Civics and HealthAllen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Science
Civics and Health
Allen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Hygiene; Public health
Other people's interests--tenement conditions, factory rules--can be
described in figures and actions that appeal to the imagination and
impress upon the mind pictures that are repeatedly reawakened by
experience and observation on the playground, at home, on the way to
school or to work. "Once upon a time--" will always arrest attention
more quickly than "The human frame consists--." What others think of me
helps me to obey law--statutory, moral, or hygienic--more than what I
know of law itself. How social instincts dominate may be illustrated by
an experience in advertising a public bath near a thoroughfare traveled
daily by thousands of working girls. I prepared a card to be
distributed among these girls that began: "A cool, refreshing bath,
etc." This card was criticised by one who knows the ways of girls and
women, as follows: "Of course you get no success when you have a man
stand on the street corner and pass out cards telling girls to get
clean. Every girl that is worth while is affronted by the insinuation."
Acting upon this expert advice, we then got out a neatly printed card
reading as follows: "For a clear complexion, sprightly step, and
bounding vitality, visit the Center Market Baths, open from 6 A.M. to 9
P.M. daily." The board of managers shook their sage masculine heads and
reluctantly gave permission to issue these appeals. Woman's judgment
was vindicated, however, and the advantage was proved of urging health
for "society's" sake rather than for health's sake, when the patronage
of the bath jumped at once to considerable proportions.
6. _Other people's habits of health influence our well-being quite as
much, if not more, than our own._ Because we are social beings, ability
to get along with our families, our friends, our employers, is--at
least so it seems to most of us--quite as important as individual
health. For too many of us, living hygienically is absolutely
impossible without inconveniencing and bothering the majority of
persons with whom we live. I remember a girl in college,--a fresh-air
fiend,--who every morning, no matter how cold, threw the windows wide
open. Then, with forty others, I thought this girl a nuisance as well
as a menace to health, but now, twenty years afterwards, I find myself
wanting to do the same thing. Professor Patten, the economist, whom I
shall quote many times because he is particularly interested in the
purpose of this book, was recently dining at my house and illustrated
from his own health the importance of teaching hygiene so as to affect
social as well as personal standards. "To be true to my own health
needs, I ought to have declined nearly everything that has been offered
me for dinner, but in the long run, if I am going to visit, my eating
what is placed before me is better for society than making those who
entertain me feel uncomfortable."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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