To Your Good Health
By Paul G. Donohue, M.D.
Treating
Damaged Heart Valves
DEAR DR. DONOHUE:
I had a double heart bypass done seven years ago.
I have emphysema. Now I have three out of four
heart valves that are bad. My doctor says I need
surgery, but he wants to put it off as long as
possible because of my health. For the first time
in my life, I am scared of surgery.
What is the
function of heart valves? What causes them to go
bad? What types of replacement valves are
available? -- J.B.
ANSWER: The four
heart valves keep blood flowing in the right
direction from one heart chamber to the next, and
finally out of the heart. Serious valve problems
can happen to any of the four valves, but the two
valves most often affected are the aortic valve
and the mitral valve. The aortic valve prevents
blood from flowing back into the heart after the
left ventricle pumps it out. The mitral valve
prevents blood from flowing back into the left
atrium after it has filled the left ventricle.
Rheumatic fever
used to be the No. 1 cause of valve malfunction.
Aging is a big reason why valves fail.
Calcification of valves -- something that happens
throughout life -- is another reason for valve
trouble. Congenital valve anomalies are
responsible for valve breakdown, as are valve
infections.
Valves can become
too narrow -- stenosis -- which makes it
difficult for blood to flow through and out of
the heart. Or they can become leaky --
regurgitant -- which causes blood to flow back
into the chamber it just left.
Replacement valves
are mechanical, man-made devices; those fashioned
from pig or cow tissue; or ones constructed from
a patient’s own tissues. Valve surgery is
major surgery. Most do quite well. You should
too.
OLD GORGON
GRAHAM
More Letters from
a Self-Made
Merchant
to His Son
by George Horace
Lorimer
First Published
1903
From 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, at the Union Stock Yards.
No. 4
From John Graham, at the Hotel Cecil,
London, to his son, Pierrepont, at the Union
Stock Yards, Chicago. The old man has just
finished going through the young man’s first
report as manager of the lard department, and he
finds it suspiciously good.
IV
LONDON, December
1, 189-.
Dear Pierrepont:
Your first report; looks so good that I’m a
little afraid of it. Figures don’t lie, I
know, but that’s, only because they
can’t talk. As a matter of fact,
they’re just as truthful as the man
who’s behind them.
It’s been my
experience that there are two kinds of
figures--educated and uneducated ones--and that
the first are a good deal like the people who
have had the advantage of a college education on
the inside and the disadvantage of a society
finish on the outside--they’re apt to tell
you only the smooth and the pleasant things. Of
course, it’s mighty nice to be told that the
shine of your shirt-front is blinding the
floor-manager’s best girl; but if
there’s a hole in the seat of your pants you
ought to know that, too, because sooner or later
you’ve got to turn your back to the
audience.
Now don’t go
off half-cocked and think I’m allowing that
you ain’t truthful; because I think you
are--reasonably so--and I’m sure that
everything you say in your report is true. But is
there anything you don’t say in it?
A good many men
are truthful on the installment plan--that is,
they tell their boss all the good things in sight
about their end of the business and then dribble
out the bad ones like a fellow who’s giving
you a list of his debts. They’ll yell for a
week that the business of their department has
increased ten per cent., and then own up in a
whisper that their selling cost has increased
twenty. In the end, that always creates a worse
impression than if both sides of the story had
been told at once or the bad had been told first.
It’s like buying a barrel of apples
that’s been deaconed--after you’ve
found that the deeper you go the meaner and
wormier the fruit, you forget all about the layer
of big, rosy, wax-finished pippins which was on
top.
I never worry
about the side of a proposition that I can see;
what I want to get a look at is the side
that’s out of sight. The bugs always snuggle
down on the under side of the stone.
The best year we
ever had--in our minds--was one when the
superintendent of the packing-house wanted an
increase in his salary, and, to make a big
showing, swelled up his inventory like a poisoned
pup. It took us three months, to wake up to what
had happened, and a year to get over feeling as
if there was sand in our eyes when we compared
the second showing with the first. An optimist is
as bad as a drunkard when he comes to figure up
results in business--he sees double. I employ
optimists to get results and pessimists to figure
them up. After I’ve charged off in my
inventory for wear and tear and depreciation, I
deduct a little more just for luck--bad luck.
That’s the only sort of luck a merchant can
afford to make a part of his calculations. The
fellow who said you can’t make a silk purse
out of a sow’s ear wasn’t on to the
packing business. You can make the purse and you
can fill it, too, from the same critter. What you
can’t do is to load up a report with
moonshine or an inventory with wind, and get
anything more substantial than a moonlight sail
toward bankruptcy. The kittens of a wildcat are
wildcats, and there’s no use counting on
their being angoras.
Speaking of
educated pigs naturally calls to mind Jake
Solzenheimer and the lard that he sold half a
cent a pound cheaper than any one else in the
business could make it. That was a long time ago,
when the packing business was still on the
bottle, and when the hogs that came to Chicago
got only a common-school education and graduated
as plain hams and sides and lard and sausage.
Literature hadn’t hit the hog business then.
It was just Graham’s hams or Smith’s
lard, and there were no poetical brands or
high-art labels.
Well, sir, one day
I heard that this Jake was offering lard to the
trade at half a cent under the market, and that
he’d had the nerve to label it "Driven
Snow Leaf." Told me, when I ran up against
him on the street, that he’d got the name
from a song which began, "Once I was pure as
the driven snow." Said it made him feel all
choky and as if he wanted to be a better man, so
he’d set out to make the song famous in the
hope of its helping others. Allowed that this was
a hard world, and that it was little enough we
could do in our business life to scatter sunshine
along the way; but he proposed that every can
which left his packing-house after this should
carry the call to a better life into some humble
home.
I let him lug that
sort of stuff to the trough till he got tired,
and then I looked him square in the eye and went
right at him with:
"Jake, what
you been putting in that lard?" because I
knew mighty well that there was something in it
which had never walked on four feet and fattened
up on fifty-cent corn and then paid railroad fare
from the Missouri River to Chicago. There are a
good many things I don’t know, but hogs
ain’t one of them.
Jake just grinned
at me and swore that there was nothing in his
lard except the pure juice of the hog; so I quit
fooling with him and took a can of "Driven
Snow" around to our chemist. It looked like
lard and smelt like lard--in fact, it looked
better than real lard: too white and crinkly and
tempting on top. And the next day the chemist
came down to my office and told me that
"Driven Snow" must have been driven
through a candle factory, because it had picked
up about twenty per cent. of paraffin wax
somewhere.
Of course, I saw
now why Jake was able to undersell us all, but it
was mighty important to knock out "Driven
Snow" with the trade in just the right way,
because most of our best customers had loaded up
with it. So I got the exact formula from the
chemist and had about a hundred sample cans made
up, labeling each one "Wandering Boy Leaf
Lard," and printing on the labels:
"This lard contains twenty per cent. of
paraffin." I sent most of these cans, with
letters of instruction, to our men through the
country. Then I waited until it was Jake’s
time to be at the Live Stock Exchange, and
happened in with a can of "Wandering
Boy" under my arm. It didn’t take me
long to get into conversation with Jake, and as
we talked I swung that can around until it
attracted his attention, and he up and asked:
"What you got
there, Graham?"
"Oh,
that," I answered, slipping the can behind
my back--"that’s a new lard we’re
putting out--something not quite so expensive as
our regular brand." Jake stopped grinning
then and gave me a mighty sharp look.
"Lemme have a
squint at it," says he, trying not to show
too keen an interest in his face.
I held back a
little; then I said: "Well, I don’t
just know as I ought to show you this. We
haven’t regularly put it on the market, and
this can ain’t a fair sample of what we can
do; but so long as I sort of got the idea from
you I might as well tell you. I’d been
thinking over what you said about that lard of
yours, and while they were taking a collection in
church the other day the soprano up and sings a
mighty touching song. It began, ‘Where is my
wandering boy to-night?’ and by the time she
was through I was feeling so mushy and sobby that
I put a five instead of a one into the plate by
mistake. I’ve been thinking ever since that
the attention of the country ought to be called
to that song, and so I’ve got up this
missionary lard"; and I shoved the can of
"Wandering Boy" under his eyes, giving
him time to read the whole label.
"H--l!"
he said.
"Yes," I
answered; "that’s it. Good lard gone
wrong; but it’s going to do a great
work."
Jake’s face
looked like the Lost Tribes--the whole bunch of
‘em--as the thing soaked in; and then he ran
his arm through mine and drew me off into a
corner.
"Graham,"
said he, "let’s drop this cussed
foolishness. You keep dark about this and
we’ll divide the lard trade of the
country."
I pretended not to
understand what he was driving at, but reached
out and grasped his hand and wrung it. "Yes,
yes, Jake," I said; "we’ll stand
shoulder to shoulder and make the lard business
one grand sweet song," and then I choked him
off by calling another fellow into the
conversation. It hardly seemed worth while to
waste time telling Jake what he was going to find
out when he got back to his office--that there
wasn’t any lard business to divide, because
I had hogged it all.
You see, my
salesmen had taken their samples of
"Wandering Boy" around to the buyers
and explained that it was made from the same
formula as "Driven Snow," and could be
bought at the same price. They didn’t sell
any "Boy," of course--that wasn’t
the idea; but they loaded up the trade with our
regular brand, to take the place of the
"Driven Snow," which was shipped back
to Jake by the car-lot.
Since then, when
anything looks too snowy and smooth and good at
the first glance, I generally analyze it for
paraffin. I’ve found that this is a mighty
big world for a square man and a mighty small
world for a crooked one.
I simply mention
these things in a general way. I’ve
confidence that you’re going to make good as
head of the lard department, and if, when I get
home, I find that your work analyzes seventy-five
per cent, as pure as your report I shall be
satisfied. In the meanwhile I shall instruct the
cashier to let you draw a hundred dollars a week,
just to show that I haven’t got a case of
faith without works. I reckon the extra
twenty-five per will come in mighty handy now
that you’re within a month of marrying
Helen.
I’m still
learning how to treat an old wife, and so I
can’t give you many pointers about a young
one. For while I’ve been married as long as
I’ve been in business, and while I know all
the curves of the great American hog, your
ma’s likely to spring a new one on me
tomorrow. No man really knows anything about
women except a widower, and he forgets it when he
gets ready to marry again. And no woman really
knows anything about men except a widow, and
she’s got to forget it before she’s
willing to marry again. The one thing you can
know is that, as a general proposition, a woman
is a little better than the man for whom she
cares. For when a woman’s bad, there’s
always a man at the bottom of it; and when a
man’s good, there’s always a woman at
the bottom of that, too.
The fact of the
matter is, that while marriages may be made in
heaven, a lot of them are lived in hell and end
in South Dakota. But when a man has picked out a
good woman he holds four hearts, and he
needn’t be afraid to draw cards if he’s
got good nerve. If he hasn’t, he’s got
no business to be sitting in games of chance. The
best woman in the world will begin trying out a
man before she’s been married to him
twenty-four hours; and unless he can smile over
the top of a four-flush and raise the ante,
she’s going to rake in the breeches and keep
them.
The great thing is
to begin right. Marriage is a close corporation,
and unless a fellow gets the controlling interest
at the start he can’t pick it up later. The
partner who owns fifty-one per cent. of the stock
in any business is the boss, even if the other is
allowed to call himself president. There’s
only two jobs for a man in his own
house--one’s boss and the other’s
office-boy, and a fellow naturally falls into the
one for which he’s fitted.
Of course, when I
speak of a fellow’s being boss in his own
home, I simply mean that, in a broad way,
he’s going to shape the policy of the
concern. When a man goes sticking his nose into
the running of the house, he’s apt to get it
tweaked, and while he’s busy drawing it back
out of danger he’s going to get his leg
pulled, too. You let your wife tend to the
housekeeping and you focus on earning money with
which she can keep house. Of course, in one way,
it’s mighty nice of a man to help around the
place, but it’s been my experience that the
fellows who tend to all the small jobs at home
never get anything else to tend to at the office.
In the end, it’s usually cheaper to give all
your attention to your business and to hire a
plumber.
You don’t
want to get it into your head, though, that
because your wife hasn’t any office-hours
she has a soft thing. A lot of men go around
sticking out their chests and wondering why their
wives have so much trouble with the help, when
they are able to handle their clerks so easy. If
you really want to know, you lift two of your men
out of their revolving-chairs, and hang one over
a forty-horse-power cook-stove that’s
booming along under forced draft so that your
dinner won’t be late, with a turkey
that’s gobbling for basting in one oven, and
a cake that’s gone back on you in a low,
underhand way in another, and sixteen different
things boiling over on top and mixing up their
smells. And you set the other at a twelve-hour
stunt of making all the beds you’ve mussed,
and washing all the dishes you’ve used, and
cleaning all the dust you’ve kicked up, and
you boss the whole while the baby yells with
colic over your arm--you just try this with two
of your men and see how long it is before
there’s rough-house on the Wabash. Yet a lot
of fellows come home after their wives have had a
day of this and blow around about how tired and
overworked they are, and wonder why home
isn’t happier. Don’t you ever forget
that it’s a blamed sight easier to keep cool
in front of an electric fan than a cook-stove,
and that you can’t subject the best temper
in the world to 500 degrees Fahrenheit without
warming it up a bit. And don’t you add to
your wife’s troubles by saying how much
better you could do it, but stand pat and thank
the Lord you’ve got a snap.
I sail to-morrow.
I’m feeling in mighty good spirits, and I
hope I’m not going to find anything at your
end of the line to give me a relapse.
Your affectionate
father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
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