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

274 THE HEALTH BL'LLETIN.WHERE IGNORANCE ISDEATHBy Alice Mayor Edwabds, Monrovia, Cal.He was not the kind of a man tofigure in romance; only a plain middleagedmachinist who had done his day'swork since he could remember withhearty thankfulness that there waswork to do. Plenty to eat of a sort,school books for the kiddie, and therent paid every month. He and thewoman had managed that.One day he began to cough. Theatmosphere was heavy in the shop.With close moist air, fatigue, and theshock of draught upon unprotectedshoulders—yes, one easily caught coldand, having once caught it, too easilykept it. So he coughed, all winter, allspring, and—it had never hung onquite so long before—all summer andall winter again.Then he noticed that he was notworking with his old vigor. Coughingtired him. It was becoming too muchtrouble to eat after a day's work. Hewould come home at night, fling himselfupon the couch and fall into anumbing sort of slumber, only to bewakened by the cough which shookhim more harshly at each paroxysm.Still, a man does not go to a doctorwhen a call means two days' wages,or a lay off from the chief business oflife. Instead, he coughs on. For fouryears John Jones coughed on, lostflesh, and worked without ambitionand with ever-increasing weariness.Then the drop came.The physician looked at him sharply.He was panting and trembling withthe fatigue of a few stairs' climb. Thephysician knew what the short breath,the feverish lips, the abnormallybright eye and that incessant coughmeant. He was not a brute. He wasonly a busy and harassed man whosehours for eating and sleeping had beenreduced to improper fractions by thedemands of just this sort of thing.There was the formal examination, ofcourse, the weary man's bewildermentgrowing with each new test, then"Consumption, man!"The doctor did not hesitate to usethe old-fashioned term for the diseasenow known under a more euphonioustitle."Quit work at once. Go down toArizona and live in the open airyour only chance. People get wellthere."And he bowed the stricken man outof the door with a throb of pity for thetwitching lips and anguished eyes.John Jones was not the kind of aman who thinks or acts quickly. Ithad 'become easier to do things slowlyin the past few years. And he wastired now—very tired. He found ithard to board the car at the corner.He scarcely noticed when the conductorcalled his street and roughlyurged him to hurry as he hesitatedwith a foot on the running board.Consumption! That was what thedoctor had said of Brown who hadworked next to him for years, and whodied there in the shop of suddenhemorrhage one day only a fewmonths since.Quit work! Why, he'd worked everyday, always— Sundays, too, most of thetime—a full, clean day's work. A manmight be tired; he might cough; buthe must work and work hard whenthere were Mary and the growing kid.Quit v/ork! Who paid the bills whena man quit work?Arizona—where was that? He hadheard of it remotely, as he had heardof Patagonia or Siberia or the Klon-