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Oldies & Oddities |
To Your Good Health
By Paul G. Donohue, M.D.
Inactivity and
Smoking Promote Artery Clogs
DEAR DR. DONOHUE:
My wife has a problem. About a year ago, she saw
a doctor about her legs. The doctor couldn’t
find a pulse in her legs. She is not active. She
sits on the couch or in bed all day. When she
walks, she has a lot of pain. She has to stop and
rest. She is a heavy smoker. She is only 53.
What’s the story? -- H.S.
ANSWER: The story
is a potential tragedy unless your wife makes
some big changes. The cause of her pulseless legs
and her leg pain when walking is most likely
blockage of her leg arteries with cholesterol and
fat. That’s atherosclerosis -- artery
hardening -- and she is quite young to have it.
If her leg arteries are clogged, the chances are
great that her heart and brain arteries are
clogged also.
She needs a
careful examination of her arteries. Determining
the blood pressure at her ankles and comparing it
with the blood pressure in her arms provides
evidence of artery blockage. The two pressures
should be about equal. If the leg pressure is
lower than the arm pressure, there’s an
obstruction in leg arteries. An ultrasound of the
arteries is also most helpful.
She has to stop
smoking. Smoking is a major cause of artery
obstruction. She must become more active. She
should lose weight if that applies. She should be
checked for diabetes and high blood pressure.
I don’t mean
to scare your wife, but she must understand that
if she doesn’t make significant changes, she
is in danger of losing her leg or legs to
gangrene. She might also need some psychological
counseling. Her inactivity could be due to
depression.
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.7
FROM John Graham, at the
Omaha Branch of Graham & Co. to Pierrepont
Graham, at the Union Stock Yards, Chicago. Mr.
Pierrepont hasn’t found the methods of the
worthy Milligan altogether to his liking, and he
has commented rather freely on them.
VII
Omaha, September 1, 189-
Dear Pierrepont:
Yours of the 30th ultimo strikes me all wrong. I
don’t like to hear you say that you
can’t work under Milligan or any other man,
for it shows a fundamental weakness. And then,
too, the house isn’t interested in knowing
how you like your boss, but in how he likes you.
I understand about
Milligan. He’s a cross, cranky old Irishman
with a temper tied up in bow-knots, who prods his
men with a bull-stick six days a week and schemes
to get them salary raises on the seventh, when he
ought to be listening to the sermon; who puts the
black-snake on a clerk’s hide when he sends
a letter to Oshkosh that ought to go to
Kalamazoo, and begs him off when the old man
wants to have fired him for it. Altogether
he’s a hard, crabbed, generous,
soft-hearted, loyal, bully old boy, who’s
been with the house since we took down the
shutters for the first time, and who’s going
to stay with it till we put them up for the last
time.
But all that
apart, you want to get it firmly fixed in your
mind that you’re going to have a Milligan
over you all your life, and if it isn’t a
Milligan it will be a Jones or a Smith, and the
chances are that you’ll find them both
harder to get along with than this old fellow.
And if it isn’t Milligan or Jones or Smith,
and you ain’t a butcher, but a parson or a
doctor, or even the President of the United
States, it’ll be a way-back deacon, or the
undertaker, or the machine. There isn’t any
such thing as being your own boss in this world
unless you’re a tramp, and then there’s
the constable.
Like the old man
if you can, but give him no cause to dislike you.
Keep your self-respect at any cost, and your
upper lip stiff at the same figure. Criticism can
properly come only from above, and whenever you
discover that your boss is no good you may rest
easy that the man who pays your salary shares
your secret. Learn to give back a bit from the
base-burner, to let the village fathers get their
feet on the fender and the sawdust box in range,
and you’ll find them making a little room
for you in turn. Old men have tender feet, and
apologies are poor salve for aching corns.
Remember that when you’re right you can
afford to keep your temper, and that when
you’re in the wrong you can’t afford to
lose it.
When you’ve
got an uncertain cow it’s all O.K. to tie a
figure eight in her tail, if you ain’t
thirsty, and it’s excitement you’re
after; but if you want peace and her nine quarts,
you will naturally approach her from the side,
and say, So-boss, in about the same tone you
would use if you were asking your best girl to
let you hold her hand.
Of course, you
want to be sure of your natural history facts,
and learn to distinguish between a cow
that’s a kicker, but who’s intentions
are good if she’s approached with proper
respect, and a hooker who is vicious on general
principles, and any way you come at her.
There’s never any use fooling with an animal
of that sort, brute or human. The only safe place
is the other side of the fence or the top of the
nearest tree.
When I was
clerking in Missouri, a fellow named Jeff Hankins
moved down from Wisconsin and bought a little
clearing just outside the town. Jeff was a good
talker, but a bad listener, so we learned a heap
about how things were done in Wisconsin, but he
didn’t pick up much information about the
habits of our Missouri fauna. When it came to
cows, he had a liberal education and he made out
all right, but by and by it got on to ploughing
time and Jeff naturally bought a mule - a little
moth-eaten cuss, with sad, dreamy eyes and
droopy, wiggly-woggly ears that swung in a circle
as easy as if they ran on ball bearings. Her
owner didn’t give her a very good character,
but Jeff was too busy telling how much he knew
about horses to pay much attention to what
anybody was saying about mules. So finally the
seller turned her loose in Jeff’s lot, told
him he wouldn’t have any trouble catching
her if he approached her right, and hurried off
out of range.
Next morning at
sunup Jeff picked out a bridle and started off
whistling Buffalo Gals - he was a powerful pretty
whistler and he could do the Mocking Bird with
variations - to catch the mule and begin his
plowing. The animal was feeding as peaceful as a
water-color picture, and she didn’t budge;
but when Jeff began to get nearer, her ears
dropped back along her neck as if they had lead
in them. He knew that symptom and so he closed up
kind of cautious, aiming for her at right angles
and gurgling, "Muley, muley, here muley;
that’s a good muley," sort of sooth and
caressing-like. Still she didn’t stir and
Jeff got right up to her and put one arm over her
back and began to reach forward with the bridle,
when something happened. He never could explain
just what it was, but we judged from the marks on
his person that the mule had reached forward and
kicked the seat of his trousers with one of her
prehensile hind feet; and had reached back and
caught him on the last button of his waistcoat
with one of her limber fore feet; and had twisted
around her elastic neck and bit off a mouthful of
his hair. When Jeff regained consciousness, he
reckoned that the only really safe way to
approach a mule was to drop on it from a balloon.
I simply mention
this little incident as an example of the fact
that there are certain animals with which the
Lord didn’t intend men to fool. And you will
find that, as a rule, the human varieties of them
are not the fellows who go for you rough-shod,
like Milligan, when you’re wrong. It’s
when you come across one of those gentlemen who
have more oil in their composition than any
two-legged animal has a right to have, that you
should be on the lookout for concealed deadly
weapons.
I don’t mean
that you should distrust a man who is affable and
approachable, but you want to learn to
distinguish between him and one who is too
affable and too approachable. The adverb makes
the difference between a good and a bad fellow.
The bunco men aren’t all at the county fair,
and they don’t all operate with the little
shells and the elusive pea. When a packer has
learned all there is to learn about quadrupeds,
he knows only one-eighth of his business; the
other seven-eighths, and the important
seven-eighths, has to do with the study of
bipeds.
I dwell on this
because I am a little disappointed that you
should have made such a mistake in sizing up
Milligan. He isn’t the brightest man in the
office, but he is loyal to me and the house, and
when you have been in the business as long as I
have you will be inclined to put a pretty high
value on loyalty. It is the one commodity that
hasn’t any market value, and it’s the
one that you can’t pay too much for. You can
trust any number of men with your money, but
mighty few with your reputation. Half the men who
are with the house on pay day are against it the
other six.
A good many young
fellows come to me looking for jobs, and they
start in by telling me what a mean house they
have bene working for; what a cuss to get along
with the senior partner was; and how little show
a bright, progressive clerk he had with him. I
never get very far with a critter of that class,
because I know that he wouldn’t like me or
the house if he came to work for us.
I don’t know
anything that a young business man ought to keep
more entirely to himself than his dislikes,
unless it is his likes. It’s generally
expensive to have either, but it’s
bankruptcy to tell about them. It’s all
right to say nothing about the dead but good, but
it’s better to apply the rule to the living,
and especially to the house which is paying your
salary.
Just one word
before I close, as old Doc Hoover used to say,
when he was coming into the stretch, but still a
good ways off from the benediction. I have notice
that you are inclined to be a little chesty and
starchy around the office. Of course, it’s
good business, when a fellow hasn’t much
behind his forehead, to throw out his chest and
attract attention to his shirt-front. But as you
begin to meet men who have done something that
makes them worth meeting you will find that there
are no "keep off the grass" or
"beware the dog" signs around their
premises, and that they don’t motion to the
orchestra to play slow music when they talk.
Superiority makes
every man feel its equal. It is courtesy without
condescension; affability without familiarity;
self-sufficiency without selfishness; simplicity
without snide. It weight sixteen ounces to the
pound without the package, and it doesn’t
need a four-colored label to make it go.
We are coming home
from here. I am a little disappointed in the
showing that this house has been making. Pound
for pound it is not getting nearly so much out of
its hogs are we are in Chicago. I don’t know
just where the leak is, but if they don’t do
better next month I am coming back here with a
shotgun, and there’s going to be a pretty
heavy mortality among our head men.
Your affectionate
father,
John Graham.
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