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

10 The Health Bulletin April, 1927
rotten products" In this particular instance,
as in all others where such
practices occur, the authorities would
probably say with truth that the personal
habits in the private life of their
employees was a matter with which
their employers had nothing to do. To a
certain extent this is true, but in health
habits, as well as in moral character
and in certain matters of tinaucial responsibility,
every health department
should be above suspicion and require
every one of its employees to at least
measure up to the average intelligence
expected of such people by the general
public.
PIGS AND PRODIGALS
We are publishing below a letter from
a trained nurse of extensive experience
in which she discusses several
pertinent questions either one of which
would form the basis for a lengthy
article. However we think the readers
of the Bulletin will agree with us
on the point she most accentuates in
her letter, and most likely to be remembered
when the rest is forgotten,
the reference to the fine food the pigs
were getting when compared to the fare
set before the family.
On reading the letter the writer is
reminded of an old gentleman who
lived in Sampson about three miles
from Clinton when the writer was a
boy, too many years ago to confess
without reluctance. This old gentleman
had accumulated quite a lot of money
and property and had achieved considerable
of a reputation along many
lines of activity. He inherited a farm
of considerable size, but as the years
moved on he added more and more land
to his original holdings. He had no
other source of income except what he
made on his farm. He reared a large
family, educated them all, and at least
two of his sons became widely known
in North Carolina as capitalists before
their death just a few years ago. This
man produced everything on his farm
that could be raised in that section. Before
the railroad running to Clinton
from Warsaw was built, about 1887, he
hauled his early truck and produce
across country to Warsaw and shipped
to the northern markets, being a pioneer
trucker and shipper. To this day, however,
he is remembered on account of
one expression attributed to him on
more than one occasion. The expression
was that he raised his stuff to sell and
when he carried it to town and failed
to sell it he took it back home and
offered it to his hogs and if they refused
to eat it, in order to save the food stuff,
he ate it himself. Of course, the old
man did not mean this literally, notwithstanding
the country folks around
about took it literally, and the oldtimers
have all ever remembered it.
The point we wish to make, however,
is that in that section, at a period when
the chief occupation of most farm people
was producing tar, pitch, and turpentine
to be floated down the river and
sold at Wilmington and the year's produce
in white flour and molasses and
white western bacon shipped from the
Middlewest to New York and from
there by ocean freight to Wilmington
was purchased for the supplies for tenants
in exchange for the tar, pitch,
and turpentine, this old man made a
business of raising a variety of truck
and vegetables, hogs and cows and
poultry, and got rich doing it.
He gave
all his children a fine start in life, all
with a basis of sound health.
He himself
had good health, and died in his
sleep at eighty years old.
Please read this trained nurse's letter
and compare her observations with your
own experience.
"I wish you would write something
about the fallacy of fumigation and the
eflicacy of soap and water and sunshine
and fresh air. Also whole wheat and
Graham flour versus white flour.
"I heard Dr. Linney of Charlotte say
two weeks before he died that it ought
to be against the law to make and sell
white flour. He was attending Dr.
Crowson's funeral and stopped where I
lived in Taylorsville. He was a specialist
for rectal trouble. He was very much
overweight and died from apoplexy.
Everything one reads about diet for
children and everybody else says to eat
whole wheat or Graham, but very few
do it especially the ones who can very
easily get it, the ones who make it on
the farm. The place I lived in one