Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/389

Rh The best way to learn this game is to play it. There is such a wealth of opportunity that after the work is once commenced, organization and development will soon follow.

Probably the most important and direct way to benefit the policyholder, and—by force of example—the public at large, is through a system of free, annual, medical examinations, for the purpose of detecting disease or disease-tendencies at the earliest possible moment. This principle of periodic inspection or examination, which seems so radical as applied to man, is accepted as commonplace when applied to the institutions or machines employed by him, such as banks, insurance companies, steam-boilers, elevators, life-preservers, etc., none of which can compare with the human organism in value, complexity or capacity for going wrong. Why not examine the human machine every year? Is there any important objection, except man's silly, subconscious feeling that he is a thing apart from the rest of nature. The bacillus typhosus has no such illusions regarding mams apartness, and, however difficult it may be to apply the law of the conservation of energy to man's mental processes, there is no doubt but that it applies to his body, and that the violation of physical and physiological laws is followed by damage and degeneration which are not always manifest until they are beyond the power of science to repair. Many a life has been saved by the warning of incipient disease gained through a life-insurance examination. Why should such benefits be casual instead of systematic?

So much for theory. In a modest way, the company with which I have the honor to be associated has for several years been trying out these theories in the laboratory of practical business experience. Our Health Bureau was established in 1909, and has covered the following activities: periodical bulletins have been issued, dealing with such subjects as the causation of degenerative affections of the heart, blood vessels and kidneys; affections of the nose, throat and lungs, with preventive measures; hygiene of the eye; dental and oral hygiene; obesity and its prevention; drug addiction; physiological effects of alcohol and tobacco; causation and prevention of typhoid, yellow fever, malaria, pneumonia, etc.; increase in the death-rate from cancer, and how to meet it by general and surgical methods; courage as a health-asset; diet-hints; summer and winter hygiene, etc. Statistical pamphlets, addresses, etc., have been issued, showing the increase and decrease in mortality from various diseases, and practical lessons have been drawn therefrom. Many thousands of such monographs have been distributed to boards of health, schools, colleges and other centers of social influence. The privilege of free annual medical examination has been extended to policyholders since 1909. Although less than 10 per cent, of the policyholders have annually availed themselves of this privilege, the results more than justify the company's action. Forty per cent, of the risks examined were found impaired, as some misinterpreted the system as an