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

July, 1927
The Health Bulletin
dairying. Naturally the type of immigrant
wanted is a healthy, independent
type who has had ample experience in
the kind of work it is wanted tliem to
do here on the abandoned land of North
Carolina. Such a type of immigrant is
not going to leave a healthy locality of
good schools, available markets, and
first class living conditions in states
like Iowa. Minnesota, or New York for
any of our localities that do not moderately
promise the same safeguard.
One of the questions always asked by
prospective immigrants is concerning
the health conditions of the place at
which they consider locating. They desire
especial assurance from the standpoint
of pure water, freedom from mosquitoes
and malaria. All of this can be
assured in most parts of North Carolina,
but it will take intelligent effort,
organized activity directed by full-time
health otiicers, and the exi>enditure of
some money to bring this about.
Sometime ago an experienced bank
director, in making an address to a
body of business men, including merchants,
bankei's, and capitalists together
with lawyers and physicians,
made the statement that loans by bankers
always made the health of the
applicant for the proposed loan and
his life expectancy secondary only to
his visible financial assets. This director
went further and stated that in his
experience as a director of the big bank
with which he was connected, that it
was not an unusual experience for a
man who had good visible assets in
the way of property, to have his loan
declined because his blood pressure was
playing around two hundred. In short,
a man may have a good business,
may
lie prospering largely as a result of
his own intelligent application and
familiarity with his procedures, but.
whose health not being good, may suddenly
die, his estate go to pieces
through faulty management, and the
bank lose some of the loan or perhaps
all
of it.
The time has come in North Carolina
for a consideration of public health
work on a basis of pure business principles.
For many years tlie development
of preventive medicine activities in this
State has had its inspiration largely in
altruistic motives. Most of tne efforts
at disease prevention have been primarily
concerned with the humanitarian
aspects of the problem. This
is well, and had it not been for this
fact many men who have already devoted
the best years of their lives to
public health work in this State would
not have been in it. It is necessary to
still bear in mind and to treat with
equal imiwrtance the demands of
humanity and altruism ; but at the same
time it is necessary for the settlement
and the cultivation of our more than
twenty million acres of idle land in
North Carolina to put these things on
a purely selfish business basis along
with the higher demands of humanity.
Therefore we would like to urge on the
chambers of commerce, the civic clubs,
and the real estate agencies throughout
the State that they pay more attention
to preventive medicine as an inducement
to the desirable class of small
farmers needed to develop the State's
uncultivated resources.
NEW BORN BABY A PERFECT MACHINE
The perfect equipment of practically
every baby born into the world is one
of the perpetual wonders of nature.
The most perfect and highest priced
automobile in the world, or linotype
machine, or any other example of the
finest art of man's inventive genius is
not a thousandth part as perfect in
every detail when turned out from the
factory as a new born babe coming
into the world under the shelter of a
dirty hovel. Nature has seemed to provide
almost every protection and every
requirement for the intelligent safeguarding
of the baby until delivered
perfect into the custody of the baby's
parents. Every one of the billions of
cells in its little body is set for action.
The muscular system goes into action
with rhythmic precision. Its digestive
system possesses one of the finest
chemical laboratories in the universe.
This laboratory is ready with its
constant supply of such substances as
renniu and pepsin and other things
necessary to set the process of digestion
to work at once for the preservation of
life and the promotion of growth. The