Health Periodicals
Daily Observer
Health Periodicals Helpful
S.Q.
Lapius handed me the list. “Here,
Harry. Mail off checks to the following
publications. The renewals to my
subscribed medical journals.”
I
perused the column of names and suddenly stopped. Wedged into the list, which included Lancet,
the Archives of Internal Medicine, the
“Simon,
what’s the Reader’s Digest doing here? A
spoof, no doubt?”
“On
the contrary, Harry, I use that to find out what my patients are reading. For months I have observed that patients
would ask questions in clusters. One
month it would be about liver disease, another about pulmonary function and so
forth. Some of the questions were fairly
sophisticated. It was all a puzzle till
I had a sore tooth.”
“You
have lost me,” I said.
“The
tooth ached like the dickens. I was
forced to visit my dentist. There was a
long wait, which gave me a chance to catch up on six months worth of Reader’s
Digest issues, and there I solved the mystery.”
“I’m
breathless,” I told him.
“Well,
you see they usually have an article on some medical thing or other. One fellow, what’s his name, Radcliffe or
something keeps writing about the different organs of the body. Has a gimmick – writes about the different
organs in the first person. I am Joe’s
liver, I am Joe’s lung and so forth.”
“Has
he done one on I am Joe’s ovary yet?”
“As
a matter of fact, no. But I think he’s
running out of organs. Anyway this month
the Digest had a real winner. How to
Survive a Heart Attack. I was wondering
what was going on. All my patients kept
asking me about EWS. I couldn’t imagine
what they were talking about. But the
article clarified the matter.”
“So
clarify it for me. What is EWS?”
“EWS
means Early Warning Signs, and refers to early warning signs of an impending
heart attack or one that is actually in progress.”
“What
happens. Does a light go on?”
“You
are droll tonight, aren’t you Harry? No,
but Dr. Glen O. Turner of Springfield, Ohio felt that if patients could
recognize the early signs of heart attack they would get to the hospital in
time to be protected against the arrhythmias that prove fatal so often during
the first hours of the attack. After all
if patients can be brought over the hump of the first few days, the outlook is
quite good. The heart will heal. But the danger is that the electrical system
of the heart is highly sensitized during the early hours of the attack, and
fatal in-coordinate heart rhythms can occur.”
“Simon,”
I interrupted, “You are lecturing me as if I was a high school student. I am a doctor, remember?”
“Oh
– sorry, Harry I got carried away.” “You
should be carried away,” I groused.
“Actually
I have been asked to address the high school students on this subject, and I
guess I was practicing a little. I’m
pleased to know that I reached you, Harry.
But it wouldn’t hurt you to climb off your high horse once in a while
and read the lay periodicals. For
instance, do you have any idea how many Americans will die of heart attacks
this year?”
“About
50,000 and one.” I said looking at him
malevolently.
“Wrong.” Lapius paid no attention to my death
stare. “About 650,000. And about 50,000 or almost ten percent of
these deaths could be prevented by early hospital treatment and surveillance in
a Coronary Care Unit.”
I
had to admit that they were impressive statistics. I was a little abashed that my guess had been
so far off. But I knew I wasn’t going to
go around reading the Reader’s Digest.
Lapius started foraging in the hall closet for his coat.
“Where
to now?” I asked.
“A
meeting of the
“Donating
your heart to some hapless individual?”
“No,
Harry. They haven’t asked me to do any
such thing. But they did ask me to help
plan for the Voluntary Screening Examination that they will conduct on
“A
what?”
“An
early-early warning system.”
“Nonsense. The whole effort is simply a drop in the
bucket.”
“Perhaps,”
said Lapius. “But it does get people
thinking about community health and gets them used to working together
voluntarily for community causes. They develop
an awareness of the facilities available in the community, and hopefully its
shortcomings too.”
“Well,
Simon,” I told him, “You can spend your time being a do-gooder and
social-service buff, but I’ve got some studying to do.”
Lapius
left without another word. I gave him a
ten minute head start and shot out the door.
He didn’t know it but I was chairman of the meeting he was going to
attend. They way he drives a car, I bet
I get there before him.