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Show You and Your Health I ly MORRIS FISHBE1N ' MHer. Jeansl ml fa Awlw Meeloel AsMelsHs. see) at Hyeele, Ike, v Nobody knowi when whooping cough first appeared, with Its noises and gasping la human beings. be-ings. It seems to have first been described 'scientifically about 157. and for a long time did not seem to disturb doctors very much. One celebrated physician wrote In lffTa that "whooping cough Is left to the management of old women and quack doctors." Yet today whooping cough causes more deaths than do moat of the other communicable dlieases of childhood. Between 1S00 and 1S0. the average number of people who died each year of this disease was MS. Most deaths from whooping whoop-ing eough are not associated with secondary conditions, such as broncho-pneumonia sr Infections of the Intestinal tract, and sometime some-time are not reported as having resulted from whooping cough. The number of school days lost because of whooping cough is greater than that for any of the Infectious diseases, and almost equals that for most of the other diseases of the breathing tract combined. Whooping cough ordinarily appears ap-pears In a child seven to ten days after he has been exposed to the disease. Cases may appear, ap-pear, however, as sarly as four days and as lets as 1 days afterward. after-ward. Experiments on monkeys, in fact, have shown instances in which secondary Infection has not appeared for 15 days. Whooping eough occurs most often in the early spring months, but may, of course, be present any time during the year. Most cases occur in children under un-der S years of age. Strangely, whooping cough la the only dia-ease dia-ease that causes more deaths In girls than In boys. Eighty per cent of the deaths in children over IS .years of age involve girls. The explanation seems to have something some-thing to do with the construction of the breathing tract in girls being be-ing different from that in boys. Whooping eough is caused by a germ.- As to which germ it is, however, not all authorities are agreed. Moot of them believe that a germ which was first described in 1M, and which looks a little like th Influents germ, is ths on responsible. This germ Is carried in nose and throat secretions and may be spread not only by direct coughing, cough-ing, sneeslng and spitting, but also, of course, by handshaking and In materials which have been used by a patient Th disease la most easily trans-mltted trans-mltted when the victim's nose Is running and his. coughing is frequent fre-quent It gradually becomes less infectious as ths condition goes on. A test has been developed In which the child coughs on a plats containing; a substance on which th germs grow easily. In Denmark Den-mark it is customary to permit a child to go back to school after th fourth week of his lUnsss If germs fall to grow on this plat When th test is made. Like chickenpox, whooping eough seems almost universal and records rec-ords show that T8 per cent of grownups have had it |