Preventable Diseases | Page 4

neutralized in the liver, burned up
in the lungs, poured out by the kidneys and the skin. The quickened
breathing is the putting on of more blast in the lung poison-crematory.
It is possible that even the rise of temperature has an injurious effect
upon the invading germs or assists the body in their destruction.
In the past we have blindly fought all of these symptoms. We shut our
patients up in stove-heated rooms with windows absolutely closed, for
fear that they would "catch cold." We took off the sheets and piled
blankets upon the bed, setting a special watch to see that the wretched
sufferer did not kick them off. We discouraged the drinking of water
and insisted on all drinks that were taken being hot or lukewarm.
Nowadays all this is changed. We throw all the windows wide-open,
and even put our patients out of doors to sleep in the open air, whether
it be typhoid, tuberculosis, or pneumonia; knowing that not only they
will not "catch cold," but that, as their hurried breathing indicates, they
need all the oxygen they can possibly get, to burn up the poison poured
out in the lungs and from the skin. We encourage the patient to drink
all the cool, pure water he will take, sometimes gallons in a day,
knowing that his thirst is an indication for flushing and flooding all the
great systems of the body sewers. Instead of smothering him in
blankets, we put him into cold packs, or put him to soak in cool water.
In short, we trust nature instead of defying her, coöperate with her in
place of fighting her,--and we have cut down the death-rate of most
fevers fifty to seventy-five per cent already. Plenty of pure, cool water
internally, externally, and eternally, rest, fresh air, and careful feeding,
are the best febrifuges and antipyretics known to modern medicine. All

others are frauds and simply smother a symptom without relieving its
cause, with the exception of quinine in malaria, mercury, and the
various antitoxins in their appropriate diseases, which act directly upon
the invading organism.
Underneath all this storm and stress of the fever paroxysm, nature is
quietly at work elaborating her antidote. In some marvelous fashion,
which we do not even yet fully understand, the cells of the body are
producing in ever-increasing quantities an anti-body, or antitoxin,
which will unite with the toxin or poison produced by the hostile germs
and render it entirely harmless. By a curious paradox of the process, it
does not kill the germs themselves. It may not even stop their further
multiplication. Indeed, it utilizes part of their products in the formation
of the antitoxin; but it domesticates them, as it were--turns them from
dangerous enemies into harmless guests.
The treaty between these germs and the body, however, is only of the
"most-favored-nation" class; for let these tamed and harmless friends of
the family escape and enter the body of another human being, and they
will attack it as virulently as ever.
Now, where and how did nature ever succeed in getting the rehearsal
and the practice necessary to build up such an extraordinary and
complicated system of defense as this? Take your microscope and look
at a drop of fluid from the mouth, the gums, the throat, the stomach, the
bowels, and you will find it simply swarming with bacteria, bacilli, and
cocci, each species of which numbers its billions. There are thirty-three
species which inhabit the mouth and gums alone! We are literally alive
with them; but most of them are absolutely harmless, and some of them
probably slightly helpful in the processes of digestion. In fevers and
infections the body merely applies to disease-germs the tricks which it
has learned in domesticating these millions of harmless vegetable
inhabitants.
Still more curious--there is a distinct parallel between the method in
which food-materials are split up and prepared for assimilation by the
body, and the method adopted in breaking up and neutralizing the
toxins of disease-germs. It is now known that poisons are formed in the

process of digesting and absorbing the simplest and most wholesome
foods; and the liver uses the skill which it has gained in dealing with
these "natural poisons" in disposing of the toxins of germs.
When a fever has run its course, as we now know nearly all infections
do, within periods ranging from three or four days to as many weeks, it
simply means that it has taken the liver and the other police-cells this
length of time to handle the rioters and turn them into peaceable and
law-abiding, even though not well-disposed citizens. In this process the
forces of law and order can be materially helped by skillful and
intelligent coöperation. But it takes brains to do it and avoid doing