YOUR HEALTH: HERE'S HOW!
Stafford, Jane
YOUR HEALTH: Here's How! By JANE STAFFORD MOST people think of tuberculosis as a disease or sickness. We are particularly likely to think of it as .the lung sickness formerly called consumption....
...Philip Levine, of the Ortho Research Foundation, pioneer in Rh research...
...Whether the disease develops in their teens or early adulthood to the point of causing illness or death depends on whether reinfection develops...
...Then enthusiasm waned and efforts were concentrated on X-ray detection of the disease in adolescents and grownups...
...All children should be protected from invasion of tuberculosis germs...
...Water Evaporation Keeps You Cool You may remember from your high school physics course that when water evaporates it absorbs heat...
...Such reinfections may come from tuberculosis germs spread by some person in contact with the child...
...In case the girl happens to have Rh negative blood, a transfusion of Rh positive blood may cause the death years later of her first-born baby, Dr...
...Tuberculin testing of school children, however, should continue, Drs...
...Incidentally, it will not hurt to sleep with an electric fan going all night, provided the fan is so placed that it does not blow directly on you...
...J. A. Myers and F. E. Harrington of Minneapolis and Dr...
...At this stage of the disease or infection, the patient may not be sick at all...
...Reinfections are more dangerous to the child than the first infection with tuberculosis germs...
...The passage of much less than one cubic centimeter of Rh positive blood from the unborn baby to the Rh negative mother's bloodstream is enough to set up this immunization...
...What happens in case of the mingling of Rh positive blood with the incompatible Rh negative blood is a process like immunization against disease...
...Levine has found...
...It may not always work out that way...
...That is why such days are so uncomfortable...
...The evidence is that unbelievably small amounts of blood will set up this immunization, Dr...
...Parents and other relatives, nurses, teachers, and boarders, or roomers in his home may be spreading living tuberculosis germs without knowing it...
...Hot weather clothing if scientifically styled will be loose-fitting and made of porous material, preferably cotton or linen...
...The color makes a difference, too...
...Fans help to keep you cool because they hasten evaporation of perspiration from your skin...
...A reaction is set up which serves to destroy the Rh positive blood just as the blood of an immunized person checks the invading germs of a disease...
...The object is to let the heat escape from your body, just as in winter you wear the reverse type designed to hold the body's heat...
...Dark colors absorb the sun's rays and are therefore warm...
...Children who have had one infection need even more care to protect them from a second infection...
...This can be determined by the tuberculin test...
...In reverse, that is one reason why air-conditioned rooms ajid buildings are comfortable...
...This is because after the first infection, his body tissues have become so sensitized to the protein of the tuberculosis germs that this substance is now a deadly poison to his body...
...This warning is given physicians in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association by Dr...
...Doctors, however, know that the disease really starts when the tuberculosis germs first get into the body and certain defending blood cells, called neutrophils, go into action against them...
...Health authorities some years ago pointed out that it is particularly -helpful to stick to one's regular sleep schedule during Summer heat waves...
...The sweat glands may be active but there will not be much evaporation...
...Children nay get this stage of tuberculosis long before they are 12 years old...
...That same principle is followed by the natural mechanism your body has for keeping cool in hot weather...
...Where RH Blood Tests Are Vital LINDEN, N. J.—No blood transfusion should be given to a young woman, a girl, or even a newborn girl baby unless tests for the Rh blood group are made first...
...The air in them is not only cooled to a comfortable temperature but it is also dried enough so that it can take up some of the moisture from the skin...
...Or the living germs in the child's own body may escape the walls which nature built around them when they first invaded...
...On very muggy days, for example, when the humidity is high, the air already holds about all the water it can take up...
...If, after that, the woman should have an Rh positive baby, the baby would be killed or made very ill by its own mother's blood...
...Tuberculin testing of school children was a common practice in many communities some years ago...
...Usually he is not...
...Levine points out...
...That, at least, is the intended procedure...
...When you get hot, you sweat and as the moisture evaporates from your skin it takes up heat, leaving you cooler...
...Parents, doctors, and health authorities can do a better job of this if they know which children have already been infected...
...In fact, fans can be a health aid if they enable you to get a sound night's sleep after each sizzling Summer day...
...Shorts and skirts are cooler than slacks and trousers...
...E. Garcia Suarez, of Santiago, Chile, declare in a report to the Journal of the American Medical Association...
...White and light colors reflect the sun's rays away from the body...
Vol. 9 • August 1945 • No. 34
