How to keep well in wartime
1943 1943 1940s 28 pages : illustrations HOW TO KEEP WELL IN WARTIME To understand how they spread is to know of one way to prevent infections. For instance, some types of tuberculosis are caused by drinking milk which has the tuberculosis germs in it. It has been estimated that about 2,000 people,...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
| Language: | English English |
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London : His Majesty's Stationery Office
1943
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/D19AE0FF-AC0D-472C-BCAB-01B166081908 http://hdl.handle.net/10796/7A90D74A-92B2-4C5D-B71B-4593F5EE6154 |
| Summary: | 1943
1943
1940s
28 pages : illustrations
HOW TO KEEP WELL IN WARTIME To understand how they spread is to know of one way to prevent infections. For instance, some types of tuberculosis are caused by drinking milk which has the tuberculosis germs in it. It has been estimated that about 2,000 people, children mostly, die yearly because of drinking milk from tuberculous cows. These deaths could be prevented by pasteurising or boiling milk, or by stamping out tuberculosis in cattle. If, therefore, you can't obtain pasteurised milk (especially if you live in the country) then see that at least for the children it is all brought to the boil before it is consumed. Tuberculosis is not the only disease spread by raw, so-called "pure milk". Diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, sore throat, and an unpleasant disease called undulant fever may also be spread by unboiled or unpasteurised milk. As short a time ago as 1936, in Bournemouth, 718 persons caught typhoid from drinking raw infected milk; 51 of them died. After that the milk was pasteurised and the epidemic ceased. If all the milk in the country were pasteurised, doctors would have much less to worry about — and incidentally, more time to teach people how to keep well. How the Germs Travel. Diphtheria and scarlet fever, as you may know, usually begin with a sore throat; it is more often complained of in the latter disease than in the former. These diseases are the result of infection with germs — very very much smaller things than lice and mites but just as alive. Although these infections may spread through a community by means of infected milk, this is not the usual way. The germs of diphtheria and scarlet fever attack the throat and make it inflamed. Once settled there they multiply, producing thousands upon thousands of other germs. All that is needed is a cough or a sneeze, and out these germs will go into the air, to be breathed in by someone whose throat will probably be infected as a result. If a child at school beginning to have diphtheria sucks his school-pen and another child also sucks it, then this is another way the germ can go on its travels. If a milk-maid with a sore throat coughs into the milk then everyone who drinks that milk (unless it is subsequently boiled or pasteurised) runs the risk of catching the sore throat — or, rather, the germs that cause it. Germs that Attack the War Effort. It is on careless coughing and sneezing that a large number of germs rely for getting about the place — that is, going from one human being to another. This is how they travel in cases of whooping-cough, measles, chicken-pox. pneumonia, tuberculosis of the lung (consumption); and — last but not least — influenza and the common cold. Altogether influenza and cold infections cause a vast amount of illness and human suffering and unhappiness, and a vast loss of hours of work to the national war effort. The Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health has calculated it as equivalent to the loss of 3,500 tanks, 20
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |