Public health is purchaseable. Within natural limitations SOCIAL SERVICE WORK OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH. PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH NEW YORK, N. Y. 149 CENTRE STREET Bureau of General Administration Sanitary Bureau .... Bureau of Records Bureau of Preventable Diseases Bureau of Hospitals Bureau of Laboratories HAVEN EMERSON, M. D. ..JOHN S. BILLINGS, M. D. .Director, EUGENE W. SCHEFFER ..Acting Sanitary Superintendent, ALONZO BLAuvelt, M. D. Bureau of Food and Drugs Bureau of Child Hygiene Bureau of Public Health Education ... Registrar, WM. H. GUILFOY, M. D. Acting Director, B. H. WATERS, M. D. Director, R. J. WILSON, M. D. Director, Wм. H. PARK, M. D. .... Director, LUCIUS P. BROWN Director, S. JOSEPHINE BAKER, M. D. Director, CHARLES F. BOLDUAN, M. D. OF THE Department of Health of the City of New York All communications relating to the publications of the Department of Health should be addressed to the Commissioner of Health, 149 Centre St., N. Y. Entered as second class matter May 7, 1913, at the post office at New York, N. Y.. under the Act of August 24, 1912. Vol. VI. NEW YORK, JANUARY, 1916. No. 1 THE PERIODIC MEDICAL EXAMINATION. As Applied to Employes of the Department of Health. By Maude Glasgow, M. D., Examiner. By affording their policy-holders a free, careful, scientific medical examination annually, Life Insurance Companies have demonstrated the value of the periodic medical examination. This expensive attention bestowed on the insured is devoid of all sentiment and rests on a sound business basis, for it is the outcome of knowledge gleaned with painstaking care from statistics, which show that men die not so much by the will of God as from their own ignorance. At the present time the strange mortality of middle life casts a shadow on the otherwise shining page of sanitary achievement. The congestion of population with the fierce competition and distractions of the age necessitate a change in the habits and customs we have carried over from less strenuous times. The individual often needs protection from himself, and against the inertia of longestablished customs and habits which are no longer in harmony with an altered environment. He needs the education made possible by the researches of science, and the wisdom that results from a knowledge patiently and intelligently gathered from many sources. The public, too, needs enlightenment on a question so vital to its own interests. It should be taught to appreciate the value of the recurring medical examination to know that human life is not only greatly extensible, but that individual well-being and physical efficiency can be vastly increased by devoting the requisite attention to sanitary reforms. Public opinion must be developed so that it will not haltingly accept or ignorantly reject, but will eagerly seek the advantage to be derived from the annual medical examination. Even a slight departure from the normal may mean the beginning of disease, and the medical examination provides the opportunity to warn the patient to seek appropriate treatment before the impairment in health is too great to preclude hope of recovery. Many maladies develop so insidiously that only careful and repeated examinations will disclose their presence, and disease once firmly established almost inevitably progresses unless suitable treatment is instituted. It is usually the most enlightened and intelligent who adopt such new measures as the repeated medical examination, while their weaker and less capable brethren resist and oppose without reason those innovations they dread without knowing why. In an address recently delivered by Health Commissioner Emerson, he said that the cure of disease was admitted as possible in but few instances that cure frequently means but the relief of symptoms, but he pointed out, prevention is possible, and is based on sound scientific principles. The Commissioner |