Spitting in Street Cars. An evidence of the way in which sanitary teaching is taking possession of the popular mind is to be found in an order recently issued by the Traction Company, of this city. The company controls the majority of our street car lines, and within a few days placards have been conspicuously placed in all of their cars to the effect that "spitting in the cars is positively forbidden." This rule has resulted from the publication to the public of the fact that the expectoration of consumptives contains the seeds of the disease and that promiscuous expectoration is a ready means for diffusing this fearfully prevalent malady. Dont's. Don't read in omnibuses or other jolting vehicles. Don't pick the teeth with pins or any other hard substance. Don't neglect any opportunity to ensure a variety of food. Don't eat and drink hot and cold things immediately in succession. Don't pamper the appetite with such variety of food as may lead to excess. Don't read, write, or do any delicate work unless receiving the light from the left side. Don't keep the parlor dark unless you value your carpet more than your children's health and your own. Don't endeavor to rest the mind by absolute inactivity; let it seek its rest in other channels, and thus rest the tired part of the brain. A Swiss Cure for a Fresh Cold. Camphor, says the Lancet, has often been recommended for colds in the head, although Dr. George Johnson and others have long since indicated the dangers from concentrated alcoholic solutions. A Swiss pharmaceutical journal gives the following method: Into a jug half filled with boiling water put one drachm of powdered camphor; over it place a funnel-shaped paper from which the apex has been torn off so as to admit the nose. The camphorated steam may thus be drawn in through the nose for ten or fifteen minutes. Any cold in the head, it is maintained, however severe, will yield to three such applications. -New York Medical Journal. The Hygienic Aspect of Life Insurance. There are but few arguments left unpresented to would-be victims by life insurance agents, but there is one that we have not yet seen written about. Serenity of mind, contentment, is, we must all admit, a most potent factor in the preservation of health and the promotion of longevity; while worry and anxiety will do much to produce ill-health and shorten life. To the man who loves his family what thought can possibly be more wearing or harassing than the fear that should he be taken away they will be left unprovided for. On the other hand what refreshing sleep will come to the man who places his head on the pillow conscious of the fact that should he die before morning his life insurance policy will provide for the loved ones he has left behind. Thus then, will the insuring of our lives not only protect those who are dear to us, but it will actually tend to lengthen our own lives by the peace of mind it will vouchsafe to us. Swelled Heads. The man who, as a result of material success, allows his head to swell, is a man whose liver will be very apt also to swell, and he will become so generally swollen that he will prove a nuisance to himself and to all about him. Edison, the great inventor, when it was recently remarked to him that since his great success he must have forgotten his old associates, replied that he would "rather have the smallpox than a swelled head." A man with a "swelled head" is an abnormal man, and an abnormal man cannot be a healthy or a happy man, so, for goodness sake, let us avoid "swelled heads," not only in ourselves, but in others. A Grasping Lot. The story is told in the newspapers that a certain M. Heriot, the owner of a big store called the Louvre, in Paris, was sent to the insane asylum by his relations because he insisted upon giving $1,000,000, which he could readily afford to lose, to founding an orphanage for soldiers' children. The local authorities finally ordered that he should be removed from a private asylum and placed in a public one, and it was quickly found that he was not insane at all. For thirteen months' treatment the private asylum doctors demand $22,500, the local doctors want $20,000, three medical students who helped find him crazy, $13,500, and the keepers, $5,000. Cleaning the Teeth. Strange as it may seem to say so, yet we imagine but few persons really use a tooth brush as they should. We recall, many years ago, when a student of medicine, the advice given in this connection by the famous Dr. Leidy, who called attention to the fact that it is not enough to brush the teeth alone, but that the whole inside of the mouth should be scrubbed as well. Many of those annoying cases of "bad breath" are due to neglect of this simple practice. The dead tissue in the mouth should be brushed loose and rinsed away, otherwise it will decompose and prove very unpleasant and offensive to both the individual and any one who may be in close proximity to him. Living by Rule. A lady recently said to one of our agents, who was soliciting her subscription to "THE ANNALS," that she did not care to read about hygiene, because she did not believe in "living by rule." If there is one point that we instruct our agents to impress upon those whom they visit more strongly than another, if there is one strong vein running through our journal, it is that "living by rule" is not hygienic. He who would so live must by so doing concentrate so much thought upon self, must become so self-conscious, so introspective, as it were, that his life would be an artificial one, and since a natural life only can be hygienic, we do not see how it is possible for one who "lives by rule" to lead a hygienic life. Quarantine Against Epidemic Influenza in Saranac Village. Dr. E. L. Trudeau wrote recently to the Medical News that he had been enabled to carry out, with apparent success, a policy of protective non-intercourse against "la grippe" at his Cottage Sanitarium in the Adirondacks. Fearing that an incursion of influenza would prove disastrous to the invalids under his care at that institution, he undertook the experiment of a quarantining of the place as soon as the disease appeared in that neighborhood. Since that time a considerable portion of the population of the surrounding country have been attacked, but no case has occurred among those connected with the sanitarium itself. That establishment is not more than a mile distant from the village, where had been a number of cases of the epidemic disease. The Light of Publicity upon Contagion. We are heartily in accord with the efforts of Dr. P. D. Keyser, who would like to have the casket containing the body of a person dead of a contagious disease marked with a sign of warning. This is an effort in the right direction. If we make evident to the people the spot where contagion exists, they will avoid it. If a man places an obstruction on our streets he is obliged to mark it by a red light when the shades of night have hidden it from view; neglecting which, he is liable for any damages that may occur. So should it be with contagion. Let us recognize contagion as an entity and treat it as such; let us mark the place where it exists, just as we would indicate the pile of building material or the cave-in of a street. The Shortcomings of Soap. There are probably few people who do not find the joy of living made less keen by having to read each day the advertisements of popular soaps. Their good qualities are so superlatively good, their effect on the complexion, the health and longevity so unfailing, their chemical composition in each case so remarkably in accord with all that exact science and dermatological art could produce, that it discourages the medical man, who finds so much in his own measures that are imperfect and incomplete. We read, therefore, with a certain sense of relief the results of an investigation made by Dr. B. H. Paul, in the British Journal of Dermatology, on the composition of these highly lauded toilet soaps. Dr. Paul states that for bodily ablution soaps should not contain an excess of alkali but should be neutral or nearly so. He found, however, that among the toilet soaps, as usually met with, a perfectly neutral soap is the exception, and that a trustworthy soap of that kind is still a desideratum. Three of five soaps of the higher grade were described as super-fatted" soaps, one of them being alleged to have been prepared according to Una's formula. But in fact they all were found to contain the full proportion of alkali required for the saponification of the fat, besides some additional potash, which in one of them was considerable. It seems, therefore, that the perfect soap is yet to be made.-Medical Record. 66 Lead Poisoning. There are but few complaints that will present symptoms so obscure, so misleading, so little directly pointing to the cause, as will be the case with comparatively mild chronic lead poisoning due to the continual ingestion of small quantities of lead in the water that we drink, this same being derived from the leaden pipes through which the water is conveyed. Competent and observing authorities are now agreed that lead poisoning from this cause is infinitely more common than we generally suppose, and it is sufficiently prevalent and its consequences sufficiently alarming to warrant the assertion that leaden pipes for the conveyance of water ought to be abandoned. In another part of this issue we tell of the introduction of glass for this purpose, or we could, if we so wished, use iron pipes. Of course the expense would be somewhat greater, but if we would do that which we should do, we will abandon leaden pipes for the conveyance of drinking water. A True Story of Boarding-School and Measles. We relate the following because it has just transpired in a family very near to us and we can vouch for its absolute accuracy. This family consisted of father, mother, daughter, aged 12, boy, aged 8, and little boy, aged 32. Though opposed to boarding-schools, it was, for certain reasons, deemed expedient to have the daughter spend the past Winter at a convent. On the sixth day of last month this girl came home to spend a couple of days. She was somewhat droopy and not just "like herself" upon arrival. On the 8th she was in bed with well-marked measles. At the time of writing all three children are sick together, with measles, in one room. Some of our old-fashioned readers who still hold to the idea that it is necessary for children to have measles, scarlet fever and all the so-called "children's diseases," will see a wise dispensation in this order of things, whereby the inevitable is received in one instead of in divided doses. But to such we would propound this query: "Is it possible for corn to grow in a field wherein the seed has not been deposited ?'' Of course there can be but one answer, and this same reply applies with equal force to all these contagious diseases. It is not necessary for children to suffer from these diseases, and they will not so suffer unless the seed be deposited in their bodies. It is perfectly possible to keep such disease away from the house, but when it has been once brought therein it is next to impossible to prevent its being spread from one to another of the children. Just as the morning-glory will not grow without first planting the seed, neither will disease; but every one knows how profusely this vine will grow until it invades every possible place and becomes a nuisance. So will the germ of disease, once brought into the house, spread and multiply until it will invade every susceptible resident thereof. We can, however, keep this seed away from the home, and there is no more favorable place for the propagation, multiplication and dissemination of disease germs than large schools wherein a large number of children, of whose home conditions we cannot be sure, are congregated in the closest of communion. The Suppression of Street Music. We cannot sympathize with the movement now in course of agitation in this city for the suppression of street musicians. Music, even though it may be bad music, will prove a pleasure to the healthy and a most valuable remedial agent to many who are not well. The strains of music may disturb the serenity of some, whose lives and whose stomachs are out of gear, but we cannot see any valid reason why this honest means of gaining a living should be denied to those who would select it, and we do see many reasons, from a hygienic point of view, why the streets of our city and the homes of our citizens should be made cheerful and pleasant by the strains of music (good, bad or indifferent) floating therein. Let the bands play, or at least, before suppressing them, let us get at public sentiment on the question and learn whether the great mass of natural persons who desire them would not far outweigh the handful of bilious, dyspeptic, nervously deranged, artificial persons who would suppress them. Dangers of Tight Clothing. Now that rational ideas as to dress have acquired a definite place in public esteem, it may be imagined that the practice of tight lacing and customs of a like nature, if known at all, are not what they used to be. A case of sudden death lately reported proves that it is still too early to indulge in such illusory ideas. The deceased, a servant girl of excitable temperament, died suddenly in an epileptoid fit, and the evidence given before the coroner respecting her death attributed the fatal issue to asphyxia, due in a great measure to the fact that both neck and waist were unnaturally constricted by her clothing, the former by a tight collar, the latter by a belt worn under the stays. We have here certainly those very conditions which would lead us to expect the worst possible consequences from a convulsive seizure. There is no organ of the body whose free movement is at such times more important than the heart. Yet here we find, on the one hand, its movement hampered by a tight girdle so placed that it could with difficulty be undone at a critical moment; on the other, a contrivance admirably adapted to allow the passage of blood to the brain, while impeding its return. This is no isolated case as regards its essential character, though, happily, somewhat singular in its termination. Minor degrees of asphyxiation, we fear, are still submitted to by a good many selftorturing children of vanity. The tight corset and the high heel still work mischief on the bodies of their devoted wearers. Taste and reason, indeed, combine to deprecate their injurious and vulgar bondage, and by no means unsuccessfully. Still the evil maintains itself. Cases like that above mentioned ought to, if they do not, open the eyes of some self-worshippers of the gentler sex who heedlessly strive by such means to excel in a sickly grace. We would strongly impress on all of this class the fact that beauty is impossible without health, and would advise them, in the name of taste as well as comfort, to avoid those methods of contortion, one and all, by which elegance is only caricatured, and health may be painfully and permanently injured.-The Analyst. |