Healthy living . They are smallereven than the cells of the blood that were describedon page 123. Yet it is these microbes that causesome of the commonest diseases from which peoplesuffer—from colds to diseases like tuberculosis,—andthey kill more people in the United States in one yearthan the Indians ever did in the whole history of thecountry. Fighting the Microbes of Disease.—^You have prob-ably seen a jar of jelly or preserves that had becomespoiled, with patches of mold on the top of it. Thismold is a microbe, which grows in masses so large thatyou can see them; and microbes produce dise
Healthy living . They are smallereven than the cells of the blood that were describedon page 123. Yet it is these microbes that causesome of the commonest diseases from which peoplesuffer—from colds to diseases like tuberculosis,—andthey kill more people in the United States in one yearthan the Indians ever did in the whole history of thecountry. Fighting the Microbes of Disease.—^You have prob-ably seen a jar of jelly or preserves that had becomespoiled, with patches of mold on the top of it. Thismold is a microbe, which grows in masses so large thatyou can see them; and microbes produce disease verymuch as the mold microbe spoils the jelly. Each kindof microbe causes its own particular sickness—one,diphtheria; another, measles; another, scarlet fever;another, whooping cough. When a child has diphtheria, i6o HEALTHY LIVING for instance, it is simply because the germ of diphtheriahas gotten into his throat and is growing there and poison-ing his whole body. If we could keep out the microbes,. Fig. 60.—^Louis Pasteur, the great Frenchmanwho discovered that microbes were the causeof many of our deadbest diseases. that child would never have diphtheria; and in the caseof many such diseases, we have learned how to protectourselves very effectively from these invisible man who first showed how to conquer the dis-eases caused by microbes was a great Frenchman OUR UNSEEN ENEMIES i6i named Louis Pasteur (pas tiir). Fifty years ago no oneknew the cause of typhoid fever or tuberculosis or anyof the other diseases of this kind. People fell sick,sometimes one or two at a time, sometimes by hun-dreds and thousands, and there was little that any onecould do to protect them. It was like fighting againstIndians that you could not see at all. What chancewould there be if invisible enemies could shoot off theirarrows at you, and you could never tell where they wereand could never see them to strike back? It was Pasteur who first revealed to us our microbeenemies
Size: 1327px × 1883px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookidhealthy, booksubjecthealth
