and in rocky regions it is difficult to tell where the water of a spring comes from or when it is safe.

Disposing of the body wastes. Most disease germs that attack us grow either in the air passages and lungs, or in the mouth, throat, and intestine. These germs leave the body in the sputum and in the body wastes. It is unsafe therefore for people to spit in public places, and it is even more unsafe for the body wastes to be scattered about. These wastes should never be allowed to pollute the soil about houses; they should not be left where rains can wash them over yards and into wells and springs, and they should not be left where flies can carry them about. Perhaps no other one thing is so important to the health of the world as a safe method of disposing of human wastes.

Questions: 1. Where do disease germs come from? 2. What is a disinfectant? 3. Name some disinfectants. 4. What mistakes are often made in disinfecting? 5. How can we keep germs from getting on objects in a sickroom? 6. Explain where flies breed and how one can get rid of them. 7. What diseases are spread by water? 8. Explain how germs get into a well or spring and how to keep them out of it. 9. Where do germs grow in the body and how do they leave the body?

Suggestions and topics for development: Show the advantages of isolation, quarantine, and disinfection in dealing with infectious diseases. Show how many diseases have been eradicated by these measures and how the only hope of limiting the spread of certain diseases now prevalent lies along these lines. Make it

plain that disease germs do not get into a cistern from a hot, dry roof, but from the people who come about the cistern.

In nearly all village and rural communities the methods of disposing of excreta offer endless opportunities for infection with germs of all kinds and with intestinal worms. Show how the presence of germ-carriers renders imperative some sanitary method of disposing of human excreta.

Bulletins on The Housefly and The Mosquito can be obtained free from the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. In regions where mosquitoes are very numerous, this repellent, recommended by the Department of Agriculture, may be found of use: one part cedar oil, two parts oil of citronella, two parts spirits of camphor.

The Anopheles (malaria-carrying) mosquito has spots on its wings and it stands up on its head when sitting or biting. In its breeding habits it is a half-wild species, and the young are usually reared in pools, ditches, and brooks and not in vessels of water about houses. It is estimated that in an area of twelve of our Southern states in which the total population is twenty-five millions, at least four per cent of the population suffer attacks of malaria each year, and that one death occurs from this cause for every fifty to three hundred cases of the disease. There are also certain areas of our country outside of the South where malaria is very prevalent. Any teacher who is located in a malarial region should teach very thoroughly the facts in regard to the disease along with the details of the life of the Anopheles mosquito and the means of combating it. In many communities coarse-meshed screens (fly screens) that will not turn mosquitoes are used. A mesh of at least sixteen strands of wire to the inch is necessary to keep Anopheles mosquitoes out of houses, and all small openings and crevices must be closed to prevent the mosquitoes from finding an entrance.

KEEPING UP THE RESISTANCE OF THE BODY TO

DISEASE GERMS

IN a telephone exchange in Massachusetts employing over sixty girls, a record of the absences on account of sickness was kept for a number of years. The amount of sickness was greatest in the winter, when many of the girls suffered from colds and grip, and during the hot weather of July and August, when there was always considerable sickness from diseases of the digestive organs. Finally, a ventilator was put into the building. The first summer this was in use, the amount of sickness was not much affected, but when the second spell of hot summer weather came again the girls were not sick as they had been in other years. Breathing the pure air through a whole winter had so built up their strength and improved their health that they could resist the germs that caused the summer diseases. In the winter months themselves, the girls to a great extent escaped the colds from which they had suffered, and the amount of sickness for the winter was less than half what it had been before the ventilator was put into the building.

Building up the resistance of the body to disease germs. From the experience of the Massachusetts telephone company, we can learn two lessons. The first is that by living in a healthful way we can build up our bodies so that they will have a greater resistance to germ diseases. The other is

that building up the body so that it can resist germs is not the work of a day or a week, but of months. We may take pneumonia or grip this year because last year we did not care for ourselves and so weakened our bodies. Hygienic habits of living are what we need at all times to help us in our fight with the germs.

The house and the health. Far more than most persons know, the houses in which we live affect the health. If a house is small, or too many people are crowded into it, it is impossible to keep the air pure. If there is only one place in the house where the teeth can be cleaned, probably the people who live in the house will often hurry off to work in the morning with uncleaned teeth. If there is no place in the bathroom but the wash basin in which to clean the teeth, no one will be able to wash his face without covering it with all the different kinds of germs that have been brought into the house.

If the floors are cold, the mother and the children who stay in the house all day will suffer and have their health injured. If the rooms are dark and damp, any germs that get into them will remain alive for weeks after they would have been dead in a dry, sunny room. The thing to do, therefore, if you are living in an unhealthful house, is to get out of it if you can, and if you must remain in it, arrange it so that it will be as easy as possible to live a healthful life. Avoid above everything being crowded to

gether with other people, for the closer people live together, the more they trade germs with each other, and the harder it is to keep conditions about them healthful.

The community and the health of the citizen. If a man has a geranium, he has a right, if he wishes to do so, to put it in a cold, dark cellar and let it wither; but no man has a right to keep people in damp, dark, crowded houses in which women and children fade away and die. If a man has a barrel of apples, he has a right to put a rotten apple in the barrel; but no man has a right to go out and scatter abroad germs that may cause disease and death in other people. Therefore we have public health officers to guard the health of the whole people. It is right that we should have officers of this kind. It is right that they should see that people are not made to live in unhealthful houses or to work in unhygienic factories. It is right that health officers should insist upon a town's having a pure water supply and a clean milk supply; that they should quarantine those who have diseases that are dangerous to others; and that they should require every one to live so that he will not injure the health of others. It is the duty of every good citizen to assist the health officers in their work, for just as a house should be arranged so that it will be easy for those in it to lead a healthful life, so a community should be kept in such a condition that it will be as easy as possible for every one in it to escape disease.