Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/454

450, no matter where his dwelling place, is more or less subject to tubercle bacilli; for, besides the utmost restriction of their prevalence by sanitary effort, unless the individual is possessed by an organism sufficiently fortified to resist and overcome conflict with them—for the conflict is certain everywhere—he is liable to contract tuberculosis. Hence it is that about one quarter of all the deaths recorded of mankind during adult life, is caused by tuberculosis, and nearly one half of the entire population, at some time in life, acquires the disease.

Tubercle bacilli are, indeed, abroad everywhere, a constant menace and challenge to one's power of resistance. Every intelligent person knows that the power of resisting the ordinary exciting causes of illness, such as sudden changes of temperature, exposure to damp soil, room or sheets, or night air with the windows closed, depends upon one's state of health. The power of resisting tubercle bacilli is no exception.

Health fortified by such conditions as the organism depends upon for its fabrication and maintenance opposes itself to all exciting causes of disease by the relative integrity, strength and vigor of all the organs and functions of the body. A person thus equipped, if beset by tubercle bacilli or other microbes, effectually resists them, devours them by oxidation and casts them off.

Feebleness, on the contrary, though not always appreciated, and sometimes cultivated, indeed, by the practise of that altogether too popular fad, abstemiousness, is always and everywhere a prevailing 'predisposition' to disease; and, associated as it commonly is with inadequate nourishment, it is the most frequent of all incitants to tuberculosis. Abstemiousness, however, is variable in its practise, and uncertain; one may over-eat and yet abstain from some essential food necessary for the maintenance of health. Adequate nourishment and stamina depend upon the supply of nutriment in the kinds and proportions required by our bodies. Food is required for a two-fold purpose; (1) to supply material for the construction and repair of tissue, and (2) to supply fuel for its maintenance, the production of heat and energy.

It is not necessary to our present purpose to pursue the subject of the origin and nature of food in its general sense, but to emphasize the importance of the essential elements of food comprehended in the various organic and inorganic compounds of which food consists, as follows: Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, chlorin, iodin, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sodium and iron.

It is not by any means necessary that a food should yield all these elements, indeed there is but one such food—milk—that is complete in this respect, and perfect, upon which the young of all mammalian animals are, or should be, for a time exclusively nourished. Neither