Health at Home, Part I [pp. 311-321]

HEALTH AT HOME. 311
HEAL TH A T HOME.
PART FIRST.
THE old saying, " There is no place like home,"
has a singularly happy meaning, when it is
applied to health and the benefits which spring
from health that is good and beautiful. We who
are engaged in forwarding sanitary work may
labor our lives out, and still do little service, un til we can get each home, however small it may
be, included in the plan of our work. The river
of national health must rise from the homes of
the nation. Then it will be a great river on which
every blessing will be borne.
When I, as a physician, enter a house where
there is a contagious disease, my first care is to
look at the surroundings. What are the customs
of the people there? Are they wholesome?
Are they unwholesome? If the answer be,
"Wholesome and common sense," then I know
that the better half of success in the way of
treatment and prevention is secured. If the an swer be, "Unwholesome, slovenly, disorderly,
careless," then I know that all that may be ad vised for the best will be more than half useless,
because there is no habit on which any depen dence can be truthfully placed, and because habit
in the wrong direction is so difficult to move that
not even the strongest ties of affection are a match
for it even in times of emergency.
If we could, then, get wives, mothers, and
daughters to learn the habitual practice of all
that tends to health, we should soon have an
easy victory, and should ourselves cease to be
known as the pioneers of sanitary work, the work
itself being a recognized system and a recognized necessity to be practiced by everybody.
To me it always seems that no point in the
warfare against disease is anything like so important as that of getting the women of the household to work heart and soul with us sanitarians.
I am never tired of repeating this fact, and I
never shall be until the fact is accomplished.
We always look to women for the cleanliness
and tidiness of home. We say a home is miserable if a good wife and mother be not at the head
of it to direct the internal arrangements. We
speak of slovenly women, so much importance
do we attach to orderly women, twenty times to
one more frequently than we do of slovenly men.
A slovenly woman is a woman of mark for discredit, and there can be no doubt that the natural excellences of women in respect to order and
cleanliness have, without any distinct system or
mode of scientific education, saved us often from
severe and fatal outbreaks of disease. In the
cholera epidemics which I have twice witnessed,
and in which I have taken visiting charge of
affected districts, I have found the women by far
the most useful and practical coadjutors. The
men sat by the fire if they were at home; the
women truly bestirred themselves. They saw
that the water intended for drinking purposes
was boiled before it was used for drinking pur poses; they attended to details relating to venti lation and general cleansing; they washed the
clothing and bedding of the affected persons;
they attended in the sick-rooms; they prepared
the food. In a sentence, they were acting forces
for the suppression of the epidemics, and their
devotion, and I say it faithfully, their readier and
superior appreciation of details, were the great
saving factors in relation both to preventive and
curative art.
That which we sanitarians want, therefore, to
see, is the scientific education of women to pre pare them to meet emergencies at once, and not
only so, but to prevent, by forethought and in telligent prevision, the necessity for emergencies.
We wish them to understand the principles which
suggest the details, instead of having to learn
the details in moments of much excitement and
anxiety and dread, when details, however important they may be, seem new, obscure, involved,
and all but impossible, when habits which have
been acquired have to be given up or much modified, and when new habits have to be, as it were,
improvised and enforced with regularity at a moment's notice. For it is as true as it is simple
that good health is after all, and bad health is
after all, a matter of habit to an extent which
few persons in the slightest degree acknowledge
or comprehend.
To the domestic cleanliness which most
women by habit learn to acquire, it should be
easy to tack on many of the other forms of
cleanliness which the physician wishes to enforce, but which the general public does not altogether or readily recognize. It is in relation to
this further cleanliness, this more than commonplace cleanliness-but which should be commonplace for all intents and purposes-that I wish to
draw attention, and the attention of the women
of the nation particularly, in these papers on
Health at Home. I promise to put forward not
one suggestion that can not be carred out, I
will, in these essays,
"Imagination's airy wing suppress,"
HE,ALTHI A T HOME.
311