Modern Hygiene's Dirty Tricks
The clean life may throw off a delicate balance in the immune system By Siri Carpenter Too clean? Antiseptic surroundings may not allow a child's immune system to practice fighting off germs. (Superstock) Sweeping along 14th-century trade routes, an infectious agent left a trail of incomparable devastation throughout Asia and Europe. In China, this plague slashed the population from 125 million to 90 million by the century's end. In Cairo, the Black Deathso called because of the dark, swollen lymph nodes that characterize the diseaseclaimed 7,000 lives a day at its height. Before it subsided, the plague had wiped out one-third of Europe's population. In most of the world today, the plague has receded to a distant, if gruesome, memory. So, too, at least in developed countries, have smallpox, typhoid fever, cholera, diphtheria, and polio declined. One by one, infectious diseases that once ravaged society and preyed especially on children have been quelled by better sanitation, antibiotics, and vaccinations. While raising barricades against deadly scourges, however, the industrialized world has also shielded people from the microbes and parasites that do no harm. Does it matter? | |
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