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

:
22 The Health Bllletin August. 1927
Floyd W. Parsons, a syndicate
writer of national reputation, writing
under the head of Everybody's Business,
an article published in several
periodicals, is authority for the statement
that "Forty million wage earners
in the United States lose nearly
10 per cent, of their time on account
of sickness; they pay out fifty millions
of dollars annually for cathartics;
they spend six times as much
for fire protection as for health protection;
and of this great army of
people in America more than a halfmillion
die each year between the
ages of 40 and 60 from old-age diseases
that are entirely preventable."
SOME VITAL PROBLEMS
Those are vital problems for people
everywhere to be thinking about and,
what is more important, doing something
about. There is probably more
outstanding ignorance concerning the
simple matter of every-day diet than
any other single item of universal
importance in the world. Most of
our studies of these questions have
been done by ultra-specialists or in a
most superficial manner by people
having only a smattering of knowledge
concerning the real fundamentals.
Some of these days we will
do better for the simple reason that
we will have to do better in order
to
live.
TEAM WORK BETWEEN PHYSICIAN AND DENTIST
NECESSARY
The heading of this article might
be termed you and your dentist and
you and your doctor and the relations
necessary between the three of you to
maintain normal good health. A
writer in a long article on a technical
dental subject in a recent issue of a
dental magazine made the following
important observation
"Health service is the foundation
of modern dental practice. This
serves to preserve the health and
thereby perpetuates the life of the
human body. These aims should be
obtained by preservation and prevention."
It is coming to be recognized by all
general practitioners of medicine and
by dentists that team work between
the doctor and the dentist is essential
for the patient's best welfare. So
important is this relation that in all
groups at present of two or more men
having office together, or at least occupying
a mutual reception room, it.
will be found that the team is most
frequently composed of a dentist and
a doctor. In the larger groups of
medical men composed of general
practitioners, surgeons, eye and
throat specialists, and so on, it will
be found that the dentist or dentists
occupy a very important position in
most of such groups. It is doubtful
that the demand of the patient has
brought about or is bringing about
such arrangements. It is more than
probable that the desire of both physicians
and dentists, to render the
very best possible service to all their
patients, is the responsible factor in
the arrangement. Whatever the primary
cause for it is, it is an arrangement
that certainly works to the best
advantage of the patients of both
doctors and dentists.
There is hardly a problem in general
medicine, especially among people
of advanced years, but what is
closely related with problems of the
teeth and other dental questions. The
person who has left any teeth at all
after 40 or 50 years of age should
emphasize the habit of frequent visits
to the dentist. Now that such aids
as X-rays and other advances are
available these visits should be even
more worth while than formerly. Pus
formation at the roots of teeth in the
case of decayed teeth are too frequently
recognized sources of trouble
in many parts of the body. Such