How to Live Part 14

Section VI--The Fields of Hygiene

[Sidenote: Public Versus Individual Hygiene]

The object of this book is primarily to instruct the individual as to what he can do to maintain his own individual health. But individual hygiene is only one particular branch of hygiene, and it is well for the individual, partly out of public spirit, partly in self-defense, to have some idea of the other important branches, namely, public hygiene, the hygiene practised by the health officer, semipublic hygiene, the hygiene of schools, inst.i.tutions, and industrial establishments, and race hygiene or eugenics, the most important of all.

All these branches are so closely related that it is impossible to mark any exact dividing-line. But, in a general way, there is a broad distinction between eugenics, which is the hygiene of future generations, and the other two, which relate to the present generation, as also between these two themselves. Thus public hygiene is that which is practised by the government for its citizens, while individual hygiene is that which is practised by the citizens for themselves.

Public hygiene consists chiefly in efforts by the government to maintain a wholesome environment in which to live, including good outdoor air--without smoke or foul odors--clean streets, pure water, good sewers, quarantine, and legal regulations concerning houses, schools, prisons, hospitals, and other public inst.i.tutions, foods sold in markets, and conditions of employment. It is chiefly useful in preventing _acute_ or infectious diseases, such as typhoid fever, scarlet fever, measles, whooping-cough, small-pox, yellow fever, and diphtheria, and in preventing accidents and occupational diseases.

Individual hygiene is chiefly useful in preventing the _chronic_ or degenerative diseases, that is, diseases of nutrition and of circulation, such as heart and kidney affections, nervous prostration, insanity.

Public hygiene has made much progress during recent years. In consequence, the number of deaths from the acute or infectious diseases has been greatly diminished. Health officers are beginning to demonstrate the truth of Pasteur's words, "It is within the power of man to rid himself of every parasitic disease."

It is this work which has reduced the general death-rate in civilized countries and sometimes cut it in two, as at Panama. The United States Public Health Service, on invitation of the Peruvian Government, recently cut the death-rate in two in one of Peru's disease-ridden cities.

Individual hygiene, on the other hand, has been greatly neglected, especially in the United States, and, doubtless largely as a consequence, the death-rates from the chronic or degenerative diseases are increasing rapidly. A further consequence is that, in the United States, while the death-rate in the early years of life (when infectious diseases do most of the killing) has been decreasing, the death-rate in later life (when the chronic diseases do most of the killing) is increasing. In Sweden, on the other hand, where individual hygiene is more generally applied, the death-rate is declining at all times of life. (See "Signs of Increase of the Degenerative Diseases,"

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES.)

Both public and individual hygiene are being invoked in the fight against tuberculosis, a disease at once infectious and chronic, due to germs and to wrong methods of living.

[Sidenote: Cooperation Necessary]

No matter how thoroughly an individual attempts to care for his own health, he will find it almost impossible to avoid infections, at times, without the organized help of the community in which he lives. A man may do his best to keep his windows open, to breathe deeply, to eat hygienically, to hold his activities within the limits of overfatigue, to screen his house against flies and leave no tin cans about his kitchen door to breed mosquitoes; but if the city in which he lives has no good air for him to breathe, if his city's water supply is contaminated, if neighboring malarial swamps are not drained or covered with oil, if flies alight on the food before it comes to his own house, if the food contains disease germs or dangerous preservatives, or if his next-door neighbor visits him and leaves infection behind him, mere personal defenses will hardly be adequate.

Even in so private a matter as moving the bowels, sometimes the fault lies partly with circ.u.mstances beyond the control of the individual.

Unfortunately in most of our cities and small towns "Comfort Stations"

are rare or unknown, and when they are available they are often in such an insanitary condition as to be a source of danger through the spread of communicable disease. Constipation, as we have seen, is a far more serious matter than it is sometimes thought to be.

It is therefore inc.u.mbent on the individual to contribute his share to the hygienic work of society as a whole, in particular to take an active interest in health legislation and administration. A man can not live to the best advantage in a life isolated from all social obligations, any more than could Robinson Crusoe, who was unable to launch his canoe in the ocean, after he had been at great pains to construct it, because he had no one to help him. Each man should take part in the great social hygienic struggle, if he is to reap the highest rewards in his own personal hygienic struggle. And he can do a great deal if he will be patient and persistent. If, for instance, he would always insist on suitable air conditions in public buildings, electric cars, theaters, and churches, and encourage others to do so, it would not take long to make air reform general.

[Sidenote: The Consumer's Duty]

In fact, it is the common public, const.i.tuting the consumer, who has it in his power to bring about most of the necessary reforms in public hygiene. When the consumer really values hygienic environment, the producer will supply it. The great improvement in recent years in drinking water was brought about through the appreciation, by the consumer, of the danger from impure water. His complaints produced the change. Hotels found it profitable to provide and advertise pure water.

So also the education of the public as to the dangers of a common public drinking cup led to the invention of bubbling fountains and cheap individual cups and to the introduction of these conveniences in railway stations and other public places.

We need to concern ourselves particularly with the character of our public water supply, air supply and food supply, the number of bacteria in milk, the fitness for human consumption of the meat, fowl, fish, and sh.e.l.l-fish sold in the public markets, and the use of adulterants and preservatives in canned and bottled goods.

[Sidenote: Quacks and Quackery]

Quacks and quackery should be vigorously fought by laymen as well as physicians. Quacks live by lying and misleading advertis.e.m.e.nts. Every one should cooperate to encourage the movement by which newspapers and magazines are giving up quack and immoral advertis.e.m.e.nts and the advertis.e.m.e.nts of alcoholic beverages. Especially should we refuse to patronize the quack advertiser. When no one is deceived by him, he will cease to advertise. A more immediate method is to change from the newspaper containing such advertising to one which does not. We should also appeal to the editors to reform their advertising, as many of them are now doing.

[Sidenote: Vaccination]

Vaccination is now a known preventive against smallpox, typhoid fever, and other germ maladies. Its use should be advocated and the ignorant prejudice against it should be overcome.

[Sidenote: Social Evil]

Last but not least, the individual should cooperate in the great movement against the social evil.

As soon as an individual becomes interested in caring for his own health and for the health of his family, his interest will not cease at individual hygiene; he will wish to improve the efficiency of the public health service by increased appropriations, improved equipment and personnel; and to cooperate with the health officer.

[Sidenote: Eugenics]

Race hygiene or eugenics, which has been mentioned as the third and most important branch of hygiene, aims to conserve the health of _future_ generations, through the action of those now living. Hygiene (individual and public) teaches us how to create for ourselves healthful conditions of living, but on every side we see evidences of the fact that we cannot entirely control conditions of health through hygiene only. Not all maladies by any means can be attributed to unnatural or unhygienic conditions of living. It is true that if followed out faithfully, the rules of hygiene will enable a man to live out his maximum natural life-span, with the maximum of well-being, and to run no risk of allowing any inherent weakness to be brought out. But some persons, even if they followed what is very nearly the normal code for the human being, would scarcely be able to avoid dire physical and mental fates.

In short, we find that besides the hygienic factor in life which we may call environment, there is something else on which the health of the individual depends. This something else is heredity, or "the nature of the breed." Back of all the individual can do by hygiene lies his inheritance. To change this the individual can do nothing, but the parents of the individual can affect his inheritance, and we as parents can affect the inheritance of our offspring.

[Sidenote: Trustees of the Racial Germ-plasm]

First, we can carry through life uninjured the essential germ plasm which has been entrusted to our care. We should never forget that this germ plasm, which we receive and transmit, really belongs, not to us, but to the race; and that we have no right, through alcoholic or other unhygienic practises, to damage it; but that, on the contrary, we are under the most solemn obligation to keep it up to the highest level within our power. We are the trustees of the racial germ plasm that we carry.

[Sidenote: Wise Combinations of Germinal Traits]

Second, we can affect the life of our offspring by our choice in marriage. The basis of the development of desirable or undesirable tendencies or traits lies, of course, in the mating from which the individual springs. On the kind of combinations of germinal traits that are made by marriage depends whether or not undesirable traits shall reappear in the offspring. For instance, a man may inherit a defect from his father because his father married a certain type of woman. Had the father selected a different type, the children might not have inherited the father's defect. The importance of choice in marriage results from certain laws of inheritance, which make it clear that by proper combinations of individuals certain bad traits may be entirely "bred out."

[Sidenote: Choice in Marriage]

As soon as men and women acquire the knowledge that their choices in marriage largely determine whether or not their physical and mental faults and virtues will reappear in children, they feel a sacred responsibility in that act of choosing. A little conscious knowledge of what kind of combinations of traits bring about their reappearance in offspring can not help but modify a person's taste, and thus automatically direct the choice of a mate, which choice will still be, and rightfully, an instinctive one. Upon the wisdom with which choices in marriage are now made depends in large degree the health and efficiency of all the individuals who will const.i.tute society in the coming generations. As the science of eugenics gathers a greater wealth of evidence and subjects it to vigorous a.n.a.lysis, its ability to guide the race to higher levels will become more positive and far-reaching.

This can be done without surrendering the general principle of individual freedom. It will not reduce but increase the number of natural love-marriages. The errors of crude and superficial or overenthusiastic eugenists should not obscure the enormous possibilities of the science for the human race. Eugenic knowledge is, therefore, not only a personal advantage but a social necessity.

[Sidenote: Social Progress]

For society as a whole, a thoroughgoing eugenic program must include:

(1) The prevention of reproduction by the markedly unfit, such as the feeble-minded, by sterilization of the most unfit and by segregating the remainder in public inst.i.tutions.

(2) The enactment of wise marriage laws.

(3) The development of an enlightened sentiment against improper marriages and the putting at the disposal of individuals contemplating marriage the data acc.u.mulated and principles worked out by eugenic students.

The Eugenics Record Office of Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, N. Y., is now engaged in collecting such material.

For us of the present generation, hygiene is of immediate concern; but if we are to build for future generations, hygiene must give way to, or grow into, eugenics. The accomplishment of a true eugenic program will be the crowning work of the health movement and the grandest service of science to the human race. (For further comments on this subject see "Eugenics" in SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES.)

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES ON SPECIAL SUBJECTS

SECTION I

NOTES ON FOOD

[Sidenote: Balancing the Diet]

It will help to balance the ration and to avoid an excess of protein and also to avoid a deficiency of either fat or carbohydrate, if we take a bird's-eye view of the various common foods in respect to the protein, fat and carbohydrate they contain. For this purpose the following table has been constructed.

[Sidenote: Common Foods Cla.s.sified]