PREVENTIVES AGAINST DISEASE.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 269, 26 February 1848, Page 4

PREVENTIVES AGAINST DISEASE.

The following preventive rules against disease have been printed and distributed by the poor-law authorities of Glasgow. They have been diawn up by some of the most eminent medical men of the city : — General Rule. — Temperance, cleanliweis, and breathing pure air, are three of the Surest means of securing health and preventing attacks of typhus fever, or any other disease. ■1. — Very often open the window of a room, arid let the air go through. You need not sit in the draught, that is dangerous. The win-

dows of common stairs and passages should always be half open. Is this the case in yours ? %. — On getting up in the morning, air the room w*ll in the way just mentioned ; let the draughts of air pass through the bed or beds at least for half an hour before they are made up -Making up a warm or ill-aired bed will itself produce disease. Hang the blankets before the fire every now and then. Keep bed, bedding, and bedstead, as clean as possible. 3. — If possible never wear in the day the shift or shirt you sleep in. Air both well, when taken off, in the air draught. Never wear them more than a week. 4. — On getting out of bed, dip a sponge or 4owel in water, and give a rapid wash with it to the whole body, rubbing it dry with a hard rough towel. Cold water is best, but warm water may be used if cold is disliked. Accustom your children not to be afraid of the cold-water sponge. They will come to like it, and apply it themselves. If your employment is dirty, wash at night also. Wash your children all over every night, and at least their faces, hands, and necks, every morning. 5. — Sweep out your rooms, passages, and stairs, every day, and wash them once a week. Whitewash at least twice a year. The trouble and expence are nothing compared to the great benefit to your health. 6. — Do all you can to avoid hanging your washing to dry hj the rooms you live in ; nothing is more dangerous to health. Soapsuds* foul water, and all other impurities should be removed from the room without delay. 7. — Use as much water in the house as you possibly can. Carrying it in is laborious, but the labour will be repaid in health and comfort. The time is at hand when every house, however humble, will have its own water-tap always giving water, so that no cistern or water vessels will be needed. 8. — Never live on poor food, that you may may save the money for drink. 9. — Lose no opportunity of walking and taking exercise in the open air. 10. — When typhus lever, small pox, or scarlet fever, is in your house, be sure to keep .the rooms well aired, and separate as much as sou can the healthy part of the family from those who are ill. Do not enter you neighbours' houses, or allow idle gossipers to come into yours; and do not go to church or meetings, or send your children to school. You thus prevent the spread of the disease. Carelessness in these things, we know, is one great cause of fever spreading amongst the poor. 11. — Never, unless duty calls, go into a house where there is disease ; and, when you are obliged to do so, never enter fasting, or when warm with walking ; avoid the patient's breath, aud stay as short a time as possible. 12. — Whether the patient dies or recovers, be sure to wash most carefully every article of clothes or bedding he has used. Get a bottle of solution of chloride of lime from a druggist ; often sprinkle the bed and floor with it, and keep a plate of it on the floor. Do all in your power to avoid keeping the dead in the same room with the living ; never ha>te any 'VaAe," and bury without delay. Lastly. — Take a very serious thought on the subject of Whisky — the grand so«rce of poverty, want, and disease — the grand destroyer of health, of morals, of character, of home, of comfort, and peace. Ask yourselves this question — Is the enjoyment of the dram or the tumbler a good barguin for the loss of all these? Sensible men are taking this thought. Many a young man is resolving to have done with drinking, and enjoy life really, which no one does who drinks. He lives a wretched life, and mark this, he must for ever continue poor. No drinker ever rises above the lowest poverty. Mark this, too: Typhus Fever finds out the drunkard and fastens on him.