Preventable Diseases

Preventable Diseases, by Woods
Hutchinson

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Title: Preventable Diseases
Author: Woods Hutchinson
Release Date: June 29, 2007 [EBook #21965]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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PREVENTABLE DISEASES

BY
WOODS HUTCHINSON, A.M., M.D.
Author of "Studies in Human and Comparative Pathology," "Instinct
and Health," etc., etc. Clinical Professor of Medicine, New York
Polyclinic, late Lecturer in Comparative Pathology, London Medical
Graduates College and University of Buffalo
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1907, 1908 AND 1909, BY THE CURTIS
PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY WOODS
HUTCHINSON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published November 1909
FIFTH IMPRESSION
* * * * *
By Woods Hutchinson
THE CONQUEST OF CONSUMPTION. Illustrated. 12mo, $1.00 net.
Postage extra.
PREVENTABLE DISEASES. 12mo, $1.50 net. Postage 13 cents.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK
* * * * *
CONTENTS
I. The Body-Republic and its Defense 1

II. Our Legacy of Health: the Power of Heredity in the Prevention of
Disease 31
III. The Physiognomy of Disease: what a Doctor can tell from
Appearances 55
IV. Colds and how to catch Them 83
V. Adenoids, or Mouth-Breathing: their Cause and their Consequences
103
VI. Tuberculosis, a Scotched Snake. I 123
VII. Tuberculosis, a Scotched Snake. II 140
VIII. The Unchecked Great Scourge: Pneumonia 174
IX. The Natural History of Typhoid Fever 198
X. Diphtheria: the Modern Moloch 222
XI. The Herods of Our Day: Scarlet Fever, Measles, and
Whooping-Cough 243
XII. Appendicitis, or Nature's Remnant Sale 267
XIII. Malaria: the Pestilence that walketh in Darkness; the greatest Foe
of the Pioneer 289
XIV. Rheumatism: what it Is, and particularly what it Isn't 311
XV. Germ-Foes that follow the Knife, or Death under the Finger-Nail
331
XVI. Cancer, or Treason in the Body-State 350
XVII. Headache: the most useful Pain in the World 367
XVIII. Nerves and Nervousness 387

XIX. Mental Influence in Disease, or how the Mind affects the Body
411
Index 439

PREVENTABLE DISEASES
CHAPTER I
THE BODY-REPUBLIC AND ITS DEFENSE
The human body as a mechanism is far from perfect. It can be beaten or
surpassed at almost every point by some product of the machine-shop
or some animal. It does almost nothing perfectly or with absolute
precision. As Huxley most unexpectedly remarked a score of years ago,
"If a manufacturer of optical instruments were to hand us for laboratory
use an instrument so full of defects and imperfections as the human eye,
we should promptly decline to accept it and return it to him. But," as he
went on to say, "while the eye is inaccurate as a microscope, imperfect
as a telescope, crude as a photographic camera, it is all of these in one."
In other words, like the body, while it does nothing accurately and
perfectly, it does a dozen different things well enough for practical
purposes. It has the crowning merit, which overbalances all these minor
defects, of being able to adapt itself to almost every conceivable change
of circumstances.
This is the keynote of the surviving power of the human species. It is
not enough that the body should be prepared to do good work under
ordinary conditions, but it must be capable, if needs be, of meeting
extraordinary ones. It is not enough for the body to be able to take care
of itself, and preserve a fair degree of efficiency in health, under what
might be termed favorable or average circumstances, but it must also be
prepared to protect itself and regain its balance in disease.
The human automobile in its million-year endurance-run has had to
learn to become self-repairing; and well has it learned its lesson. Not

only, in the language of the old saw, is there "a remedy for every evil
under the sun," but in at least eight cases out of ten that remedy will be
found within the body itself. Generations ago this self-balancing,
self-repairing power was recognized by the more thoughtful fathers in
medicine and even dignified by a name in their pompous Latinity--the
vis medicatrix naturæ, the healing power of nature.
In the new conception of disease, our drugs, our tonics, our
prescriptions and treatments, are simply means of rousing this force
into activity, assisting its operations, or removing