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THE

DIETETIC AND HYGIENIC GAZETTE

A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF PHYSIOLOGICAL MEDICINE

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The best antiseptic for purposes of personal hygiene

LISTERINE

Being efficiently antiseptic, non-poisonous and of agreeable odor and taste, Listerine has justly acquired much popularity as a mouth-wash, for daily use in the care and preservation of the teeth.

As an antiseptic wash or dressing for superficial wounds, cuts, bruises or abrasions, it may be applied in its full strength or diluted with one to three parts water; it also forms a useful application in simple disorders of the skin.

In all cases of fever, where the patient suffers so greatly from the parched condition of the mouth, nothing seems to afford so much relief as a mouth-wash made by adding a teaspoonful of Listerine to a glass of water, which may be used ad libitum.

As a gargle, spray or douche, Listerine solution, of suitable strength, is very valuable in sore throat and in catarrhal conditions of the mucous surfaces; indeed, the varied purposes for which Listerine may be successfully used stamps it as an invaluable article for the family medicine cabinet.

Special pamphlets on dental and general hygiene may be had upon request.

LAMBERT PHARMACAL COMPANY

LOCUST AND TWENTY-FIRST STREETS :: :: ST. LOUIS, MO.

AS A

VAGINAL Douche

CHINOSOL

(Accepted by the Council on Pharm. and Chem., A. M. A.)

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If mistaken for a "headache tablet", no tragedy can result.

Sample and Full Literature on Request.

CHINOSOL CO. PARMELE PHARMACAL CO.

54 SCUTH ST.. N. Y.

THE

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A really scientific efficiency will produce the best possible results all around, advantaging not only one factor in the economic scheme, but mutually every one and all. Any other kind of efficiency is spurious and not scientific; and will be found in the long run not to pay anybody concerned-employer, employee or middleman-nearly so well as scientific efficiency. The capabilities of any inanimate, inorganic machinery, such as is made of wood, metal, leather and so on, with the amount of finished product that can be got out of it in any given number of hours, can be mathematically gauged; the expense of running a plant, the cost of the raw material, the freightage and the like-such factors are easily estimated.

It is not so easy to gauge the capabilities of the organic, the man-machine which is the fundamental factor in the world's work; and yet any plan to secure mercantile efficiency that would claim to be scientific has got to take into serious and sympathetic account the nature and the capabilities of the sentient, the human machine.

It is a spurious and not a real efficiency which would tend to strain and overspeed and exhaust unduly the workman, either he who works the more with his brains or he who works mostly with his muscles. The fagged brain or muscle doesn't pay, because it is unreliable; and this in turn means wanton extravagance. It is economic waste to goad a tired mind or body beyond the normal limits.

The true scientific management will stop labor before fatigue reaches the stage of unreliability. And one must consider here, not only daily but also weekly exhaustion.

No. IV

A wholesome fatigue, which good food well enjoyed, and a good night's rest, will recuperate, is the natural (and the blessed) state of man; but exhaustion beyond the powers of recreation-which is re-creation (making over again) is unnatural and therefore economic folly. It is uneconomic, if nothing else, to have exhaustion increase progressively day by day and week by week, until the human machine must go before its time to the scrap heap; this is uneconomic for the employer, because the longer any man is on a job the more experienced he becomes; and an employee's experience is a business asset, well worth paying for.

Fatigue of the human machine is the cry of the builders for more material, when the supply has been depleted by successive effort. Every muscular movement is a chemical process manifested by heat, motion and perspiration. All combustion, whether vital or inorganic, is a chemical combination of atmospheric oxygen with the elements (food or coal) taken in the machine; in the one instance the body's discharges, in the other, ashes and clinkers are the residue of the burning. Forced draft will the sooner and the more wastefully consume the fuel and wear out the machine, no matter of what kind.

Laboratory experiments have shown the essential nature of this chemical process in the human machine, and its relation to fatigue. A muscle being stimulated, there is release of energy, part of which contracts the muscle, whilst the rest as heat, maintains the bodily temperature or is wasted in perspiration. Fatigue is due mainly to the waste products resulting from this chemical

reaction. Inject the extract of a fatigued muscle into an animal and it will show great prostration; but inject an extract of a non-fatigued muscle, and no languor at all is apparent. A fatigued muscle is one which, by reason of repeated contractions, has undergone much chemical change, with accumulated waste; and the waste, instead of being discharged, gets distributed through the blood all over the body. Thus soldiers, after an exhausting march, are just as arm tired as they are leg weary.

The role which accidents play comes in here: The best surety against industrial accidents is an alert mind and a virile body; on the other hand the ideal predisposition to accident is an exhausted, run-down, devitalized human machine. In Europe they have scientifically worked out the relation between fatigue and accidents; with the result that the latter have been reduced at least fifty per cent.

Bank clerks make most of their mistakes in the late afternoon; this is one of the

reasons why banks close early-the bankers have found their employees' mistakes too expensive. And every one knows what dreadful calamity results when railway men work continuously too many hours. A wise corporation, however selfish, will make its hours of labor of reasonable number; and indeed, it is most gratifying to observe that the essential parallelism of efficiency and humanity is being more and more appreciated throughout civilization.

Doctors, by the way, are oftentimes overworked; when this is so, the patient had best be content with the services of an assistant (or a confederate, as has been said); men who have in their keeping the health of human beings (the most precious thing in existence) must be assured rested minds in healthy bodies. The same consideration should be had for druggists; to err (with perhaps fatal results) in filling a prescription is indeed human; and hardly blameworthy in a man who must be at his desk more than half the twenty-four hours.

"LET THERE BE LIGHT."

"LET there be light;" also, let the light be placed so that it shall not glare, and be properly disposed in relation to shadows.

In the splendid campaign now on for the alleviation of occupational diseases and accidents the part taken by Mr. Leon Baster, founder and secretary of the Engineering Society of England and Editor of The Illuminating Engineer, is most worthy of appreciation.

Mr. Gaster insists first that light (whether natural or artificial) shall be sufficient for the work to be done. In Holland a minimum of illumination has been fixed for general work; and in trades especially trying to the eyes, such as jewelry, engraving, embroidering and the like, a minimum has been established. The British Government is requiring photometric measurements to be carried out in many factories, to the same end.

Sufficient light being forthcoming, the next problem is how to use it wisely. Factory lamps are oftentimes not sufficiently

shaded; and are placed so that they dazzle the eye and strain the vision. A man habitually using his eyes in strong light decomposes his "visual purple" faster than it can be regenerated. Besides, a constant, extreme fatiguing and painful muscular contraction is compelled. So the most lighted room is not always the best lighted. Very few modern illuminants are of sufficiently mild intensity to permit their use at close range. The old soft, mellow yellow candle or gas light, when there was sufficient of it, treated the human vision much more mercifully and benignantly. Powerful lamps must be screened by such well-designed reflectors as will both remove the glare, and direct the light, not upon the workman's eyes, but upon the object.

And lamps must be properly placed as to shadows. Not to one's right hand, for example, where it will shadow the sheet one wished to write upon, or the material the driller or cutter wishes to work upon. Here is a common defect in banks and offices;

and many an operative's hand and fingers have been mutilated by reason of the light casting a shadow of the head or body at work. In many shops the light falls on the floor (where it is wasted), rather than upon the tables, where the work is to be done. Dangerous machinery should ever be welllighted; it is worse than useless to place a guard about such machinery, if working it in semi-darkness invites maiming or even death.

Bad lighting headed the list of causes leading to accidents in a report of a metropolitan casualty company, in which it was. shown that when darkness set in early and artificial light had to be depended upon, the accident percentage rose progressively and became greatest in the darkest months. Throughout the year a relatively large proportion of accidents occur after four P. M. -the time when artificial light begins to be necessary. (No doubt the late afternoon fatigue is an additional factor in such accident-production.) A badly-lighted shop, moreover, will become dirty and unwhole

some.

And passages are oftentimes badly lighted so that workers stumble over obstacles; when one is carrying molten lead, for example, the matter becomes no trifle. Pretty nearly as bad is it to place a bright light in front of some obstacle; so that the latter shall be in shadow, whilst the light glares into the eyes of anyone approaching. A man walked off a platform and was killed, because his eyes were dazzled by a light set to prevent just such an accident. The normally functioning eye, like any other organ that is properly used, tends to

DR. Harvey W. Wiley recently declared in an address that we have, in America, the most abundant and palatable food in the world, and yet spoil more of it in the kitchen. than any or all other countries. Good food and good cooking are preventives of divorce. Who ever heard of divorce in rural France,

where the women know how to cook? You

increase in power and facility with right usage; if overstrained or ill-used it becomes progressively less and less able to do any work at all. This precious organ is really an expanded portion of the brain; more than that, the eye affects the working of other organs and is in turn affected by them. Insufficient eyesight is the cause of most chronic headaches, of some indigestions, and of many conditions of depression or fatigue. These are of course individual misfortunes; but the employer of labor is singularly blind to his own interests to imagine they do not affect him. Apart from humane considerations (which, despite pessimists, obtain generally in business), improper lighting is an economic loss for employers. In shops having insufficient or glarey lighting not so rapid work can be done, besides which the worker must

perforce turn out an inferior grade of

article.

The proper lighting of schools is of course vastly important. Education now being compulsory, parents have a right to demand that the children whom they send to school shall have their tender eyes safeguarded while studying. Besides, children contract incipient spinal curvature and other afflictions by having to twist themselves so that the light may fall properly upon their desks or the blackboard. Lighting in the home is also frequently faulty, the eyes being blinded, whilst the page is not illuminated as it should be.

America is the pioneer in illuminating engineering; yet even we it seems, have much to learn, and more still to put in practice, when it comes to the right kinds of artificial lighting.

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