Tropical Hygiene – Introduction

The subject of Hygiene and Sanitation is a very important one in all countries, but is especially so in tropical ones where the warmth and dampness, together with ignorance of the laws of health, make it easy for disease to spread. do on no vino jon abrogǝb Hygiene is the science which teaches us how to keep healthy. Hygiene teaches us the laws of health, especially as these are applied to individual people.

Sanitation is the art by which the laws of health are applied to a number of people living in the same place, that is, to the community. It deals with Public Health, which is usually a Government undertaking. Health and Disease. We say a person is healthy when all the parts of his body are doing their work properly. For this it is of course necessary that the various parts should be properly made to start with. When a man’s organs are defective, or when for some cause or other they are not working properly, we say bris gnotw he has some disease.b
Physiology. The subject of Hygiene does not actually include the study of the body and its various parts. But as the aim of Hygiene is to keep the body healthy it is necessary to have some knowledge of how the body works and what it requires to keep it going. As we go on therefore it will be necessary to say some- thing about the chief parts of the body and how they work. This study is called Physiology.

GENERAL HYGIENE : THE BODY A FORTIFIED TOWN

Most of us have a general idea of how the body tries to resist disease and what we can do to help it. The body is often thought of as a town, organized to keep all its inhabitants happy and to protect itself from enemies. Every member of the town has a piece of work to do. Some of the inhabitants are chiefs and have very important work, but the most interesting thing about it is that no member of the town can do his work properly unless the others do their share; the happiness of the whole town, and its ability to resist its enemies, depends not only on the chiefs, but also on the more humble town folk. A set of inhabitants (organs) work- ing together for a special purpose is called a system.

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE TOWN

The town has a Chief (the Brain) and his Headmen (the Nerve Centres), and these manage the business of the town and send orders to the chiefs and people.
The Communication System.-This is a wonderful system by which messages are sent from place to place by the nerves. There are Head Offices and Exchanges much as in our telephone and telegraph systems. If the nerves get out of order the whole work of the town goes wrong and everybody becomes unhappy.
The Food System.-The town is supplied with food by the Digestive System which provides that each member gets food in the form which it needs. This system consists of the Mouth, Stomach and Intestines.

The Transport System.-There is a very good system of transport (the Circulation of the Blood) by which food is carried to different parts, and by which, when the town is invaded, soldiers are conveyed to the place of attack. It also carries away all refuse to-
The Sanitary System, which gets rid of the materials not wanted by the town. This System (the Excretory System) is of great importance. It consists of the Kidneys, the Skin, the Lungs and the Bowels.

The Working System.-The work of the town is done by the bony and muscular systems together. The Skeleton or Bony System is the framework of the whole. Unlike the framework of a house it is very flexible, has many joints of different kinds and can be moved in many ways. The power that makes the move- ment is supplied by the Muscular System.
The Ventilation System supplies the town with one of its most important needs. Its proper name is the Respiratory System. By means of this, the gas called Oxygen enters the body through the nose or mouth and goes to the lungs where, as will be seen, it does important work.

The Reproductive System.-One of the most wonder- ful things about this town is that special parts of it, the Womb and Ovaries, are able to lay the foundations of a new town. This it can only do with the help of new life (semen) from outside; this semen is produced in the Testicle of the male. After ten lunar months the new town can live by itself as a baby; the child passes through the birth canal, attached to its mother by the cord”, and becomes independent, or nearly so. Other parts of the town, the Breasts, continue to manu- facture food for the new town for some time.

There is a wall around it (the Skin) with well guarded gates (Nose and Mouth). The soldiers are in the blood, and when an enemy enters they are rushed up to the fight. This causes the part attacked to become full of blood (Inflammation), and often the soldiers (White Corpuscles) are killed and their dead bodies go to form a whitish matter called Pus. It is very important that these soldiers should be strong and well nourished so that they may defeat an invader when it enters the body, and therefore a part of Hygiene is concerned with the methods by which the blood can be kept strong.d od The Enemies of the Town. We have seen that the towne of the body has certain enemies. These are constantly trying to enter the town. They may try the main gates (mouth and nose) or may get through a hole in the wall (a scratch or cut in the skin). One of the things Hygiene has to do is to teach us how to protect these gates and to strengthen the body against attack. We should therefore know something of the nature of these enemies.

They are mainly worms and germs. 25 Worms enter the body as eggs or very small larvæ. (A larva is the baby form of a worm or insect.) They get in through the mouth in food and drinks which have not been cleanly prepared; or through the skin either by themselves or with the help of biting insects. qlon 5d
be Germs are very small, living creatures. They cannot be seen with the naked eye and are therefore all the more dangerous. Thousands of them could go side by side through the eye of a needle, and thus it is very easy for them to get through the wall of the body if it is scratched or cut. We shall learn more about them later, but the chief thing to remember about them now is that they love dark, dirty and damp places. Wherever there is dirt there are germs. Therefore one of the best ways of helping the town in its fight is to get rid of dirt in all its forms.
Defense. There are three ways in which we can help the town’s defenses:

1. By keeping the invader away from the walls and thus prevent him from entering.
2. By strengthening the defending soldiers, making them strong for the fight if the enemy gets in. his ju
3. If the enemy gets in and the fight goes against the town there is still another way of helping. That is by sending the defenders some outside help such as medicines.

To wait to be ill and then have to be cured, instead of avoiding the illness, is obviously foolish. As the proverb says: prevention is better than cure. So we learn in hygiene to keep enemies out and make our bodies strong to deal with them. Help from outside, to deal with enemies that have got in, is usually the doctor’s job; it is not actually hygiene at all, and there is little about such medical problems in this book.

Our object therefore throughout will be to teach: (a) cleanliness-clean air, clean water, clean food, clean bodies, clean houses; (b) how to strengthen our bodies by eating the right food, by breathing properly, by wearing suitable clothes, by taking correct exercise and having proper rest; (c) how worms and germs live, how they enter the body, and how we can defend ourselves against them. We shall also include a little “First Aid” by which the body may be helped to recover in case of accidents, because however hygienic we may be in our habits “accidents will happen “.

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