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A large majority, for instance, of the nearly thirteen thousand deaths attributed to measles are due to bronchitis, caught by letting the child go out-of-doors too soon after recovery, which means, of course, either a chill falling upon the irritated and weakened bronchial mucous membrane, or an infection by one of the score of disease-germs, such as those of influenza, pneumonia, bronchitis, and even tuberculosis, which are continually lying in wait for just such an emergency as this just such a weakening of the vital resistance.
This much we feel sure of, and it is one of the keynotes of the attitude of modern medicine, that a large majority of the symptoms of disease are really nature's attempts to cure it. This is admirably shown in our modern treatment of fevers. These we now know to be due to the infection of the body by more or less definitely recognized disease-germs or organisms.
Late investigations seem to show that one of the functions of the white corpuscles of the blood is to devour disease-germs and bacteria present in the circulation, thus absorbing these organisms into subjection to the central life of the body, and that for this object they congregate in numbers toward any part of the body which is wounded or diseased.
The Parsees claim that their method of disposing of the dead is an effective protection of the living; that it disseminates no corruption, no impurities of any sort, no disease-germs; that no wrap, no garment which has touched the dead is allowed to touch the living afterward; that from the Towers of Silence nothing proceeds which can carry harm to the outside world.
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.
A small, twisted, shriveling spur or side twig of the intestine, opening from a point which has become a kind of settling basin in the food-tube, its mouth gaping, as it were, to admit any poisonous or irritating food, infectious materials, disease-germs, the ordinary bacteria which swarm in the alimentary canal, or irritating foreign bodies, like particles of dirt, sand, hairs, fragments of bone, pins, etc., which may have been accidentally swallowed.
It is one of the few consoling facts, well known to all students of comparative pathology or the diseases of the different species of animals, how peculiarly specialized they are in the choice of their diseases, or, perhaps, to put it more accurately, how particular and restricted disease-germs are in their choice of a host.
They were not half equipped, nor half fed, nor half cared for when they were wounded or sick; they had to sleep in dog-kennel shelter-tents, which afforded little or no protection from tropical rains; they had to cook in coffee-cups and old tomato-cans because they had no camp-kettles; they never had a change of underclothing after they landed; they were forced to drink brook-water that was full of disease-germs because they had no suitable vessels in which to boil it or keep it after it had been boiled; they lived a large part of the time on hard bread and bacon, without beans, rice, or any of the other articles which go to make up the full army ration; and when wounded they had to wait hours for surgical aid, and then, half dead from pain and exhaustion, they lay all night on the water-soaked ground, without shelter, blanket, pillow, food, or attendance.
The very sickle-shape of the plasmodium turned itself into an interrogation mark. The first clew that was given was the new and interesting one that this organism was a new departure in the germ line in that it was an animal, instead of a plant, like all the other hitherto known bacilli, bacteria, and other disease-germs.
As long as your larynx and windpipe are inflamed or tickled by disease-germs or other poisons, your body will do its best to get rid of them by coughing, or, if they swarm on the mucous membrane of the nose, by sneezing. To attempt to stop either coughing or sneezing without removing the cause is as irrational as putting out a switch-light without closing the switch.
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