Avoid Influenza

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 608, 9 March 1929, Page 19

Avoid Influenza

ELEVEN AMERICAN RULES I FOR PREVENTION J I HHE prevalence of influenza in Great Britain and the United States has caused concern among the health authorities in both countries. The Ministry of Health early in the year issued a pamphlet of advice. lu the United States, Surgeon-Gen-eral Cumming, who presides over what is termed “the board of strategyin Washington," has issued the following 11 rules which almost every American newspaper has published:— 1. Avoid needless crowding. "Walk to work when possible. 2. Take advantage of sunshine. 3. Sleep with windows open. 4. Avoid people who are coughing, sneezing or snuffling. 5. Wash your hands before ea“. g, and do not put your fingers in your mouth. 6. Do not use napkins, towels, spoons, forks, knives, and drinking-cups unless they are clean. 7. Use plenty of clean water, both inside and outside. Eat wholesome foods. Sleep at least seven hours. 8. Keep away from houses with influenza . 9 Avoid undue chilling of the body. 10. Avoid dust and overheated rooms. 11. In case you do contract the disease <*-o to bed as soon as symptoms develop and remain there until thoroughly recovered. Call a physician at once. “Public-health authorities,” says the “Baltimore Sun,” "anxiously at work, are forced to place their main reliance upon a working alliance between nature and individual common sense. Nature will do its part, anyhow, and it is a grand lighter; but humans can help by avoiding infection as a first step and, when necessary, by not requiring nature to attend to business and disease at the same time. That is, they can go to bed and let the restorative foreqp of the body centre their action on a conflict with the organisms which are trying to multiply within it. Fever is one sign, and a sure one, that the conflict is on. ; “Cannot the average man take some ! pride in his own capacity to safeguard himself? He should recognise that soreness and fever are nature's I method not of annoying but of warning, and co-operate -with its mysterious power of recuperation, which in accuracy of diagnosis and immediacy !of action far surpasses the best that i science can show.” i "’Flu hits overtired people. It ] strikes where resistance is low through lack of sleep and too much : work or pleasure-seeking,” says the | "Chicago Evening Post.” j “This is a season of extra pressure |in both spheres of life. It may not be easy to cut down on work but it lis easier than suffering from 'flu. It ; may require self-denial to cut out late indulgence in amusement, but it is a | self-denial that pays.

"Go to bed early in a room with the windows opeu, but protected from draught. Take things quietly. Neither drive yourself nor let others drive