The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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32 The Health Bulletin March, 1927
have established, is a purely artificial
one, since there can be no money
equivalent for ministering to spiritual
needs, giving knowledge, dispensing
justice, or healing the sick ; and in an
ideal State these services would be
available for all equally as essential
services for the State.
"Taking healing as our main example,
the physician can heal without charge
or cost ; his service is of an intensely
individual nature, and his work has its
roots, not in commerce, but in the
virtue of compassion ; a compassion
furnishing a motive for work so strong
that science has become its handmaiden.
"It will readily be seen that to
organize a profession is a very different
proposition from organizing an industry,
and further that it is impossible
to adjust the methods employed
by the trades unions to the needs of
a profession, or to shackle the progress
of science and the arts with the fetters
of trades union regulations.
"Since collective bargaining, the main
weapon of trade unions, cannot be effective
without the right to withdraw
their labor, it is manifestly impossible
to apply trade union principles to the
medical or nursing professions, since
though it may be possible to abandon
an industiT in the interests of the
w'orkers with a mere loss of money for
all concerned, to leave untended the
sick persons and young children would
involve the loss to them of their health,
and even in many cases of life itself.
There is no eight hour day for the sick
whom we serve, and the need for our
service is as urgent and abiding as is
the suffering we seek to relieve.
"That the conditions under which the
nurses carry out their varied diities
need reform is widely recognized today,
and many efforts are being made
to carry these reforms into practice.
Nurses need both protection and representation."
Just as surely do these conditions obtain
in the United States. The nurse
needs representation on hospital and
community boards ; she needs protection
in her isolation. The Trained
Nurse and Hospital Review.
SAFE MLLK
The North Carolina State Board of
Health has had an officer in the field
for more than two years, aiding in the
work of producing safe milk from a
sanitary point of view. The work of
this officer consists in part in securing
the adoption by towns and cities of a
Standard Milk Ordinance promulgated
by the United States Government ; and
subsequent to adoption advising with
local authorities in the execution of the
ordinance. This work is meeting with
success in increasing volume and is resulting
in a supply of milk of standard
purity for most of the larger cities and
towns. One of the most encouraging
features of the work is the increased
consumption of milk brought about
through the removal of fear concerning
the safety of market milk.
In a survey of eight cities adopting
the Standard Ordinance figures for the
average daily sales of milk were available
for the years 1924 and 1926. The
increase noted in the latter year represented
a gain of eight per cent over
the former.
FARM LABORER'S DIET
BEST
Of several groups of white mice fed
on various experimental diets, those
fed the fare of an Essex farm laborer
were found to have the highest fertility,
according to a report in the Journal of
the American Medical Association of
some studies carried on in Loudon. In
spite of the popular theory that a
highly civilized diet has an effect on
the incidence of cancer, those mice fed
(
on a wild diet had the highest cancer
mortality.
The wild diet consisted of wheat,
oats, barley, greenstuffs and water.
Proteins and green food were the laborer's
diet. On a tea diet of meat, tea.
biscuits, bread and butter, the mice
hardly bred at all. Other diets were
a canteen lunch diet of meat, vegetables
and sweets and an overroasted diet.
The lowest cancer mortality appeared
among those fed on the tea diet. There
was no evidence that fried and overcooked
food was causing an increase of
cancer. Eygeia.