Part 16 (1/2)

6. Keep your home clean and well ventilated.

7. Never neglect a cold.

Here are some pictures showing how people get the germs of consumption into them unless they are very careful.

A large number of cows have the germs or seeds of consumption in them, and they give out these germs in their milk. So milk ought to be ”sterilised,” that is to say, it should be made so hot that the germs are killed before it is drunk.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DO NOT DRINK MILK STRAIGHT FROM THE COW, AS A GREAT NUMBER OF THESE ANIMALS HAVE THE GERMS OF CONSUMPTION IN THEM.]

Then a large number of people have the consumption germs in them, although they may not yet be ill with it. They will get ill sooner or later, and they give out germs whenever they cough or spit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOW CONSUMPTION IS SPREAD.

A man spits and the germs rise. They try a boy who breathes through the nose, but get thrown out again. Then they try another boy who breathes through his open mouth, and so they get into his lungs.]

These germs get blown about in the air with the dust, and get into other people's mouths, and so into their lungs--that is, if the other people go about with their mouths partly open. If they breathe through their nose only, as I hope all Scouts do, there is less chance of the germs getting into the lungs, as they get caught in the sticky liquid in the nostrils, and get driven out again when you blow your nose.

It is the same with other diseases besides consumption.

The Missioner Scout can safely go about among people who are ill with colds, measles, and other sicknesses, if he breathes only through his nose. All illnesses that are ”catching” are spread by germs flying from one person to another.

The consumptive germs get into you and go for your lungs, which are big sponges inside you, through which your blood gets the air, which is necessary to keep it healthy. Consumption germs ”consume” your lungs.

The nasty little germ of disease thrives in dirt, and dark and muggy _air_, and so he grips even the healthiest people in rooms that are dark and dirty, and where the windows are not kept open.

Fresh air, sunlight, and cleanliness kill the germs.

Now that you know what consumption is, you will be doing a good turn to get other people to understand it.

I _want_ every _Scout who reads this to show the pictures to at least five other people, AND EXPLAIN them. He may thus save lives._

TRAVELS ABROAD

CAMPING IN NORWAY

After a delightful little voyage in one of the smart Wilson Line steamers, I arrived one morning early in Christiania, the capital of Norway.

The town is an ordinary Continental town, but stands on the sh.o.r.es of an arm of the sea which is so shut in by wooded hills for some twenty miles that it is more like an inland lake than a gulf of the ocean.

What a place for Sea Scouts!

One of the first Norwegian boys to attract my attention was a Boy Scout--so like an English Scout that he may have been one for all I know, but I was not able to speak to him, I was catching a train, and he was going off in a hurry in another direction, evidently in trouble, as he was whistling and smiling! And it is difficult to tell a Norwegian boy from an English boy by his appearance, for they are very much alike.

And so are the girls and young women very like their British sisters.

But then, as we all came of the same blood in bygone times, it is not altogether surprising.

Then their Royal Family is related to ours, for Queen Maud, the wife of King Haakon, is sister of our own King.