Highways and Highway TransportationChatburn, George R.
History
Highways and Highway Transportation
Chatburn, George R.
Roads; Transportation
While motoring may not be the best form of exercise, may not bring
into play as many muscles as walking, horseback riding, or rowing,
say, it must be remembered that not many can have horses to ride or
boats to row and walking is too slow. Gymnasium exercises or even home
gymnastics are not exciting enough to keep one practicing, so that
the outdoor life of the present day, brought about largely by the
automobile, has had a more wholesome effect on the people generally
than perhaps any other measure.
Styles of clothing have kept close pace, and the garments now worn by
both men and women are both comfortable and sanitary, allowing freedom
of bodily movement. It is to be hoped that the same influences which
induced such hygienic clothing will continue and that never more
may the autocratic demands of style force people into close-fitting
uncomfortable, unsanitary wearing apparel. For years hygienists, health
reformers, and physicians preached against tight lacing for women
without results until the automobile came to their assistance. Until
very recent years women’s long skirts have swept clouds of germ-laden
dust into the air from sidewalks to be breathed by all passers-by. All
men know that their present dressing, while it might be bettered, is
so much more comfortable than formerly that they have much reason for
rejoicing. Formal dressing except for an occasional party has almost
disappeared. In the summer time men may be comfortable on the streets
without coats. But the women, though more responsive to style changes,
now go the men one better and abandon long sleeves and high collars.
Medical science, always alert to adopt modern improvements, was one
of the first to take advantage of the time-saving benefits of the
automobile. Its universal use by physicians and surgeons, allowing them
to reach the bedside of sick patients more quickly and allowing them
to visit more patients in the same time, is certainly a pathological
asset of great value. Automobile ambulances called in emergency cases
save the lives of many injured persons by getting them quickly to
the hospitals and under the care of competent medical and surgical
attention.
From a purely sanitary point of view good roads have been great
agencies for health. Clean streets, clean pavements, and clean roads
are much more wholesome than the mud puddles and quagmires that
formerly served as passageways for man and beast. In order to get
better roadways drainage was resorted to. Ponds and standing water
along the side of the road were done away with, at the same time
obliterating the breeding places of the myriads of mosquitoes that
always abounded in summer time. Since mosquitoes are carriers, as
is well known, of such diseases as malaria and yellow fever, the
consequence has been a very great reduction, almost elimination, of
these ailments.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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