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Show oo "THE DREAD OF DISEASE." (Youth's Companion) Dr. Gold water, the New York commissioner com-missioner of health, has recently published pub-lished an article advocating "the inauguration in-auguration of universal periodic medical med-ical examinations as an Indispensable means for the control of all disea sea." As an Illustration of the need and Importance of such a measure, he cites the recent examination of tho employes of a New i ork hank ET.ery one of them was found "abnormal," "abnor-mal," and "on the sure road to diseases dis-eases of heart, lungs, kidneys or blood vessels. ' Possibly that discovery may have been useful and beneficial to a few of the men that it was &o to all may reasonably be doubted It may have enabled some of them to ward off the diseases that threatened. In the cases of others, however, impaired impair-ed health must have been owing to the conditions of life and work, ron- niuons Deyona tne muiviuuai s caniroj or power to remedy To tell such a person about the damaging but unsuspected un-suspected processes going on within him is to do him no kindness His latent malady is far less likely to be progressive while he is unaware of it, ignorance acts as a stay of execution exe-cution The danger of such universal medical med-ical examination as the health commissioner com-missioner pleads for is that it would transform innumerable happy and to all Intents and purposes healthy persona per-sona into melancholy watchers of their own symptoms, who would nev er again dare to exert themsehes hopefully and eagerly in tho business of life. So far from prolonging life, . i . i i j imparting surn aire miuwieuso ui themselves to people would be the means of shortening their term and of limiting their happiness and their usefulness. A healthy mental attitude is the greatest of all helps In preserving physical sanity; break down a healthy mental attitude, and the bale ful germs that are in all of ub will riot uncontrolled. If all the employes em-ployes of a bank are, according to the medical examiner, pathological cases, uViaf itnmhsr ff tho PftlDlOVCS Of a factory or a department store would be pronounced entirely sound Virtu ally all of us go through life with engines that are more or less imperfect, imper-fect, but that do their work satisfactorily satisfac-torily enough as long as we do not watch them, tinker over them and fuss with them. A compulsory, uni versal medical examination would probably result in widespread depression depres-sion and deepair, ggajaHajijBggsjBKRa |