
proof as that, he began to be pretty positive that dull-
ness and deafness often go together.

From there he went to a school in England, where he
became even more positive than ever ; for here he found
that most of the bright children could hear his watch

95

96 GOOD HEALTH

tick when it was as far from their ears as fifty-one inches,
while most of the dull children could not hear it unless
it was as near to them as thirty-one inches.

All these experiments showed that when children are
a little deaf they seem dull in the schoolroom, and that
when they are not deaf they
are more apt to seem bright.
Nevertheless we know that
very often deaf children are
not really dull, for doctors
have cured them, and after

TESTING HIS HEARING

the cure they have been as bright as anybody. Of
course the chance is that the better we hear the quicker
we shall understand. It is important, therefore, to have
good hearing.

If you wish to decide about your own hearing you
might try this experiment.

Get several children together ; ask some one to hold a
watch for you to listen to, and see who can hear it tick the

THE EAR WE CANNOT SEE

97

farthest off. Also test each of your ears separately. Cover
one ear while you listen with the other, and decide which
hears the better. You may find a difference between them.

A CUT THROUGH THE RIGHT EAR

«, the tube ; b, the ear drum ; c, the ear bones ; d, the snail shell ;
^, the nerve of hearing

If the other children can hear the watch farther away
than you can hear it, or if one of your ears hears better
than the other, you should tell your father and he should
take you to a doctor to be examined. Very likely the
doctor will find out what the trouble is and cure you.

98 GOOD HEALTH

The only means we have of knowing anything about
the machinery that does all this hearing is what people
tell us who have seen what there is on the other side of
the eardrum.

First they find three tiny bones that stretch from the
underside of the drum to the next part of the hearing
machine, which is called the inside ear. Here there are
slender tubes full of liquid, within bone channels full of
liquid, and a special tube in a bony case that looks like
a snail shell.

This inside ear is the most important part of the hear-
ing machine, because the nerves which report the sound
to the brain are here. It is so small that you could put
it into a box one inch square, but it is more precious
than any box of gold, and the bony case that holds it is
stronger than any watch case. Every sound that we
hear — whether it be a clap of thunder or the whisper of
our dearest friend — goes through the eardrum, the tiny
bones, the liquid, and the nerves, to the brain ; and that
is what we call hearing.

Our ears may, however, get out of order. I know a
boy who is deaf whenever he catches cold, and with each
cold he is a little deafer than he was the time before.
The worst of it is that the cold sometimes gives him an
abscess in his ear. He had that sort of cold last winter,
and I never saw any boy suffer such terrible pain. At
last, however, the pain went away and he felt quite well

THE EAR WE CANNOT SEE 99

again ; yet he was deaf for weeks afterwards. He could
not hear his own watch tick, while any one who talked
to him had to shout. I told him he must make up his
mind never to take another cold, for at this rate he would
be perfectly deaf after a while.

Even people who hear very well do not always hear
the same things in the same way. If you should go into
the woods when the birds are singing, you would prob-
ably hear a great confusion of sounds and songs ; perhaps
you would not know one song from another; whereas,
in the same woods, a man who had trained his hearing
for bird songs might say, " I hear the voices of a dozen
different birds that I know." And then he would give
you their names, — robin, bluebird, flicker, goldfinch, and
all the others.

One of the most astonishing things about our hearing
is that we can make it careful or careless by the way we
use our ears. Listen carefully to a new song or a new
piece of music and you will learn it faster. Separate the
noises on the city street every day, and you will learn to
know each sound by itself. The more carefully we listen,
the better we remember; and the better we remember,
the more we enjoy what we hear.

Thus one thing helps another: teach yourself to
listen to sounds and you will surprise yourself and your
friends by the way you remember them.

100 GOOD HEALTH

QUESTIONS

1. What did the man discover about the hearing of children
in Europe?

2. Tell about the children in the school in Scotland.

3. What test did he make in the English school?

4. From all these examinations what did he decide?

5. How do we know that a deaf child may not be dull?

6. How may you decide whether you can hear as well as other
children?

7. What is the most important hearing-part of the ear?

8. What sometimes makes children deaf?

9. How can we train our hearing?

CHAPTER XX
THE WAY TO TREAT THE FINGER NAILS

There are men in India who make a vow to keep their
hands shut tight for ten or even twenty years. Very
often they keep the vow, and of course the nails are
growing all the time.

At first they grow into the flesh of the palm of the hand ;
then they go through it. Little by little they crowd be-
tween the bones until they make their way through them
too and come out on the back of the hand. When that has
come to pass, men cannot open their hands even if they
wish to ; in a strange way they are really nailed shut.

You and I cannot imagine how such a man must suffer,
yet people who wear tight shoes may know a little about
it. Sometimes such shoes press the nails so hard that
they become " ingrowing nails," and these are very pain-
ful indeed.

After certain kinds of illness the nails drop off and
new ones grow in their place ; after other diseases the
nail is rough and thick; and always, the older a man is,
the more brittle his nails get.

No carpenter, mason, farmer, or writer could do good
work if he had a finger nail like a brittle claw on the end

101

IO2

GOOD HEALTH

of each finger. This, then, explains certain people in
China. They are ashamed to work and they wish their
neighbors to know that their hands are as idle as
they are fine, so they let one or two finger nails grow
very long. These slender claws break so easily that the
owner must protect each one with a special covering.

The nail protector
shown in the pic-
ture is three and a
half inches long.
It is made of silver
and is truly beauti-
ful.

Nevertheless,
whether wre are old
or young, whether
we work or play,
it is we ourselves
who decide about
our finger nails. We can keep them rough or smooth,
straight or crooked, tidy or untidy, just as we choose.
Everybody knows this. For this reason, when we see
the finger nails of any man, woman, or child, we think
we know something about that person.

These two pictures show us two kinds of finger nails.
One is oval at the bottom and oval at the top ; it shows
the pretty white crescent; it is clean and it is trimmed

As THE CHINESE PROTECT A FINGER
NAIL

THE WAY TO TREAT THE FINGER NAILS

103

A FINGER NAIL
THAT is A CREDIT

smooth. From the looks of one such nail we are sure

that the rest of the hand is just as clean, and it is easy

for us to believe all sorts of pleasant

things about the person that owns it.
When finger nails look like the one

in the second picture, however, we are

quite apt to have opposite thoughts

about the owner.

Here the skin grows so high on the

nail that the little crescent does not show

at all. This makes the whole nail look

square and short. See how it is trimmed,

— uneven, and short in spots; it also

looks as if somebody had taken pains to pack damp

dust under the crooked edge. Such a neglected nail !
I think I must tell you that the child who owns that
finger was ashamed to have the photo-
graph taken. That is not strange, for
when we look at it we are quite sure
about the rest of the hand ; we are also
more than half afraid that the teeth, the
body, and the clothes all match it.
Finger nails are great telltales.

There are two very good reasons

why we should take the best possible care of them.

1. For the sake of health.

2. For the sake of beauty.

A FINGER NAIL

THAT TELLS TALES

104 GOOD HEALTH

Many people do not seem to know that, as far as their
health goes, it is worse to have dust under the finger nails
than to have it on the end of the nose or in the middle
of the cheek ; for some of the worst microbes may be
packed away in the dust under the nails, and such mi-
crobes may enter any scratch or cut we have ; they may
also go into our mouths with the food we touch with
our fingers. In fact this is the most important reason for
keeping the nails clean, though the second reason is the
one that people think most about. They want their
fingers to match their clean faces and their clean clothes.
They are ashamed not to have one part of the body look
as clean as another part. For the sake of beauty, there-
fore, they keep their nails well cleaned and trimmed.
This is a good reason too.

I have heard of children, and grown people too, who
trim their nails with their teeth, biting them around the
edges. Sometimes the habit becomes so strong that they
keep on even when there is no nail to bite. I have a
friend who bites until she gives herself pain and the
blood comes. Naturally, of course, her finger nails are
so short that the flesh rolls over the top of each nail ;
and the fingers are such queer-looking things that she
often doubles them up into her hand to keep them out
of sight. She says she cannot stop the biting because
she has the habit, and she bites before she has time
to think.

THE WAY TO TREAT THE FINGER NAILS 105

There are three reasons why it is a mistake to trim
finger nails with the teeth.

1. The pieces we bite off are sharp and
hard and bad for the stomach. Yet if they
are in our mouths we may swallow them.

2. No teeth can trim nails as well as a file
can do it.

3. If we get the habit of using the teeth,
we shall be likely to keep the nails too short.
The flesh then rolls over the ends, and in-
stead of having slender, useful, pretty ends
to our fingers, we shall have round, blunt
finger tips that cannot untie knots or pick
up any small thing. We shall be ashamed of
our fingers and our friends will be ashamed
of us.

There are men and women in every city who spend
all their time in taking care of finger nails for other
people, but any intelligent person can keep his own
nails in good shape with simple things. What we need
most is warm water, soap, a nailbrush, a nail file, and a
nail cleaner.

You can buy a stiff little brush with a wooden back at
any grocery store for three or five cents. It will not be
handsome, but the bristles will get under the nails as well
as if it had an ivory back. For five or ten cents more
you can buy a nail file and cleaner at any hardware shop.

106 GOOD HEALTH

Use the water, the soap, arid the brush until your nails
really look clean, or until the dust is so soft under them
that the nail cleaner will take it out without any trouble.
Never clean the nails with a knife or scissors, or any
sharp thing that takes out the dust by scraping the nail.
You will make it rough, and it will be harder to get

the dust out next time.
Never scrape the top
of the nail either ; you
will simply make it
grow thick and clumsy.
When the nail is
clean, file the edge un-
til it has just the curve
you wish. Some people
use curved scissors, but
a file is best because it

NAIL-CLEANING TOOLS

leaves the smoothest

edge. Pointed nails break so easily that the best style
is to make the shape of the finger nails match the oval
shape of the end of the finger.

The picture shows how to use the thumb nail of one
hand to press back the flesh from each nail of the other
hand. Make as much of the crescent show as you can
without giving pain to the flesh, and do it when the
fingers are damp. If the skin is pressed back little by
little every day, the shape of the nails will improve.

THE WAY TO TREAT THE FINGER NAILS 107

When the skin is once in the habit of staying back,
and when you once give the nail the right curve, a
few minutes each day will keep them in good order.

Very many men and
women have to do the sort
of work that breaks their
finger nails and stains them,
yet such people often take
better care of their nails
than those who never work
hard with their hands.

Finger nails should be MAKING THE CRESCENT SHOW
curved at the top, but toe nails should be cut straight
across. This keeps the corners from growing into the
flesh when the shoe presses the toe. Nobody wants an
" ingrowing nail," and we can prevent them if we cut the
nails carefully and wear shoes that are not too small.

QUESTIONS

1. Describe a well-cared- for finger nail.

2. Give two reasons for taking care of the nails.

3. How may dust under the nails give us disease?

4. Give the reasons why it is unwise to trim the finger nails with
the teeth.

5. What do you need to use in nail cleaning?

6. Tell what you would do, step by step, to put your nails in
good shape.

CHAPTER XXI
CARING FOR THE HAIR

If you pull out a hair from your head, you will see how
long the root is and what it looks like. All you find is a

bit of flesh on the end of the hair.
The picture shows what that
bit of flesh really is. The pit
which the hair stands in is called
the hair cell. It is plain, there-
fore, that when you pulled out
the hair, the entire lining of the
cell came with it ; in other words,
you pulled out the whole won-
derful cell with everything that
was in it. That is what you see
on the root of the hair in your
hand.

The truth is that each hair
stands alone like a small tele-
graph pole in its own little cell ;

each jg separate f rom every Qther

one; each has its own muscle, its own oil glands, and you

would be able to see them plainly under a microscope.

1 08

A HAIR IN ITS CELL
a, hair shaft; 3, muscle; c, oil gland

CARING FOR THE HAIR

109

As a rule, hairs do not stand up perfectly straight.
Instead, each slants under the skin as the picture shows,
and the way the cell is pointed decides which way the
hair shall bend.

When a cat sees a dog and bristles up her tail three
times as big as usual, it is because, at the very same
instant, each tiny muscle
pulls each tiny hair
into standing position.
When the fright is over,
the muscles let go little
by little, and those thou-
sands of hairs fall quietly
into place again.

Take the hair that you
pulled from your own
head and try to stretch
it. Look at its size, —
so slender, — and see
how hard you can pull
it before you break it. Its strength will surprise you.

Horsehair ropes are especially strong and useful, but
perhaps the most interesting hair rope in the world is
in Japan. It was made from the hair of thousands of
women who wished to do what they could for a beautiful
temple. They gave their long black hair to be used in
making a rope to ring the bell with. This rope is long

HAIR MUSCLES AT WORK

HO GOOD HEALTH

and strong, and, unless it is burned or destroyed in
some such way, it will last for hundreds and -hundreds
of years, for hair does not decay as bones and flesh do.

In the British Museum in London there is a wig
made from human hair. The priest who wore it lived
over three thousand years ago, yet the wig does not
show its age.

I suppose such things were as useful then as now,
and no doubt the same kinds of hair grew on the same
kinds of human beings and animals. Human beings
wanted theirs for beauty and for use, while animals
needed theirs for comfort as well as for use, and both
alike needed more hair in cold weather than in warm
weather.

Notice how much thicker the cat's fur is in winter
than in summer. Though the hair of the human being
does not change in thickness from summer to winter, we
can ourselves make some difference in the matter. I have
heard men say : " I must not have my hair cut to-day, it
is too cold ; " and no one thinks of having his hair cut
when he has a cold already, for he knows it will be a
risk. People who explore in cold countries let their
beards grow to protect their throats. A football player
wears long, thick hair to save his head from the hardest
bumps.

It is probably true that women think more of their
hair than men do, because it makes more difference with

CARING FOR THE HAIR III

their looks. Indeed, a woman without hair on her head
looks about as queer as a doll without her curly wig,
yet there are women who are entirely bald.

I once knew a woman who was so ill that she lost
every hair on her head. It came out by the handful,
and at the same time her eyelashes and the hairs of her
eyebrows dropped out too.

To conceal her loss she covered her head with a wig
and painted her eyebrows the color of her false hair.
Unfortunately she could do nothing for her eyelashes,
so her eyelids had to go like plain, untrimmed curtains.

Every woman of every nation and tribe likes to have
a fine head of hair. Even a man seems to like it better
when there is hair on the top of his head, and I suppose
a baldheaded football player would have a pretty hard
time of it. The question for us all, then, is how to get a
fine head of hair and how to keep it.

Most important of all is the healthy scalp, and very
often its health depends upon how we treat it. We can
do two things to help make it vigorous.

1. Keep it clean.

2. Bring fresh blood to it by brushing the
hair and by massaging the scalp.

Most heads need washing about twice a month, but
heads are like hands in this respect, for the kind of work
we do makes a difference in the amount of washing that
is needed. A child often needs the wash once a week.

112 GOOD HEALTH

Some people rub a raw egg into the scalp before
washing. This does no harm, but an egg on the head is
no more important for head washing than an egg on the
hands for hand washing. Certain other things are, how-
ever, very necessary.

Take a washbowl of warm water and any good soap
(I myself like tar soap best), make a good lather, and
rub it into your scalp with your ringers or a brush ;
wash the head and hair thoroughly; then rinse it in a
second bowl of warm water. This will take out the soap-
suds. Next wash it in cold water quickly to prevent
yourself from taking cold afterwards.

Your hair is now clean and sweet. Dry it with towels
if you are a boy; if you are a girl the register, the
radiator, or the stove will help in winter. Do not go
to bed with damp hair. You may catch cold.

Washing is a great help, but exercise of the scalp is
quite as important for any head of hair. To get it brush
your hair every day until the scalp feels warm but not
sore. Five minutes may be long enough. Also, for two
or three minutes each day, press the fingers of both hands
hard against your head through your hair and move
the scalp back and forth on the skull. Do this in one
place after another until every part has had its exercise.
The special good of all this washing, brushing, and exer-
cise is that it clears away the dandruff, thoroughly cleans
the skin, brings the blood to the scalp, and makes the oil

CARING FOR THE HAIR 113

glands active. Washing and exercise are indeed the best
hair tonics we can have ; many a man has secured a
better head of hair by being faithful in their use.

Girls with long, thick hair are sometimes careless
about washing their heads; they do not know how
much other people are judging them by the looks and
the odor of their hair. Washed hair is light and fluffy,
sweet and clean, while unwashed hair is solid and heavy,
neither sweet nor clean.

The oil glands give hair all the oil it needs. Don't
put on any more, for the more oil there is, the more
dust it will hold, and tidy men and women do not like
to use their heads as a gathering place for all sorts of
microbes that are lodged in the dust of the air.

QUESTIONS

1. When you pull out a hair, what comes with it?

2. How many hairs are there in each cell?

3. What other things are in the same cell?

4. What is it that pulls up the hair on a cat's tail?

5. How do we know that hair is durable?

6. What is the objection to cutting hair on a cold day?

7. What two things must be done in order to have a healthy scalp?

8. Describe washing the head.

9. How often should the head be washed?

10. In what ways do washing and brushing help the scalp?

1 1 . What difference is there in the looks of washed and unwashed hair ?

12. Why is it better not to put oil on the hair?

CHAPTER XXII

THE HEALTH OF THE SKIN

When a barefoot boy takes a needle and thread and
sews stitches in the skin on the bottom of his foot, he

does not intend to go
deeper than the out-
side layer, — the epi-
dermis; yet if he pricks
himself, he knows at
once that he has gone
through the epidermis
and put his needle into
the inside layer, — the
dermis.

If no blood comes
when a man slices off
a bit of skin as he
shaves, we know he has
cut nothing but epider-
mis ; if blood does flow,
however, we know he
has cut the dermis too.

The truth is that what we call skin is made up of two

layers, — the dermis, that holds nerves, sweat glands, and

114

TESTING THE EPIDERMIS

THE HEALTH OF THE SKIN

blood vessels; and the epidermis, which protects them
all and keeps them out of sight. Each layer is as thin
as paper.

After you have had a warm bath some day, rub your
hand hard over the damp flesh and see how much you
can roll up. A good deal of it is dead
epidermis, which should be rubbed off.
In truth, we shed our epidermis some-
what as a snake sheds his skin; only the
snake loses all his skin at once, while we
lose ours a little at a time. More than that,
his dead skin can do no harm to any one,
whereas ours may carry deadly disease. In
fact, scarlet fever, smallpox, and measles
may go with any piece of epidermis which
peels from people who have those diseases.
That is why children are kept out of school SwEAT GLAND
until they are quite through shedding the skin they had
while they were sick. They must not share their epider-
mis and their disease with other children.

So far as the skin is concerned the sweat glands play
an important part. Each separate one of them is a tiny
twisted tube under the dermis. It runs up in a crooked
fashion through both layers of the skin and gives an
extra twist or two just before it comes to an end on the
surface of the epidermis. Each pore of the skin that you
see is the mouth of a separate sweat gland. These glands

Ii6 GOOD HEALTH

are crowded close together over the whole body; they
work fastest when we are warm, and the perspiration
that they pour on the skin needs to be washed off
regularly.

Now notice several facts about this perspiration.

1. It is a mixture of water and waste matter
from the body.

2. The water evaporates soon.

3. While it is evaporating, it cools the skin.

4. After it has evaporated, the waste matter
that was in it stays on the skin.

5. This waste mixes with oil from the oil
glands, bits of epidermis, dust from our
clothes and from the air, and stays like a
snug, thin coat on the outside of our body
from head to heel.

6. Unless it is washed off or rubbed off,
this coat grows thicker every day.

7. The thicker it is, the less perspiration
will get through it to cool the skin and to
regulate the temperature of the body.

8. When the temperature of the body can-
not be regulated by the sweat glands, health
itself is apt to suffer.

9. When perspiration is checked, some
other part of the body must dispose of what
should have gone off through the sweat
glands.

THE HEALTH OF THE SKIN 1 1 7

This list of facts shows that unless the skin is well
cared for it gets into a bad state ; yet we do not see the
thin, outside covering of waste matter, oil, and epider-
mis until there is dust enough in it to give a brown
color to the skin. Then of course we are shocked or
distressed. We promptly say, " That child needs a bath,"
or " That boy looks as if he had n't bathed for a month."

At that time the body or the clothes are apt to give
another sure sign that they need cleaning. That sign is
an odor, and it tells the story as plainly as if it screamed
aloud.

I have a ten-year-old niece in the fourth grade of a
grammar school, and she calls one of the boys in her
class " that smelly boy." Yesterday she said : " I hate
to stand near that smelly boy at the blackboard." What
she said simply shows the difference there is in children
as well as in grown people. Some are clean and some are
unclean ; some are washed all over, and some are washed
in spots ; some look as if they had used wash cloth and
towel so vigorously that every pore of the skin is clean;
others are so dingy round the neck and ears that it seems
as if they hardly know what soap and water will do.

Indeed, some people give the impression of being
clean, while from other people, in spite of fine clothes,
there may be an odor which will betray them.

Is it strange then that washed people do not like to
have unwashed people around? The fact is they so

Il8 GOOD HEALTH

thoroughly dislike having them near that they can't
help showing their objection sometimes. Of course
this hurts the feelings of the unwashed; still, if they
are bright enough, they will see what the matter is,
adopt the habit of bathing regularly, and join the army
of the clean.

For the sake of cleanliness we should change our
underclothing in the morning and at night, and shake it
to get rid of bits of epidermis and waste matter from the
sweat glands which cling to it. A hard dry rub with a
coarse towel is helpful.

By adding to this a warm bath once a week any one
can keep the skin in good condition. A quick, cold bath
every morning before breakfast is good for most healthy
people. It does as much as anything else to keep one
healthy. Some use a bath tub, others use a washbowl;
either is suitable. Here are a few rules.

1. Take your cold bath in a warm room.

2. Wet the skin quickly.

3. Wipe hard and dry with a rough towel
until the skin is pink.

4. If you use a washbowl, wash and wipe
part of the body at a time. This will keep
you from taking cold.

5. You should feel warm after your bath ;
if you feel cold instead, you are not vigorous
enough to take daily cold baths.

THE HEALTH OF THE SKIN 119

My niece who does not like the " smelly boy " takes
her cold bath every morning in five minutes. This sort
of quick bathing helps the body resist disease; it gives
the nerves of the small blood vessels such vigorous,
healthy gymnastic exercise that they get into good
habits of controlling the flow of the blood back and
forth, and the better they do this the less likely we are
to take cold. If possible, before taking the cold bath,
spend five minutes in giving vigorous exercise to arms,
legs, and body. This will help immensely in making the
quick, cold bath useful to you.

For warm bathing, remember two points :

1. If you take the bath in the daytime,
always dash the body with cold water after-
wards. This will keep you from taking cold.

2. If you bathe in warm water just before
getting into bed, you do not need the cold
dash, for the bedclothes will keep you from
taking cold.

Give yourself a clean, healthy, vigorous skin, and you
will grow faster, be in better health, and be less likely to
take cold.

QUESTIONS

1. How many layers are there to the skin?

2. Give the names of the skin layers. •

3. What is the use of the epidermis?

120 GOOD HEALTH

4. What diseases may go with bits of epidermis?

5. What important things are in the dermis?

6. What does the sweat gland do?

7. Why do we need to bathe?

8. What should we do to escape taking cold after a warm bath?

9. What are the important things to think about when we take the
quick cold bath?

10. What is the use of the cold bath every morning?

CHAPTER XXIII
ALCOHOL AND COLD WEATHER

If doctors only knew of some safe drink that would make
people comfortable no matter what the weather might be,
everybody would keep a bottle of it in the house.

There are those who seem to think that almost any
kind of wine, whisky, or beer will do this ; many people
are quite sure that when the weather is biting cold they
really need some one of these alcoholic drinks to keep
them warm.

A company of strong men thought so when they were
traveling across the western plains several years ago.
There were twenty-six of these men; it was winter and
they had to spend a terribly cold night in their camp
without any fire. They had food enough and plenty of
whisky; but one of the men knew more than the
others, and while they were talking about what they
should do to keep warm, he said that for one thing it
was not safe for any of them to drink whisky that night.
He even went so far as to say that they were far more
likely to freeze if they drank it.

Two of his friends believed him and the three took no
whisky before going to sleep ; they were cold in the night

121

122 GOOD HEALTH

but they were not very uncomfortable. Three of the
other men drank a little; they were much colder than
the first men but they did not freeze. Seven men drank
more and their fingers and toes were frostbitten by morn-
ing. Six drank a good deal and they were so badly
frozen that they never really got well again. Four drank
until they were foolish and one after the other they all
died three or four weeks afterwards. The last three men
were drunk when they went to bed and by morning they
were frozen to death.

Each one of these men was strong the day before, and
each had the same number of blankets that night. It
seemed to be just the whisky and nothing else that
made the difference.

One of the men in the party wrote to a medical paper
in Cincinnati, Ohio, about it, and the point he made
was that the more the men drank the more they suffered
from the cold.

A great many people believe as these men believed.
They say, " When I am cold and take whisky, I know
it is good for me because it makes me feel warm." Per-
haps such people will understand what the matter is if
we explain just what happens when a man drinks alcohol.

One of the first things alcohol does — if a man takes
enough of it — is to enlarge the small tubes that carry
the blood to the skin all over the body. Now if these
blood vessels are enlarged, more blood passes through

ALCOHOL AND COLD WEATHER 123

them, and the skin feels warm and comfortable for a
little while. Unfortunately, however, the warmer the skin
is the more it takes from the real heat of the inside of
the body. The outside feels warmer after a man drinks
alcohol, because the blood is there, but the inside is just
so much the colder to make up for it.

For our best health it is most important that the tem-
perature of the inside of the body should remain the same
day and night, winter and summer. Anything, therefore,
that reduces the inside heat too much is bad for us. Now
the reason a man does not notice the change when the
inside of his body is growing colder is that alcohol is
also doing another thing. It is making the nerves less
sensitive. This is most serious, for our nerves are as
important to our body as an engineer is to his train. If
the engineer of a train is stupid; or if he is asleep, the
train is not safe. No passenger cares to travel for a
moment on a train with a sleepy engineer. So it is
with the body: dreadful things may happen to it if the
nerves are too dull to tell us when we are in danger.

That is what happened to those men in their camp.
No doubt those who took so much whisky felt a good
deal warmer when they went to bed than those who did
not take any. They felt so warm that they could not
imagine they had disturbed the heat regulation of their
bodies; they did not know they were in danger. Per-
haps they dreamed they were warm and comfortable even

124 GOOD HEALTH

while they were freezing to death. They did not know
that they had taken something that would put the heat
machinery out of order. They wanted to do all they
could to keep warm and safe, but they were ignorant
and it turned out that they did just the wrong thing.

I suppose that hundreds of people make the same mis-
take every winter. It is hard for them to believe that
their feelings deceive them. But people who travel in
the coldest countries learn the lesson after a while.

In a book by the great physician, Dr. Carpenter, I
read that there was a crew of sixty-six men from Den-
mark who tried to stay in Hudson Bay all winter. Now
the place is so far north and so cold that the men wished
to do everything to keep warm ; they therefore took a
load of alcoholic drink with them to help as much as
possible. No doubt they thought that the colder it was
the more they ought to drink, for that is just the mistake
a great many people make.

Nevertheless, in spite of everything, these men died
one after another, and by the end of winter only two
were alive. At another time a crew of Englishmen went
to the same place, and they were just as anxious as the
others to keep warm and to keep alive, but they tried
the opposite plan about alcoholic drinks: they decided
not to take any with them. There were only twenty-two
men in this crew. They took no alcoholic drinks, and
when winter was over they sent the joyful news to their

ALCOHOL AND COLD WEATHER 125

friends that twenty of them were alive and well. Only
two had died.

Nowadays people who explore the coldest countries
are very careful about what they drink there and just
when they drink it. They are sure that it is not best to
drink anything that has alcohol in it while they are well
and working hard. When a man is ill the doctor should
decide what is to be done.

If Dr. Hodge could have taken Bum and Tipsy and
Nig and Topsy on a sledding trip to Greenland, and if
he could have hitched Nig and Topsy to one sled and
Bum and Tipsy to the other, he would have found that
Nig and Topsy traveled faster than Bum and Tipsy
every day, went farther, and carried the heavier load.

In such matters as this it is about the same with men
as with dogs.

Dr. Hayes was a surgeon who went with Dr. Kane to
explore in the Arctic regions. Afterwards he said that
he would never again take any alcoholic drink with him
on such a trip, and that he would not let anybody go
with him who had ever used such drinks. He said he
knew from experience that those who use alcohol cannot
endure the cold so well as other people.

All these facts show that the man who wants to do
the thing that is safest for his health and the man who
wants to do the best work he can in cold weather need
to go without drinking.

126 GOOD HEALTH

QUESTIONS

1. Tell what happened to the party of men crossing the western
prairie.

2. Which men suffered the least ? Which suffered the most ?

3. Why do people think whisky warms them ?

4. When alcohol enlarges the blood vessels of the skin, what hap-
pens to the inside temperature of the body ?

5. Tell about the crew of sixty-six men who went to Hudson Bay.

6. What did they drink and what became of them ?

7. What was the story of the crew of Englishmen ?

8. If Nig and Topsy and Bum and Tipsy had gone to Greenland,
which two of the dogs would have done the most work ?

CHAPTER XXIV
ALCOHOL AND WARM WEATHER

Probably somebody will say, "Well, then, if alcohol
does n't keep people warm in cold countries, it must be
just what they need when they are too hot and want to
cool off in warm countries."

But it seems that alcohol puts the heat machinery
out of order even faster in India and Africa, where it is
warm, than it does in Greenland, where it is cold.

Dr. Parkes was a famous English doctor. He was also
a teacher in an army medical school, and he wanted the
soldiers to be so healthy and so vigorous that they would
always win in whatever battle they were fighting. He
knew that so far as the health is concerned, it makes just
as much difference what a soldier eats and what he drinks
as what anybody else eats and drinks ; and he knew that
when soldiers are marching in terrible heat, and when the
days are so warm that brave men lose their courage and
their strength, they ought to have anything in the world
that will help them. He therefore tried to find out what
things did the soldiers most harm, and what things helped
them the most. He studied the English soldiers in India,

and he saw that many of them took alcoholic drinks.

127

128 GOOD HEALTH

Then he took pains to notice which soldiers were the
healthier, and which made the better fighters, — those
who d*ank or those who did not drink.

He heard that in a certain regiment there were four
hundred men who did not take alcohol, and at once he
began to keep a record of those men and of the other
men in the same regiment. He discovered that the
men who did not drink could march farther without
getting tired, fight harder without running away, and
live longer without getting ill. After that he always said
that warm countries "are precisely the climates where
alcohol is most harmful." Since then many other men
all over the world have said the same thing.

Sir Charles Napier gave an address to a company of
soldiers in India, and he said: " Let me give you a bit
of advice. Don't drink. You are come to a country
where, if you drink, you are dead men. If you be sober
and steady, you '11 get on well ; but if you drink you 're
done for. I knew two regiments in this country : one
drank, the other did n't drink. The one that did n't drink
is one of the finest regiments and has got on as well as
any regiment in existence. The one that did drink has
been all but destroyed."

When soldiers are ill in India they have to go to the
soldiers' hospital, and it is easy to find out there which
kind of men get sick the more easily, — those who drink
or those who do not drink.

ALCOHOL AND WARM WEATHER 129

By studying the figures, Dr. Carpenter learned that if
a man drinks he is three times more likely to get ill and
have to go to the hospital than if he does not drink, and
that after he is in the hospital the man who drinks is far
more likely to die than the man who never drinks.

Every year the officers of the armies in different coun-
tries of the world are finding out that the longer their
soldiers go without alcoholic drinks the better they can
march and fight.

In 1898 Lord Kitchener took his soldiers on the long-
est march that anybody has ever written about. They
were in Sudan, Africa, and they marched across the
desert sand where the sun is blazing hot. More than
that, when they reached the end of the march they fought
a terrible battle — and they conquered. This was what
people call a total abstinence army, which means that
none of the soldiers took any alcoholic drinks whatever.

Mr. Stanley was a great traveler in Africa, and he says
that in such warm countries no one should dare to touch
a drop of alcohol in the daytime. Most people who go
off hunting in Africa and India believe the same thing.
They say that if a man is in the habit of drinking he is
not so strong for the hunting trip and not so likely to
hit the lions and the tigers when he sees them.

Thus we learn that alcohol is a man's enemy in cold
countries and in hot countries, in winter and in summer,
when he is well and when he is ill.

130 GOOD HEALTH

QUESTIONS

1. How much more useful is alcohol in warm countries than in
cold countries?

2. In what country did Dr. Parkes study about soldiers and alcohol?

3. What did he learn about those four hundred men?

4. What did he say about warm countries and alcohol?

5. What did Dr. Carpenter find out about soldiers in the hospital
in India?

6. What did Sir Charles Napier think about alcohol for soldiers ?

7. What did Lord Kitchener's total abstinence army do?

CHAPTER XXV

SOME FACTS ABOUT THE NOSE

When a dog wants to find his master, his nose is
often quite as useful as his legs. He puts it near the
ground and smells his master's footsteps as fast as
he can run.

Bloodhounds can find a burglar in the same way, while
wild deer can smell their enemy a long way off if the wind
is blowing from that direction. If the hunter himself had
as keen a nose as that, I suppose it would help him in his
hunting, but it would make it that much harder for the
deer to save his life.

In any case our nose is as useful as we need. It tells
us even in the dark or when our eyes are shut which flower
is a rose and which is a lily ; it warns us when the gas is
escaping and we know by it when the room is too close,
when there is tobacco smoke in it, and when the air is
impure from sewers or garbage cans or soiled things.

Though the nose is so useful, it is not always beauti-
ful. It may be long and thin like a knife blade, or it
may be short and thick like a small club ; it may curve
up like a queer little handle, or it may bend down like
a broken-backed man; but the shape does not change

132 GOOD HEALTH

its usefulness : a healthy nose is a busy part of the
breathing machine, and it is well made.

Feel the bone that is between your eyes: it is hard
and firm ; you cannot move it. Now take hold of the end
of your nose : see how you can bend it from side to side
like a piece of India rubber. If the whole nose were solid
bone from root to tip there might be broken noses at
every recess ; but the part that is hit most often can only
be hurt ; it cannot break because it is made of something
tough and limber called cartilage.

The nostrils are openings of tubes that admit air to the
lungs. Feel the thin partition between them ; a few hairs
are inside of each nostril to help keep the dust out.

The tear tube is there too. It runs from the pink
corner of the eye down into the upper part of the nose,
where the tears go. It is most busy and most useful
when you cry. Indeed, the reason that you need to blow
your nose very often just then is that a tiny stream of
salt water is running through the tear tube into the nose
and you must get rid of it.

Without any doubt the lining of the nostril is as
interesting as any part of the nose. It is like a thin,
delicate lace work of small blood vessels, and it is called
the mucous membrane. This is where the mucous glands
are, and they send out a thick fluid that keeps the lining
damp. When you have a cold in the head it is these
glands that do the extra work of mucus making. Then

SOME FACTS ABOUT THE NOSE

133

you say, " My nose is running," and you have to use
your handkerchief every few minutes.

In the case of such a cold as that you can neither
smell nor breathe easily. In fact, you really have to use
your mouth for breathing, instead of your nose, which
is a great misfortune. It is bad for your health and bad
for your looks. I have seen
children sit, and stand, and
walk, and play with their lower
jaw hanging down a little.
Probably they had no idea
how dull and foolish it made
them look, and certainly they
did not know that they might
injure their lungs by breath-
ing in that way.

Even without any cold the
mucus keeps the nose SO damp WHERE AIR is WARMED AND
that the air itself grows warm

and damp on its way to the lungs. This is precisely what
the lungs need. Then, too, between the damp skin and
the hairs of the nose the dust and the microbes are
almost sure to be caught and stopped from going any
farther.

From all this it is very plain that we must do every-
thing we can to keep from catching cold, because we
cannot afford to have our nose stopped up for even

134 GOOD HEALTH

one day. If you have no cold in your head, yet can-
not breathe when your mouth is shut, something is
the matter, and your father should take you to see
the doctor.

There are three reasons why we should breathe through
the nose and not through the mouth.

1. The nose warms the air for the lungs.

2. The nose helps the air to be damp before
it gets to the lungs.

3. The nose cleans the air for the lungs.

It is easy to see that a bad cold in the head stops all
the work of the nose. When the air comes through the
mouth to the lungs it is not so clean from dust and
microbes as it ought to be, it is not damp enough, and
it is not so warm as when it goes through the nose.
The sensible thing, then, for any person to do is to keep
from catching cold, to shut his mouth, and to breathe
through his nose.

Still there is another extreme: when we try not to
catch cold we may actually get the nose too dry. That
is apt to happen in winter when people live in houses
that are heated by stoves, furnaces, or steam pipes. Often
in such places the air is so dry that the nose cannot help
getting dry too. You know how it is with wet towels
over a register or near a radiator: the hot air takes all
the water out of them, and they are dry in no time.
Hot air does the same thing to any damp nose that

SOME FACTS ABOUT THE NOSE 135

happens to be in the same room. The objection to this
is that when the lining of the nose is very dry it cannot
catch the dust and microbes in the air and keep them
from the lungs; neither can it keep the air that is to
pass into the lungs damp enough ; in fact, it is about as
well to breathe through the mouth as through such a
dry nose.

But what shall we do about all this? We must
remember that the more water the air takes from other
things the less it will take from us. For this reason
some people put open dishes of water in their rooms, or
plants that grow in water, or wet fern balls. Anything
is useful that gives water to the air.

In my own home water is heated near the furnace in
the basement. Damp air from it then mixes with the
pure air from out of doors after the latter has become
warm, and they rise together to the different rooms of
the house.

If you have a healthy, useful nose, try to keep it so.
Some of the rules for the health of the nose are the same
as those for the health of the skin.

1. Take a quick cold bath every morning.

2. Change your clothes, your shoes, and your
stockings when they are damp.

3. Do not sit in a draft.

4. Breathe pure air by day and by night.

136 GOOD HEALTH

QUESTIONS

1. In what way is the nose specially useful to dogs?

2. What warning do we get from the nose?

3. Describe the tear tube.

4. Describe the lining of the nose.

5. What do the mucous glands do?

6. In what way does the damp mucus of the nose help the lungs?

7. Give three reasons for breathing through the nose.

8. Why is it better to have damp air in a room?

9. How can we keep the air in a room damp in winter?
10. Give rules for the health of the nose.

CHAPTER XXVI
OUR LUNGS

If your clothes are very loose around the waist, take
a long, deep breath and see what happens.

Your ribs rise higher and higher; you get larger
around the chest; your waist is bigger. While you are
doing this you really feel as if you were working with
your body. And so you are: your muscles are pulling
up the ribs and you are stretching out the lungs with
the air you put into them. In fact, our lungs are like a
pair of useful bellows: we pull up the ribs and the air
rushes in; we drop them down and the air streams out
of the nose and mouth.

These wonderful bellows work day and night, when
we are asleep and when we are awake, from the time we
are born until we die ; but how little we think about
them ! how little we do to take care of them !

Fortunately they are in a strong cage with bones on
every side. The backbone is behind, the ribs are on the
sides, and the breastbone is in front.

Some day when your father does not know about it
watch to see how many times he draws his breath every
minute. Some men breathe fifteen times a minute; an

137

138

GOOD HEALTH

elephant breathes only eight times, and I have heard that
a mouse breathes a hundred and twenty times each min-
ute. This breathing is so important that we should die
in a few minutes if the air could not get into our lungs.
Then, too, the more air they hold the better it is for us.

Each lung is some-
what like a big sponge.
If you could take a
piece of one of them
in your hand and
squeeze it hard, you
would make a large
slice look very small.
The reason is plain.
The main part of each
lung is a bunch of
branching tubes. It
looks like a tree hang-
ing downwards; only
in the tree of the lungs every twig and branch is hollow,
and you know a bunch of hollow tubes can be squeezed
up small.

Look at the picture carefully and you will see that
the largest tube is at the top. This is the windpipe.
Now press your finger up and down in front of your
neck and you will find several ridges. They are rings
of cartilage which hold the windpipe out round and

THE AIR TUBES OF THE LUNGS

OUR LUNGS 139

firm. All the air you breathe goes from your nose or
mouth down to the lungs by this road ; but when a bit
of food or water tries to make the same journey, we
cough and almost strangle in trying to get it out. At
the same time we know that the trouble is with the little
swinging door of cartilage between the windpipe and
the food pipe. It did not shut down soon enough and
the food went the wrong way.

You can see that the windpipe has two branches:
one goes to one lung and one to the other. After that,
each of these branches divides and keeps on subdivid-
ing into smaller and smaller branches and twigs, until
the real skeleton of the lung is a beautiful tree like
the one in the picture.

The air sacs are too small to show in the picture, but
there is one of them on the end of each twig. They are
so tiny that nobody sees them without a microscope, and
there are so many of them that all the blood of the body
comes to them and goes away again. It brings carbon
dioxid gas when it comes, and it takes oxygen when it
goes away.

That is why the lungs are so important: the blood
must have oxygen for the body to use. The reason for
breathing is now plainer than ever : whenever we take a
good breath of fresh air we send a quantity of this oxy-
gen into our lungs; and of course, the more we draw
in the deeper down it goes and the more the blood gets.

140 GOOD HEALTH

Any man, woman, or child can see that every tube of
the lungs ought to be kept open so that the air may go
in and out easily and give the blood a chance to get all
the oxygen it needs; yet I have seen girls who looked
as if they had never read a book on hygiene in their
lives, for they dressed as if they did not know they had
any lungs. You can tell such a girl at a glance. As a
rule her waist is very small.

Some people used to think that a small waist made
a woman look delicate and beautiful, but in these days
we are sure that it makes her look ignorant and out of
shape. We think so because we know what she has
done to the inside of her body. She has squeezed up
hundreds and thousands of air tubes and air sacs until
they are like a useless sponge. When that happens,
neither the lungs nor the blood can possibly get as
much air as they need.

The worst of it is that the less air our lungs get the
easier it is for them to become diseased. When every
air sac is full of air, the blood takes the oxygen out of
it as fast as possible ; it also leaves its load of carbon
dioxid there in place of the oxygen.

There are, then, two things that the lungs do for us all
the time : they take oxygen into the body with the air
for the blood to use, and they send carbon dioxid out of
the body because the blood is through with it.

OUR LUNGS 141

QUESTIONS

1. What happens to ribs and chest when you take a long breath?

2. When do the lungs work?

3. What do lungs look like?

4. What is the name of the largest tube?

5. What is it for?

6. What is at the end of each one of the smaller tubes?

7. What gas does the blood bring to these cells? What gas does
it take away?

8. What does lacing do to the lungs?

9. What harm is it if the lungs do not get air enough?
10. What two things do the lungs do for us?

CHAPTER XXVII

LUNGS, DUST, AND TOBACCO SMOKE

The next time you play tag or any other exciting
game that makes you run, notice your breathing.

You will see that the harder you jump or run the
harder your lungs will have to work. You will have to
breathe fast ; you will fill your lungs with air over and
over again ; and even then perhaps you will say, " Oh,
I 'm all out of breath ! " But that sort of exercise is the
very best thing for your lungs. It makes them grow.

The next best thing is to stand out of doors every
morning and take ten deep breaths of fresh air, and
every night before going to bed do the same thing.
While you are doing this there are several things to
think about. In the first place stand straight like a
soldier, holding your chest forward. A sponge that is
crowded tight will not hold much water,* and air cells
that are doubled together will not hold much air. The
first duty then is to hold the body in such a way that
every air cell will be open and free.

Now breathe slowly until the lungs are really full, but
do not strain them ; then breathe the air out as slowly

as you breathed it in.

142

LUNGS, DUST, AND TOBACCO SMOKE 143

Do this faithfully every morning, and do it whenever
you think about it during the day. The breastbone is
not hard when you are young, and if you are careful
to hold the chest up and breathe as you should the
bones will have a fine curved shape, and in the end you
will have a big, healthy, splendid chest and lungs.

You know what sort of air you ought to breathe, and
you know about oxygen and carbon dioxid. There is
also dust in the air, which is very injurious to the lungs.
They cannot always save themselves from this, though
they do a good deal at it by a wonderful
arrangement which they have.

On the inside of the largest tubes of
the lungs and inside the nose there are
thousands and thousands of little threads ClLIA READY FOR
called cilia. These cilia are like the tip
ends of the very finest cobweb silk, and they are mov-
ing all the time like tiny paddles. They are busy day
and night, through winter and through summer, for
their duty is to keep dust and microbes from getting
into the lungs.

They are the air cleaners of the tubes, just as certain
men are the street cleaners of the city. When there is
dust in the air they paddle hard in such a way as to
drive it out of the lung tubes and out of the nose. They
manage very well most of the time ; still, when the lungs
belong to a man who not only lives in the dust all day

144 GOOD HEALTH

but also breathes with his mouth open all night, the cilia
have far too much to do : more dust gets in than they
can drive out, and it rushes past them, goes into the
most delicate tubes and air cells, stays there, and does
mischief. This explains black lungs.

The other day a doctor told me that he had just
examined the lungs of a man who had died in Chicago.
He said that the man had always lived in the dustiest
part of the city, and that after he died, when the doctors
cut his lungs open, they noticed how dark they were.
Besides that, certain spots were as black as ink.

No doubt the cilia had worked as hard as they could,
but the man had probably breathed in more dust than
they could drive out, and it may be he had breathed
with his mouth open.

Though dust is bad enough, microbes in the lungs
are even worse. Yet how hard it is to keep microbes
out of the dust ! We learned that in the ninth chapter.
We also learned that microbes of consumption may give
the disease to healthy people and that we must do all we
can not to breathe them.

In dusty streets and smoky places it is especially
important to breathe through the nose, because the nose
cilia will help the lung cilia; but in the very dustiest
places of all we should use a veil or a respirator to
sift out as much dust as possible. We should also avoid
talking in such places.

LUNGS, DUST, AND TOBACCO SMOKE 145

Our lungs are not only like the branches of a tree
but they are like two big bottles with one small mouth.
When the cork is in a bottle the water cannot evaporate
fast. It is so with the lungs: when the mouth is shut
the tubes do not dry very quickly, — and for the sake
of the cilia they need to be damp.

That is one of the good reasons for not smoking
tobacco. When a man sends warm, dry tobacco smoke
into his lungs, as some people do, he does three harmful
things to his breathing machine.

1. He keeps the cilia too dry.

2. He sends such a cloud of smoke against
the cilia that a great deal of it manages to
get into the lungs.

3. There is a poison in the tobacco that a
man smokes, and when the smoke gets into
the lungs, of course the poison gets there
too. The cilia cannot send it out.

The lungs are so important and so delicate, and the
cilia are such good friends of ours, that we should help
them in every way.

QUESTIONS

1. What does exercise do to breathing?

2. What good does deep breathing do to the lungs?

3. What kind of air should be used?

4. What are cilia like?

146 GOOD HEALTH

5. What do they try to do?

6. What happens when the cilia have too much to do?

7. What is worse for the lungs than mere dust?

8. How shall we protect our lungs in dusty places?

9. Why should we keep from talking on a dusty street?

10. What harm does tobacco smoke do to cilia?

11. Mention three ways in which warm, dry tobacco smoke may
injure a man's lungs.

CHAPTER XXVIII

TEETH

Once every week I meet three pretty girls and two big
boys who belong to the same family. They have soft brown
hair, merry eyes, and they dress well, but, whenever they
smile they show such yellow teeth that I feel like saying,
" Children, children, why don't you wash your teeth ? "

Whenever one of the girls gets a new hat, or one of
the boys buys a suit of clothes, my first thought is,
" You poor child ! you wish to look fine, and you think
you look quite fine already, but a toothbrush would
help you more than anything else in the world." The
trouble with their teeth is that they never wash them.

I have a young lady friend with a funny little pointed
mouth. Her teeth are clean, to be sure, but the upper
front ones reach over the lower ones so that they never
help each other when she chews. When this young
woman was a little girl she sucked her thumb every
night when she went to bed. She even sucked it by day-
light too, sometimes, so that little by little she changed
the shape of her upper jaw, and now if you should see
her you would think that she had done all she could to

make herself look like a squirrel.

147

148 GOOD HEALTH

I know of a boy with a mouth full of good-looking
teeth. The second picture shows how straight and even
they are now ; but when he was eight years old some of
his teeth were as crooked as the cobblestones on an old
down-town city street. The first picture shows how they
looked at that time.

This troubled his father so much that he took him
to a dentist who was a clever man, and he managed to
make them grow in the right way.
The boy can now chew his food
better than he did before, because
the upper teeth and the lower teeth
are opposite each other and work
together.

Go to the mirror. Look at your
own teeth and answer these three
questions about them. Are they

THE WAY THE TEETH dean ? Are they crooked ? Do they
GREW

look as if you had ever sucked

your thumb or your fingers?

If they are crooked the dentist can help you, and you
ought to go to him before the jawbone gets harder. It is
easier and quicker work to straighten young teeth than
old teeth.

If your teeth are not clean, you must wash them ; and
if you know of any child that sucks his thumb, you must
help him to stop it.

TEETH

149

Now count your teeth, and ask your father to let
you count his teeth too. He ought to have thirty-two
altogether. Probably some of your baby teeth have fallen
out, but when you were six years old you had ten teeth
above and ten below. Just now
you are getting your new teeth,
and they must last the rest of your
life, for when the second teeth are
gone, no others will come to take
their place, and false teeth are a
nuisance.

Look carefully and you will see
that each tooth has one just like it
on the opposite side of the same jaw. AFTER THE TEETH WERE

The shapes of your front teeth STRAIGHTENED
and your back teeth are different, as they have different
kinds of work to do, but every tooth in the world is
made in the same way. The soft part is in the center,
and that is where the nerves are also. It is called the
"pulp." Hard bone is around it, while outside of all
comes the enamel. This is the hardest thing in the body,
yet it is the only part of the tooth we have to be care-
ful about. We must do two things to preserve it.

1. Keep it clean.

2. Keep it from getting cracked or broken.

The reason for both these directions is the same: we
must save our teeth from the microbes.

150

GOOD HEALTH

I have a queer-looking string of teeth in my attic.
Once these teeth were growing in the mouth of a heathen
man in Micronesia, but his enemy caught him and killed
him, pulled out every one of his teeth, and threaded
them on a string. I suppose this enemy
knew that when teeth are not in the mouth
they will last for ages and ages, and prob-
ably he wanted his children and grand-
children to believe that once upon a time
he had been strong enough to kill his foe.
If the man had lived until now, his teeth
would have been ruined long ago, and it
would have been the microbes that did
it, for they can destroy the teeth in any
.6 man's mouth; but when teeth are clean
and dry, threaded on a string, and packed
away in the attic, no microbe touches
them.

This teaches us a great lesson: the
cleaner we keep our teeth the longer they
will last. Microbes go wherever there is
a, nerve ; 6, bone ; any fooc[ ancj moisture, and the longer

c, enamel .

the food stays in one spot the more the
microbes will gather just there. They will enter any
crack and work their way deeper and deeper toward
the nerves in the pulp. When they reach far enough
we suffer and have to go to the dentist.

TEETH

TEETH 151

No crack is too small for microbes to find and enter.
If you cut your finger the flesh will mend itself, but the
enamel of the tooth can never grow together again after
we have cracked it. That is why we should not crush
nuts or any other hard thing with our teeth; we can-
not afford to crack the enamel that protects them and
saves them from microbes.

Even when there are no cracks, if bits of food stay in
one spot long enough the microbes will not only make a
hole for themselves just there, but after that hole is once
made, they will go in without asking your permission
and do the greatest mischief.

We can save ourselves from these teeth microbes in
only one way, and that is by keeping the teeth as clean
as possible. Of course we cannot thread them on a
string and put them in the attic to keep dry, but we can
do several other things that are more sensible.

1. Get a toothbrush that is just stiff
enough not to hurt your gums. The bristles
should not be too near together, because
you want them to go between your teeth.

2. Have some tooth powder.

3. Use toothbrush, powder, and water every
morning; scrub every part of your teeth
thoroughly; you will have to screw your
brush around pretty well to do it, yet only
in this way will you dislodge the microbe.

152 GOOD HEALTH

4. Every night before you go to bed take
a piece of soft silk thread and draw it
between as many teeth as you can. This is
better than a toothpick. You will get a
speck of food almost every time you pull the
thread through.

If you can wash your teeth after each meal, that will
be better yet ; but use the powder only once a day.

If you have poor teeth, go to the dentist twice a year.
This will save you from pain and will make your teeth
last much longer.

QUESTIONS

1. What sort of people sometimes have unwashed teeth?

2. What does sucking the thumb and fingers do to the jaw
sometimes?

3. What can a dentist do to crooked teeth?

4. What is the outside of the tooth called?

5. What two things must we do to the enamel?

6. Why must we keep the enamel clean and unbroken?

7. What harm do microbes do to the teeth when they are not
perfectly dry and perfectly clean ?

8. What does that teach us?

9. What do you need to use to clean teeth with?
10. How often should you wash them?

CHAPTER XXIX

EATING

I know a farmer who never hires a man to help him
work on the farm until he has seen him eat. He says
he can tell by the way the man eats whether he is likely
to work well or not.

We are apt to think that a man is healthy, vigorous,
and able to work if he has a good appetite ; and when
we hear a boy say, " I am as hungry as a bear," we are
quite sure that he is well, while we also suspect that he
is growing fast.

It is a good sign to feel hungry. In fact, that is the
way the body rings the bell to tell us that it needs food
to make flesh and brains out of. If a boy never felt
hungry, he might be so busy with his tops, his balls, and
his books as to forget his eating entirely. If he did not
eat, he would grow thinner and weaker day by day until
he was nothing but skin and bone and unable to walk,
and at last he would stop living entirely. That is what
happens when people starve to death.

Even when people have food enough they make great
mistakes about eating. Every child should know four
things in this direction.

153

154 GOOD HEALTH

1. What to eat.

2. When to eat.

3. How to eat.

4. How much to eat.

First of all, however, he needs to know a little about
the part of the body that uses the food. He must bear in
mind the important fact that it is a long tube, beginning
with the mouth, enlarging as a stomach, then becoming a
tube again. Parts of it are straight and parts are twisted ;
parts are large and parts are small ; but every mouthful
of food we swallow takes the same road through it

The next time you eat, notice just what happens.
You might try an experiment first: wipe your tongue
perfectly dry and put a lump of sugar on it. You will
be surprised to find that you cannot taste the sugar with
a dry tongue. This is true of other kinds of food, for the
fact is it is the saliva in our mouths that helps us taste
anything. Yet the saliva has even more important work
to do.

Put a piece of bread into your mouth. Perhaps you
want to swallow it at once, but it is too hard and dry ; so
you crush it between your teeth and bite it into smaller
and smaller pieces ; your tongue turns it over and rolls
it around, while you keep on chewing, and all the while
the bread is getting damp and soft.

That is the main use of saliva : it gets the food ready
for swallowing. Perhaps the wonder is where all the

EATING

155

liquid comes from. There are little pockets under the
tongue and in the sides of the mouth; and the more
saliva we need the faster these pockets make it and
send it out for us to use.

We know how it looks : it
is a thick kind of water, but
it is very different from the
water we drink. Any kind
of water will make bread soft,
but saliva is the only kind
that can get food into the best
condition for the stomach to
use. The truth is that the
saliva actually helps digest
the food ; that is why we need
to take small mouthfuls at a
time, and chew each mouth-
ful until it is wet through and
through with the saliva and
turned into a smooth, thick
pudding with not a lump in
it. At that point it is ready
to be swallowed.

It is a mistake to drink while we are chewing,
for real water weakens the saliva. Do not drink until
you have swallowed the mouthful you have been
chewing.

WELL FED AND GROWING

156 GOOD HEALTH

We talk a great deal about eating, but there are only
three things that we can do about it: we put the food
into our mouths; we chew it; we swallow it. After
that the long food tube of the body does everything else.
Each part of this tube seems to be a special station that
does some special thing to the food.

First comes the mouth that holds it and chews it. Next
is the food pipe that does the swallowing. This tube
sends the food into a queer-shaped bag that we call the
stomach, and there it stays for two or three hours, while
the muscles pull it in every direction and send the food
round and round.

In the midst of all this a thick kind of clear liquid,
called gastric juice, comes out of the lining of the stom-
ach and makes the food as soft as pea soup.

It is about ready for the blood now, but, on the way,
it must next go into the longest and most twisted part of
the food tube. This is about twenty feet long in a man,
and is folded into small compass below the stomach.

The dissolved part of the food passes through the lin-
ing of the tube, and after that the blood carries it to any
place that needs it most, — to the bones, the skin, the
hair, the lungs, and everywhere else where it is needed.

Even with the best of chewing there is always some
waste, and this has to pass out of our bodies. It is
exceedingly important that we get rid of it every day.

Now we are ready for questions about food.

EATING 157

1. What to eat. Most of the food we
have on our tables is good for us. Milk
and eggs, fresh meat, cereals, bread, vege-
tables, and fruits, — the stomach uses them
all; but the time of the year makes a
difference about what is best for us. In
winter we need more butter, fat meat, and
such things to help keep us warm; in sum-
mer, more vegetables and fruit are better,
with less meat.

A little candy is good for almost every-
body, if we eat it at mealtime, but it is not
good for us between meals.

2. When to eat. If you are strong, eat
three times a day, and be regular. Do not
eat between the meals. The stomach works
hard and needs to rest as much as a hard-
working boy. If you are not strong, eat less
at each meal, but eat oftener. In any case be
sure to eat at regular times.

3. How to eat. Eat slowly and chew the
food until it is soft like pudding or cream.
Never drink in the midst of chewing. Even
milk should be swallowed slowly enough to
let the saliva mix with it, for otherwise it
turns to curds in the stomach and is slow
in digesting.

158 GOOD HEALTH

4. How much to eat. If you are healthy
and have been chewing carefully, eat until
you stop feeling hungry. Never eat until
you feel stuffed.

The boy who works and plays and studies hard needs
more food than his delicate mother who reads and sews
all day in a warm room. Besides that, he is growing and
she is not.

QUESTIONS

1 . What does a good appetite show ?

2. How much tasting can you do with a dry tongue?

3. What does this show?

4. What is the particular use of saliva?

5. Where does it come from?

6. How do you know when you have chewed anything long enough?

7. What does the stomach do with food ?

8. How does the food get into the blood at last?

9. What are some of the things that we may eat?

10. When shall we eat?

11. How shall we eat?

12. How much shall we eat?

CHAPTER XXX
ALEXIS ST. MARTIN AND ALCOHOL

Many years ago there was a young man in Canada
who was wounded in his stomach by a bullet. Perhaps
this was not so very strange, for the fellow belonged to
the American Fur Company and he hunted fur-covered
animals for a living. The really strange part of the affair
was this : the bullet went into his stomach in such a way
that it did not kill him, although it tore the flesh so badly
that it left a wide opening. Indeed, this opening was so
large that it could never grow together again. You know
most cuts heal up after a while, but all this one did was
to stop bleeding and get healed around the edges. It
never did more than that.

The result was that from that time on, as long as the
hunter lived, there was an opening through the side of
his body into his stomach. It was two and a half inches
around, and there was a piece of the lining of the stomach
that hung down over the opening like a valve and cov-
ered it up. If anybody wanted to look into the man's
stomach, and if Alexis St. Martin (that was the hunter's
name) would let him do it, all that was necessary was to
push the valve back with the finger and peep in.

159

160 GOOD HEALTH

Now Dr. Beaumont was a physician who lived in the
town where the shooting accident happened. He was
acquainted with Alexis St. Martin, and as he was anxious
to know just how the stomach works when it is trying
to digest food, he invited the young man to come and
live in his house and let him keep watch of his eating.

I suppose this was the first time in the history of the
world that a doctor had had a chance to look into the
stomach of a live man whenever he wished to see what
was going on there. Dr. Beaumont was able to do this
for several years, because St. Martin stayed with him a
long time.

Fortunately for everybody the man was healthy and
enjoyed eating; he chewed and swallowed, and drank
water or milk or whisky just as Dr. Beaumont advised.
In fact he seemed to be willing to eat anything the doc-
tor gave him, and to eat much or little according as
Dr. Beaumont wished to make his experiments, and so it
came about that on certain days he ate one thing at a
meal, while on other days he ate several different kinds
of things at a meal.

As these experiments went on day after day, nothing
that the young man ate or drank escaped Dr. Beaumont's
eyes. He watched the food digest after each meal, and
found out precisely how long it took St. Martin's stomach
to get anything ready to go on into the next part of the
long food tube. He also learned what kinds are the

ALEXIS ST. MARTIN AND ALCOHOL 161

easiest to digest, and he knew that what was good for
St. Martin was good for other men too.

As it happened, Dr. Beaumont was a doctor in the
United States army. He therefore decided that this was
just the time to see whether it was best for a man to put
alcohol into his stomach every day. He knew that if
alcohol could help anybody it would certainly be good
for soldiers, and I suppose he wanted to be sure about
this so as to be able to advise soldiers to use it if
it was really going to make them braver or stronger
or healthier.

On the other hand, if wine or beer or whisky and such
things were likely to do more harm than good, he wanted
to know that too, so as to be on the safe side and advise
soldiers against using anything of the kind.

Before this time doctors could only judge about alco-
hol by the way men felt and acted after they drank it.
Nobody had seen how the stomach itself looked and
acted when men put alcohol into it.

Even when Bum and Tipsy used alcohol, Dr. Hodge
could not tell what the drink really did to their stomachs,
for there was no hole for him to look through. He only
knew that it made the dogs weaker than other dogs and
not so brave.

Dr. Beaumont now proposed to find out something
more than this, and fortunately, when he asked Alexis
St. Martin whether he would be willing to have his

1 62 GOOD HEALTH

stomach used for the experiments, St. Martin said, "Yes,
certainly."

One interesting thing to remember is that Bum and
Tipsy had to take alcohol every day until Dr. Hodge
could tell by their actions what was happening. But St.
Martin did not have to take so much : when Dr. Beau-
mont looked into the stomach he saw exactly what the
alcohol did when it got there, so he did not have to give
it long enough to do the man any very great harm.

First of all he gave St. Martin good food without any^
alcohol in it, and at this time he noticed that when he
gave him the food the inside lining of the stomach was
of a pink color and perfectly healthy. The gastric juice
was healthy too ; it was thin and clear, without any special
color, and it did its work well.

That is the way the stomach acted when St. Martin
took food but did not drink alcohol. But now the young
man took alcohol for several days, while of course he had
his regular food besides. Everybody was especially inter-
ested in the case, and the doctor kept on examining the
stomach each day. I think he was surprised to find that
whenever he looked in the lining was redder than it was
the time before ; then there were sores on it ; after that
the sores were worse and blood came from them.

When he saw how things were going Dr. Beaumont
took some of the gastric juice from the stomach (he
could get it out easily by putting a tube in through the

ALEXIS ST. MARTIN AND ALCOHOL 163

opening) and noticed that it was not clear and thin as it
was before. It had thick and ropy mucus in it.

On another day he took out more of the gastric juice
and found a little blood in it too. This seemed to come
from the sore places.

At first St. Martin could not tell from his feelings that
anything was the matter with his stomach. He simply
had to believe Dr. Beaumont, for of course he himself
could not stretch his neck far enough over to look through
the opening into his own stomach. But after a while
he did not feel so well ; he was dizzy and his face had
a yellow color.

Dr. Beaumont tried his experiments over and over
again at different times, and in the end he decided
two things.

1. Alcohol made the lining of St. Martin's
stomach sore and unhealthy, so that the
gastric juice was changed, and after that it
could not digest the food so well.

2. A man's stomach may have sores in it
even when the man himself does not know
anything about them. This means that a
man cannot tell by his feelings what the
alcohol is doing to his stomach.

If any one had the same kind of sores on the outside
of his body that St. Martin had in his stomach, he would
do all he could to get rid of them; because, even if a

1 64 GOOD HEALTH

man did not feel these sores at the time, he would know
that they would do him harm and that he would not feel
so well later. They would injure his body though he
might not know what the matter was.

When Dr. Beaumont had found out all that he needed
to know, he stopped giving alcohol to St. Martin ; where-
upon the lining of his stomach grew more healthy every
day, until at last, when the doctor looked in one morning,
he saw that it was quite well again.

Afterwards, when he wrote a book about these experi-
ments, he said, " The use of ardent spirits always pro-
duces disease of the stomach, if persevered in."

QUESTIONS

1. Who was Alexis St. Martin?

2. What happened to him ?

3. What did Dr. Beaumont wish to learn?

4. How did he make the food experiments?

5. What did he decide to find out about alcohol?

6. Before that time how did any one know what alcohol does to a
man's stomach?

7- When the inside of St. Martin's stomach was healthy, what was
its color?

8. After taking alcohol awhile, what change was there in the color?

9. What other bad signs did the doctor discover ?
IO. What did he say in his book about using alcohol?

CHAPTER XXXI

THE EXERCISE WE NEED

Give special attention at this time to the connection
between your breathing and your exercise. Notice how
quietly you breathe before you start to run ; then go
with a rush around the block, or walk up four flights of
stairs at a brisk pace, and notice your breathing again.
At the end of the exercise you will find that your lungs
are working hard ; you may even be panting as a dog
does when he runs behind a carriage.

The fact is that the harder we use certain muscles
of our bodies, the more air the body needs; while the
more it needs, the harder the lungs try to get it.

Now it is the work of the large muscles that compels
the body to call for the most air. However long and
however hard you exercise the small muscles of your
hand by opening and shutting your fingers, you can
never get out of breath from doing it ; but by making
the large muscles of your legs move energetically enough
to race around the block, you can make your lungs draw
in all they can possibly hold. It is the work of the large
muscles, then, that forces the lungs to supply the body

with unusual quantities of life-giving oxygen. Remember

165

1 66

GOOD HEALTH

that point. Here is another point quite as important.
When you come into the school building to-morrow
morning, if you count your pulse at the foot of the stairs
(provided that you have not been running just before
that), you will find it beating quietly. But walk rapidly

to the top of the building
and count the rate of your
heart beats again for a
whole minute, and you will
notice a great change; your
pulse will now be pounding
violently.

The experiment shows
that exercise increases not
merely the breathing but
also the circulation of the
blood in the body.

The easiest way to feel

the pulse is to put the hand
FEELING THE PULSE Qn the gide of the wrist

toward the thumb. There you may count from seventy
to one hundred pulse beats a minute. Sometimes hard
exercise drives the pulse up to one hundred and fifty,
but this is too fast. At other times, when one is lying
very quiet, having been still a long time, it will beat
much slower than seventy; and it is then that the
heart does its resting.

THE EXERCISE WE NEED

I67

In every case the heart beats because the muscles
which are working must have more blood ; and the heart
meets the demand by pumping the blood into them as
promptly as possible.

Moreover, with circulation as with respiration, it isn't
so much the use of the small muscles as the use of the

large muscles that makes
the heart work. You can
increase the heart rate a
trifle by using the hand
vigorously, but move-
ments of the body and
movements of the legs, as
in running, increase the
circulation very much more
than exercise of the small
muscles.

Exercise also tends to
make the muscles harder.
Take hold of your right
upper arm with your left

hand; clinch the fist of your right hand as hard as possible;
slowly bend the right arm, and you will feel the muscle
of that arm increasing in size. This is because it is get-
ting shorter. If you do this a good many times each
day, the muscle itself becomes harder ; that is, it has less
fat in it and is better adapted for doing hard work.

HARDENING A MUSCLE

1 68

GOOD HEALTH

Muscle that is used also tends to grow larger. It is
interesting to measure the size of one's arm at the
beginning of a year and then again at the end of the

year, and see how much it
has grown in size, if exercise
has been taken.

Much more important,
however, than either growth
in hardness or size is growth
in strength. If you take
hold of a bar that is fastened
as high as you can reach
and pull your body up so
that your chin is over the
bar, the muscles of your

HE STRENGTHENS HIS ARMS

arms and certain muscles of
the back are doing hard
work. A boy who can do
this but once at the begin-
ning of the term can easily,
at the end of the term, — if he will practice three or four
minutes night and morning, — do it five or six times. It
is not worth while to do it for more than this length of
time, for there is no advantage in having arms that are
strong unduly in proportion to the rest of the body.

That which happens to the muscles of the arm when
they are used in this way happens to all other muscles

THE EXERCISE WE NEED 169

when similarly used. No muscle can help growing
bigger and stronger if it is used ; whereas, if it is not
used, it is just as sure to grow smaller and weaker.

Another point about exercise is that it increases one's
appetite and one's digestion of food. This is accom-
plished very slowly, but a person who is working or
who is out of doors a great deal will need more food
than one who sits still most of the time.

The man who wishes to succeed in those athletic
sports which depend on strength, quickness, or endur-
ance trains for it ; that is, he uses exercises which increase
the circulation of his blood and which make the muscles
harder, larger, stronger, and quicker in their movements,
for these exercises make a man more healthy in every way.

Not only this, but the more he practices, the better
can he do each particular thing, for muscles learn les-
sons as truly as children learn them.

Perhaps the most important reason for having gym-
nastics in school is that the body may learn to hold
itself in the correct position and thus prevent curvature
of the spine. This curvature often comes from bending
over school desks so much of the time.

You will notice that your school gymnastics give
more work to the big muscles of the back and the neck
than to the smaller muscles of the arms. The reason is
that the back must be straightened, and the exercises are
to keep the muscles strong enough to hold the backbone

1 70 GOOD HEALTH

in its natural position. If they succeed, we may have
the kind of carriage of the body that military men have ;
that is, we may be erect and vigorous.

Good health is closely related to standing straight.
I do not mean that every person who stands as he
should is healthy, and that every person who stands
crooked is unhealthy ; but I do mean that standing
straight helps one to be healthy as well as to look
healthy. To sit in a bad posture tends to interfere with
respiration, digestion, and circulation. That is why a
person who sits or bends over constantly feels so tired
and cross at the end of the day; the different organs
of his body have had to do their work in a cramped
position, and they could not do it satisfactorily.

A person should never sit still longer than an hour at a
time. Once in a while, he should stand up and take a two-
minute exercise to increase circulation and respiration,
to straighten his back and to cultivate good feelings.

Exercise is good, but one can take too much of it.
Many people overdo in athletic work. I have seen sev-
eral basket-ball teams and several relay teams who after
they became expert played so many games and ran so
many races that the boys were seriously overworked, —
so much so that it took them years to recover.

A hard relay race should not be run oftener than
once a week, and a team should play no more than one
hard basket-ball game a week.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST

The reference books are grouped under the chapters to which they belong.

CHAPTERS I-VI, AIR AND VENTILATION

HARRINGTON, CHARLES, Practical Hygiene (Second Edition) chaps, ii

and v. 1902.

NOTTER, J. L., Treatise on Hygiene, chaps, i and iii. 1900.
RICHARDS and WOODMAN, Air, Water, and Food. 1901.
SMITHSONIAN REPORT, The Composition of Expired Air. 1895.

CHAPTERS VII-X, MICROBES, DUST, AND TOBACCO CHEWING

HODGE, C. F., Nature Study and Life, pp. 471-477. 1902.
KOTELMANN, LuDWiG, School Hygiene, chap. vi. 1899.
PRUDDEN, T. M., Dust and its Dangers. 1901.

SEDGWICK, WILLIAM T., Principles of Sanitary Science and the Public
Health. 1902.

CHAPTERS XI-XIII, SLEEP

CARPENTER, WILLIAM B., Principles of Human Physiology, p. 609.
KOTELMANN, L., School Hygiene, pp. 187, 225, and 231. 1899.

CHAPTERS XIV AND XV, THE EYE

KOTELMANN, L., School Hygiene, chap. xi. 1899.
MARTIN, H. N., The Human Body, chaps, xxxii and xxxiii. 1896.
PYLE, W. L., Personal Hygiene. 1901.

TODD, C. F., Sanitation Relative to Sight and Hearing (an article in the
St. Louis Medical Journal, April, 1903).

171

172 GOOD HEALTH

CHAPTERS XVI AND XVII, ANIMALS AND ALCOHOL

HODGE, C. F., Physiological Aspects of the Liquor Problem. Report of the
Sub-committee of the Committee of Fifty to investigate the Liquor
Problem, vol. i. 1903.

CHAPTERS XVIII AND XIX, THE EAR

AYERS, HOWARD, Biological Lectures.

MARTIN, H. N., The Human Body, chap, xxxiv. 1896.

PYLE, W. L., Personal Hygiene. 1901.

CHAPTERS XX-XXII, THE FINGER NAILS, THE HAIR,
AND THE SKIN

MARTIN, H. N., The Human Body, chap, xxviii. 1896.
PYLE, W. L., Personal Hygiene. 1901.

CHAPTERS XXIII AND XXIV, ALCOHOL IN COLD WEATHER
AND IN HOT WEATHER

CARPENTER, WM. B., The Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Liquors.
NOTTER, J. L., Treatise on Hygiene, pp. 411 and 412. 1900.

CHAPTERS XXV-XXVII, THE NOSE AND THE LUNGS

MARTIN, H. N., The Human Body, chap. xxvi. 1896.
PYLE, W. L., Personal Hygiene. 1901.

CHAPTERS XXVIII AND XXIX, THE TEETH AND EATING

MARTIN, H. N., The Human Body, chaps, xxii-xxiv. 1896.
PYLE, W. L., Personal Hygiene. 1901.

CHAPTER XXX, ALEXIS ST. MARTIN AND ALCOHOL

BEAUMONT, WILLIAM, Experiments on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology
of Digestion.

CHAPTER XXXI, THE EXERCISE WE NEED
GULICK, L. H., Physical Education by Muscular Exercise. 1904.

GLOSSARY

Key: fate, senate, fat, arm, all, ask; mete, e"vent, met, her; ice, It, sir,
old, obey, not, son, h6rse ; use, finite, up; baby; c as in call, 5 as in mice;
g as in go, g as in cage ; ti as in motion ; obscure sounds : a, g, i, o, u. Silent
letters are italicized.

ab'stl nenqe, the act of refraining

from the use of something,
ath iSt'Ic, strong ; active.

bac te'rl a, the smallest living crea-
tures.

car'bon di ox'Id, carbonic acid; a

gas.
car'tl lage, an elastic tissue;

gristle,
cjl'l a, hairlike growths on various

membranes and organs of the

body.
Qir cu la'tion, the act of moving in

a circuit or circle,
con sump'tion, a name commonly

given to a disease of the lungs.

deVmls, the second layer or true
skin.

6p I dem'Ic, common to or affect-
ing a great number.

8p I der'mis,the outer layer of skin,
e v&p'6 rate, to pass off in vapor.

fer mSnt', to turn sour and boil
gently.

gar'bage, any worthless, offensive

matter,
gas 'trie, belonging or pertaining

to the stomach.

In tox'I cate, to make drunk.

m6mrbrane, a thin, soft tissue in
the form of a sheet or layer
covering parts of the body.

mer'cury, the column of quick-
silver in a thermometer.

mi'crobe, the smallest living crea-
ture that can be seen only
through a microscope.

mi'cro scope, an instrument for ex-
amining objects too small for
the naked eye.

'74

GOOD HEALTH

mo not '6 nous, unchanging.

mu'cous, slimy.

mu'cus, a thick fluid formed by the

mucous membranes of animals, sa ll'va, the liquid made by the

glands and lining membrane of
oc'ulist, one skilled in the treat- the mouth.

ment of the eyes,
oxyggn, the element of the air thgr inoin'e ter, an instrument

rgs'plrator, an instrument used
as an aid in breathing.

that supports life.

which tells temperature.

air.

per'spi ra/tion, the liquid poured vgn'ti late, to supply with fresh
out on the surface of the skin
by the sweat glands.

r8s pi ra/tion, the act of breathing.

vSn'tllator, a means by which
tresh air is supplied to a room
or building.

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Beal : Seed Dispersal 35 .40

Bergen : Glimpses at the Plant World 40 .45

Blaisdell : Child's Book of Health (Revised Edition) . . .30 .35

Blaisdell : How to Keep Well (Revised Edition) 45 .55

Blaisdell : Our Bodies and How We Live (Revised Edition) .65 .75

Burkett, Stevens, and Hill: Agriculture for Beginners . . .75 .80

Dickerson: Moths and Butterflies 1.25 1.40

Frye : Brooks and Brook Basins . . . 50 .55

Frye : Child and Nature 80 .88

Frye : Elements of Geography 65 .80

Frye: Grammar School Geography . . 1.25 1.45

Gould: Mother Nature's Children 60 .70

Gulick Hygiene Series

Book I. Good Health 40 .45

Book II. Emergencies 40 .45

Book III. Town and City .50 .60

Book IV. The Body at Work .50 .60

Book V. Control of Body and Mind .50 .60

Hall : Our World Reader, No. i 50 .60

Higgins : First Science Book 65 .75

Hodge: Nature Study and Life 1.50 1.65

Holden : The Sciences 50 .60

Newell : Outlines of Lessons in Botany

Part I. From Seed to Leaf 50 .55

Part II. Flower and Fruit 80 .90

Newell : Reader in Botany

Part I. From Seed to Leaf 60 .70

Part II. Flower and Fruit 60 .70

Roth : First Book of Forestry 75 .85

Shaler: Story of Our Continent . 75 .85

Weed: Seed-TraveYiers 25 .30

Weed : Stories of Insect Life

First Series 25 .30

Second Series (Murtfeldt and Weed) 30 .35

GINN AND COMPANY PUBLISHERS

CIVICS AND HEALTH

By WILLIAM H. ALLEN, Secretary of the Bureau of Municipal Research, New

York City. With an Introduction by Professor WILLIAM T. SEDGWICK,

Professor of Biology in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

List price, $1.25

Adopted, within FOUR months of publication, by the Teachers'
Reading Circles of

Maryland, Kentucky, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma,
and New Mexico

Dr. Allen prevention is a text and the making of
sound citizens a sermon. In " Civics and Health " he
sounds a slogan which should awaken every community in
this country to its opportunities in municipal reform. Every
teacher who reads this book will gain a new sense of duty
in matters of hygiene and sanitation.

Civics and Health is enthrallingly interesting. It is humanized
sociology. Cleaning up children by scientific illumination will appeal
to every father and mother, every child lover who has any patriotism
or desire to learn how we as a people are to make moral-reform agita-
tions fruitful through health of American children, and so establish
health of national lite. — Boston Transcript.

This is one of the books we wish the law required every citizen to
have in his house and to know by heart. Then, indeed, mankind would
have made an immense stride forward. — Chicago Medical Recorder.

The book is alive from cover to cover. It breathes reform, but not
of the platform variety. It abounds in ugly facts, but superabounds in
the statement of best methods of getting rid of this ugliness. As
claimed by the publishers, it is preeminently a book on " getting things
done." — Hygiene and Physical Education, Springfield, Mass.

1 86%

GINN AND COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Date Due

3*1 34>

LIBRARY

COLLEGE OF DENTISTRY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA