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

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July, 1927 The Health Bulletin 13
reference book or lecture on medicine
or surgery he forgot all about mealtime.
When he did eat the coffee had to be
black and very hot and he wanted an
abundance of sweets especially what he
called "plain cake." He had the pill
and tablet habit down to a scientifically
irreducible minimum. He bought his
pills and tablets by the pound. He did
not use tobacco and never took a drink
of intoxicating wine or liquor in his
life. He was simply deficient in the
positive health building practices regarded
so essential now by everyone.
We often think of that village graveyard
in the hills of Virginia where the
turf has long since fallen in, and where
the blossoming wistaria sheds its fragrance
; and wonder how much the
world has lost through the premature
death of so many of its men of genius,
deaths for the most part nearly always
due to the violation of all ordinary
laws of good health.
FOOD FOR GERMS
The fear of famine and the quest
for food is an age-old instinct, present
in the mind of man and in the lower
animals, at all times. But how many
of us have ever stopped to think that
the microscopical forms of life do much
of their damage to mankind in order
to provide food on which to live. A
writer in the Connecticut Health Bulletin
makes the following interesting
comment in an article on "Gunning
for Bacteria" : "Germs, or microbes,
or bacteria, are fovmd in the air we
breathe, the water we drink, the food
we eat, and upon everything we touch.
The varieties that cause disease are
able to grow inside our bodies and, in
order that they may get food on which
to live, they destroy our tissues and
organs producing poisons and toxins
that cause human disease and death."
One of the appalling facts of nature
is the universal habit of a large portion
of the animal kingdom, including
man, of destroying other forms of animal
life for food.
The story has been frequently told of
a medical research worker, who in the
course of a scientific lecture was
heckled by a group of people who were
fighting the use of animals such as
rabbits, rats, dogs, and so on in research
work, on the ground that vivisection
is cruel. They could not bear
the idea of a rabbit losing its life in a
painless manner, even to provide the
necessary material to save a baby's
life. This particular lecturer knew
that these people who were disturbing
his lecture were owners of large orchards
and truck farms. He knew
that they scrupulously practiced spraying
their fruit trees and potatoes, etc.,
with poison solutions in order to kill
the animal life that was damaging their
fruit and truck. So the lecturer let
them put out their usual palaver about
the sufferings of the poor little mice
and rabbits in the laboratory. The
usual ignorant, inconsistent tirade of
the anti-vivisectionist. The speaker
then turned to the rest of the audience
and called attention to the spraying
operations of their heckler friends, with
the mild suggestion that a potato bug
had as complex organism and valued
its life fully as much as a laboratory
mouse could its own. Church was
then out.
Moral: Formulate it yourself.
KEEP YOUR MACHINERY FIT
Under the above heading a manufacturer
of breakfast foods sends out
the following little poem, written by
John Kendrick Bangs
You know the model of your car,
You know just what its powers are.
You treat it with a deal of care.
Nor tax it more than it will bear.
But as for self—that's different;
Your mechanism may be bent,
Your carburetor gone to grass.
Your engine just a rusty mass.
Your wheels may wobble and your cogs
Be handed over to the dogs.
And you skip and skid and slide
Without a thought of things inside.
What fools, indeed, we mortals are
To lavish care upon a car.
With ne'er a bit of time to see
About our own machinery