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To Your Good Health
By Paul G. Donohue, M.D.
Diverticulosis
Is Quite Common
DEAR DR. DONOHUE:
When I turned 50, my doctor had me get a
colonoscopy. I’m sorry I did. The specialist
didn’t find cancer, but he found I have
diverticulosis. Now I worry all the time about
what’s going to happen. What is going to
happen? -- R.K.
ANSWER: Most
likely, nothing is going to happen.
A diverticulum is
a small bulge that protrudes from the
colon’s outer wall. Diverticula look like
tiny soap bubbles. People don’t get them
until later in life. By age 80, almost half have
diverticulosis -- a colon studded with
diverticula -- and few have or will have any
symptoms from them.
The condition is
common in places where grains are refined.
Refining removes bran. Bran is fiber, and it
serves to keep undigested food moist as it passes
through the digestive tract. Without fiber,
undigested food becomes rock-hard and difficult
to propel through the tract. The colon has to
exert great pressure to keep it moving. The
increased pressure causes the colon lining to
push through the colon wall and form a
diverticulum on its outside wall. The evidence
for a lack of fiber being the cause of
diverticulosis is circumstantial, but it makes
sense.
If diverticula
become inflamed, that is diverticulitis, and it
is most painful and often requires
hospitalization.
You can prevent
diverticulosis from becoming diverticulitis by
increasing your fiber intake to 25 to 30 grams a
day. Fresh fruit with skins, vegetables and whole
grains are fiber sources. You’ll find many
fiber-rich cereals with the amount of fiber
listed in the nutrition information on the box.
You can also buy bran cheaply at a health-food
store. It’s an excellent fiber source. This
is all you have to do. Stop worrying.
LETTERS from
a SELF-MADE
MERCHANT
to his SON.
by George Horace
Lorimer
First
published October, 1902
Being the Letters written by John
Graham, Head of the House of Graham &
Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago, familiarly
known on ‘Change as "Old Gorgon
Graham," to his Son, Pierrepont, facetiously
known to his intimates as "Piggy."
No.12
FROM John Graham, at the
Union Stock Yards in Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, at Little Delmonico’s, Prairie
Centre, Indiana. Mr. Pierrepont has annoyed his
father by accepting his criticisms in a spirit of
gentle, but most reprehensible, resignation.
XII
CHICAGO, April 15, 189-
Dear Pierrepont: Don’t
ever write me another of those sad, sweet, gentle
sufferer letters. It’s only natural that a
colt should kick a trifle when he’s first
hitched up to the break wagon, and I’m
always a little suspicious of a critter that
stands too quiet under the whip. I know it’s
not meekness, but meanness, that I’ve got to
fight, and it’s hard to tell which is the
worst.
The only animal which the Bible
calls patient is an ass, and that’s both
good doctrine and good natural history. For I had
to make considerable of a study of the Missouri
mule when I was a boy, and I discovered that
he’s not really patient, but that he only
pretends to be. You can cuss him out till
you’ve nothing but holy thoughts left in you
to draw on, and you can lay the rawhide on him
till he’s striped like a circus zebra, and
if you’re cautious and reserved in his
company he will just look grieved and pained and
resigned. But all the time that mule will be
getting meaner and meaner inside, adding compound
cussedness every thirty days, and practicing drop
kicks in his stall after dark. Of course, nothing
in this world is wholly bad, not even a mule, for
he is half horse. But my observation has taught
me that the horse half of him is the front half,
and that the only really safe way to drive him is
hind-side first. I suppose that you could train
one to travel that way, but it really
doesn’t seem worth while when good roadsters
are so cheap.
That’s the way I feel
about these young fellows who lazy along trying
to turn in at every gate where there seems to be
a little shade, and sulking and balking whenever
you say "git-ap" to them. They are the
men who are always howling that Bill Smith was
promoted because he had a pull, and that they are
being held down because the manager is jealous of
them. I’ve seen a good many pulls in my
time, but I never saw one strong enough to lift a
man any higher than he could raise himself by his
boot straps, or long enough to reach through the
cashier’s window for more money than its
owner earned.
When a fellow brags that he has
a pull, he’s a liar or his employer’s a
fool. And when a fellow whines that he’s
being held down, the truth is, as a general
thing, that his boss can’t hold him up. He
just picks a nice, soft spot, stretches out flat
on his back, and yells that some heartless brute
has knocked him down and is sitting on his chest.
A good man is as full of bounce
as a cat with a small boy and a bull terrier
after him. When he’s thrown to the dog from
the second-story window, he fixes while he’s
sailing through the air to land right, and when
the dog jumps for the spot where he hits, he
isn’t there, but in the top of the tree
across the street. He’s a good deal like the
little red-headed cuss that we saw in the
football game you took me to. Every time the herd
stampeded it would start in to trample and paw
and gore him. One minute the whole bunch would be
on top of him and the next he would be loping off
down the range, spitting out hair and pieces of
canvas jacket, or standing on one side as cool as
a hog on ice, watching the mess unsnarl and the
removal of the cripples.
I didn’t understand
football, but I understood that little sawed-off.
He knew his business. And when a fellow knows his
business, he doesn’t have to explain to
people that he does. It isn’t what a man
knows, but what he thinks he knows that he brags
about. Big talk means little knowledge.
There’s a vast difference
between having a carload of miscellaneous facts
sloshing around loose in your head and getting
all mixed up in transit, and carrying the same
assortment properly boxed and crated for
convenient handling and immediate delivery. A ham
never weighs so much as when it’s half
cured. When it has soaked in all the pickle that
it can, it has to sweat out most of it in the
smoke-house before it is any real good; and when
you’ve soaked up all the information you can
hold, you will have to forget half of it before
you will be of any real use to the house. If
there’s anything worse than knowing too
little, it’s knowing too much. Education
will broaden a narrow mind, but there’s no
known cure for a big head. The best you can hope
is that it will swell up and bust; and then, of
course, there’s nothing left. Poverty never
spoils a good man, but prosperity often does.
It’s easy to stand hard times, because
that’s the only thing you can do, but in
good times the fool-killer has to do night work.
I simply mention these things
in a general way. A good many of them don’t
apply to you, no doubt, but it won’t do any
harm to make sure. Most men get cross-eyed when
they come to size themselves up, and see an angel
instead of what they’re trying to look at.
There’s nothing that tells the truth to a
woman like a mirror, or that lies harder to a
man.
What I am sure of is that you
have got the sulks too quick. If you knew all
that you’ll have to learn before you’ll
be a big, broad-gauged merchant, you might have
something to be sulky about.
When you’ve posted
yourself properly about the business you’ll
have taken a step in the right direction--you
will be able to get your buyer’s attention.
All the other steps are those which lead you into
his confidence.
Right here you will discover
that you are in the fix of the young fellow who
married his best girl and took her home to live
with his mother. He found that the only way in
which he could make one happy was by making the
other mad, and that when he tried to make them
both happy he only succeeded in making them both
mad. Naturally, in the end, his wife divorced him
and his mother disinherited him, and left her
money to an orphan asylum, because, as she
sensibly observed in the codicil, "orphans
can not be ungrateful to their parents." But
if the man had had a little tact he would have
kept them in separate houses, and have let each
one think that she was getting a trifle the best
of it, without really giving it to either.
Tact is the knack of keeping
quiet at the right time; of being so agreeable
yourself that no one can be disagreeable to you;
of making inferiority feel like equality. A
tactful man can pull the stinger from a bee
without getting stung.
Some men deal in facts, and
call Bill Jones a liar. They get knocked down.
Some men deal in subterfuges, and say that Bill
Jones’ father was a kettle-rendered liar,
and that his mother’s maiden name was
Sapphira, and that any one who believes in the
Darwinian theory should pity rather than blame
their son. They get disliked. But your tactful
man says that since Baron Munchausen no one has
been so chuck full of bully reminiscences as Bill
Jones; and when that comes back to Bill he is
half tickled to death, because he doesn’t
know that the higher criticism has hurt the
Baron’s reputation. That man gets the trade.
There are two kinds of information: one to which
everybody’s entitled, and that is taught at
school; and one which nobody ought to know except
yourself, and that is what you think of Bill
Jones. Of course, where you feel a man is not
square you will be armed to meet him, but never
on his own ground. Make him be honest with you if
you can, but don’t let him make you
dishonest with him.
When you make a mistake,
don’t make the second one--keeping it to
yourself. Own up. The time to sort out rotten
eggs is at the nest. The deeper you hide them in
the case the longer they stay in circulation, and
the worse impression they make when they finally
come to the breakfast-table. A mistake sprouts a
lie when you cover it up. And one lie breeds
enough distrust to choke out the prettiest crop
of confidence that a fellow ever cultivated.
Of course, it’s easy to
have the confidence of the house, or the
confidence of the buyer, but you’ve got to
have both. The house pays you your salary, and
the buyer helps you earn it. If you skin the
buyer you will lose your trade; and if you play
tag with the house you will lose your job.
You’ve simply got to walk the fence
straight, for if you step to either side
you’ll find a good deal of air under you.
Even after you are able to
command the attention and the confidence of your
buyers, you’ve got to be up and dressed all
day to hold what trade is yours, and twisting and
turning all night to wriggle into some of the
other fellow’s. When business is good, that
is the time to force it, because it will come
easy; and when it is bad, that is the time to
force it, too, because we will need the orders.
Speaking of making trade
naturally calls to my mind my old acquaintance,
Herr Doctor Paracelsus Von Munsterberg, who, when
I was a boy, came to our town "fresh from
his healing triumphs at the Courts of
Europe," as his handbills ran, "not to
make money, but to confer on suffering mankind
the priceless boon of health; to make the sick
well, and the well better."
Munsterberg wasn’t one of
your common, coarse, county-fair barkers. He was
a pretty high-toned article. Had nice, curly
black hair and didn’t spare the bear’s
grease. Wore a silk hat and a Prince Albert coat
all the time, except when he was orating, and
then he shed the coat to get freer action with
his arms. And when he talked he used the whole
language, you bet.
Of course, the Priceless Boon
was put up in bottles, labeled Munsterberg’s
Miraculous Medical Discovery, and, simply to
introduce it, he was willing to sell the small
size at fifty cents and the large one at a
dollar. In addition to being a philanthropist the
Doctor was quite a hand at card tricks, played
the banjo, sung songs and imitated a saw going
through a board very creditably. All these
accomplishments, and the story of how he cured
the Emperor of Austria’s sister with a
single bottle, drew a crowd, but they didn’t
sell a drop of the Discovery. Nobody in town was
really sick, and those who thought they were had
stocked up the week before with Quackenboss’
Quick Quinine Kure from a fellow that made just
as liberal promises as Munsterberg and sold the
large size at fifty cents, including a handsome
reproduction of an old master for the parlor.
Some fellows would just have
cussed a little and have moved on to the next
town, but Munsterberg made a beautiful speech,
praising the climate, and saying that in his
humble capacity he had been privileged to meet
the strength and beauty of many Courts, but never
had he been in any place where strength was
stronger or beauty beautifuller than right here
in Hoskins’ Corners. He prayed with all his
heart, though it was almost too much to hope,
that the cholera, which was raging in Kentucky,
would pass this Eden by; that the yellow fever,
which was devastating Tennessee, would halt
abashed before this stronghold of health, though
he felt bound to add that it was a peculiarly
malignant and persistent disease; that the
smallpox, which was creeping southward from
Canada, would smite the next town instead of
ours, though he must own that it was no respecter
of persons; that the diphtheria and
scarlet-fever, which were sweeping over New
England and crowding the graveyards, could be
kept from crossing the Hudson, though they were
great travelers and it was well to be prepared
for the worst; that we one and all might
providentially escape chills, headaches, coated
tongue, pains in the back, loss of sleep and that
tired feeling, but it was almost too much to ask,
even of such a generous climate. In any event, he
begged us to beware of worthless nostrums and
base imitations. It made him sad to think that
to-day we were here and that to-morrow we were
running up an undertaker’s bill, all for the
lack of a small bottle of Medicine’s
greatest gift to Man.
I could see that this speech
made a lot of women in the crowd powerful uneasy,
and I heard the Widow Judkins say that she was
afraid it was going to be "a mighty sickly
winter," and she didn’t know as it
would do any harm to have some of that stuff in
the house. But the Doctor didn’t offer the
Priceless Boon for sale again. He went right from
his speech into an imitation of a dog, with a tin
can tied to his tail, running down Main Street
and crawling under Si Hooper’s store at the
far end of it--an imitation, he told us, to which
the Sultan was powerful partial, "him being
a cruel man and delighting in torturing the poor
dumb beasts which the Lord has given us to love,
honor and cherish."
He kept this sort of thing up
till he judged it was our bedtime, and then he
thanked us "one and all for our kind
attention," and said that as his mission in
life was to amuse as well as to heal, he would
stay over till the next afternoon and give a
special matinée for the little ones, whom he
loved for the sake of his own golden-haired
Willie, back there over the Rhine.
Naturally, all the women and
children turned out the next afternoon, though
the men had to be at work in the fields and the
stores, and the Doctor just made us roar for half
an hour. Then, while he was singing an uncommon
funny song, Mrs. Brown’s Johnny let out a
howl.
The Doctor stopped short.
"Bring the poor little sufferer here, Madam,
and let me see if I can soothe his agony,"
says he.
Mrs. Brown was a good deal
embarrassed and more scared, but she pushed
Johnny, yelling all the time, up to the Doctor,
who began tapping him on the back and looking
down his throat. Naturally, this made Johnny cry
all the harder, and his mother was beginning to
explain that she "reckoned she must have
stepped on his sore toe," when the Doctor
struck his forehead, cried "Eureka!",
whipped out a bottle of the Priceless Boon, and
forced a spoonful of it into Johnny’s mouth.
Then he gave the boy three slaps on the back and
three taps on the stomach, ran one hand along his
windpipe, and took a small button-hook out of his
mouth with the other.
Johnny made all his previous
attempts at yelling sound like an imitation when
he saw this, and he broke away and ran toward
home. Then the Doctor stuck one hand in over the
top of his vest, waved the button-hook in the
other, and cried: "Woman, your child is
cured! Your button-hook is found!"
Then he went on to explain that
when baby swallowed safety-pins, or pennies, or
fish-bones, or button-hooks, or any little
household articles, that all you had to do was to
give it a spoonful of the Priceless Boon, tap it
gently fore and aft, hold your hand under its
mouth, and the little article would drop out like
chocolate from a slot machine.
Every one was talking at once,
now, and nobody had any time for Mrs. Brown, who
was trying to say something. Finally she got mad
and followed Johnny home. Half an hour later the
Doctor drove out of the Corners, leaving his
stock of the Priceless Boon distributed--for the
usual consideration--among all the mothers in
town.
It was not until the next day
that Mrs. Brown got a chance to explain that
while the Boon might be all that the Doctor
claimed for it, no one in her house had ever
owned a button-hook, because her old man wore
jack-boots and she wore congress shoes, and
little Johnny wore just plain feet.
I simply mention the Doctor in
passing, not as an example in morals, but in
methods. Some salesmen think that selling is like
eating--to satisfy an existing appetite; but a
good salesman is like a good cook--he can create
an appetite when the buyer isn’t hungry.
I don’t care how good old
methods are, new ones are better, even if
they’re only just as good. That’s not
so Irish as it sounds. Doing the same thing in
the same way year after year is like eating a
quail a day for thirty days. Along toward the
middle of the month a fellow begins to long for a
broiled crow or a slice of cold dog.
Your affectionate father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
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