Checking the Waste: A Study in ConservationGregory, Mary Huston
History
Checking the Waste: A Study in Conservation
Gregory, Mary Huston
Conservation of natural resources; United States -- Economic conditions
People everywhere are thinking about health, and because of this,
Christian Science, the Emmanuel Movement and the various sects which
practise faith or mental healing have sprung up.
Hospitals and health officers are doing much for the public health.
Doctors themselves are changing their ideas and are teaching us not only
how to cure but how to prevent disease.
Doctors are also seeking not only to prevent disease but to find new
ways of treating it. They are discarding drugs in as many cases as
possible, frequently using serums in which cultures from the disease
itself are used for its cure.
Health means more ability to work, more means of learning, of
accomplishing great things, more pleasures in every day that is lived;
and so it is as important to preserve health, in order to enjoy life, as
it is to prevent death. We can realize how few persons have perfect
health by noting the common salutation "How do you do?" or "How are
you?"
Serious sickness is such as renders a person entirely unable to work.
Benefit societies have found that the average number of days of sickness
per year from each person under seventy years of age is ten, of which
at least two are spent in bed.
About a million and a half people die each year in the United States,
and it is estimated that twice that number, or three million persons,
are constantly unable even to care for themselves. The effect of this is
felt on the patient himself, in suffering, in loss of time in which he
is unable to earn money, and in the amount spent for doctors, medicine,
and nursing. It is felt on the family, in which the household machinery
is thrown out while the wife and mother nurses the sick members of the
family, or is herself too ill to work, or when the father's income stops
on account of sickness.
The entire community suffers from the constant idleness of three million
persons, as well as from the deaths which withdraw a still larger number
of persons from actual work for a period of two to five days during the
time of death and burial of the bodies of members of the family.
Then there is all the long train of small ailments, which do not make us
seriously ill, often do not even keep us from work, but which do take
away from the pleasure and enjoyment of life, which render work a burden
instead of a delight, and lessen our ability to work by many degrees.
Not only this, but they all have within them the possibility of
developing into serious diseases. Such lesser troubles are colds,
headache, catarrh, dyspepsia, nervousness, neuralgia, sore throat, skin
eruptions, rheumatism, toothache, earache, affections of the eyes,
lameness, sprains, bruises, cuts, and burns.
Civilization has brought us great blessings but it has also brought with
it many dangers to health. Professor Irving Fisher of Yale says:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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