Outlines of Practical Sanitation; For Students, Physicians and Sanitarians

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XII Personal Hygiene Heredity gJNE might live under the best sanitary conditions described in the preceding pages, drinking pure water, eating pure food, and breathing pure air, yet he might be doomed to a life of sickness and an early death, for lack of knowledge of how to care for that delicately, although strongly, made machine known as the human body. Unfortunately, this machine, though fresh from the hand of the Maker, is often defective in many respects, and this brings up the important question of heredity; important, vastly important it is, for blood does tell. I do not mean the blue blood of a tainted and worn-out aristocracy, but the good red blood of health, derived from healthy ancestors who lived their days in sobriety and uprightness, and bequeathed to their descendants good strong hearts, elastic and healthy arteries and organs, and a constitution able to resist the inroads of disease; this is the kind of blood that does tell, and the child that has this kind is highly favored among his fellows. A certain young lady known to the author while out camping developed a catarrhal pneumonia; for a whole summer she was ill, but finally overcame the disease. To that young lady ancestry was of vital importance, for every doctor knows the course of such a disease when it attacks those who are born with a low-grade constitution, especially those prone to that terrible disease--tuberculosis. Yet even if one is burdened with ancestral weakness much may be done to make life healthy and useful, by special care to the little details of right living. And a life begun with the best of hereditary factors may be embarrassed by ailments brought on by careless living. Food In order to keep the body in effectual working order we need a certain amoun...