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1-SHE MAKES HER PATIENT CLEAN AND COMFORTABLE. 2-SHE ORDERS PROPER CARE AND FEEDING FOR MOTHER AND BABY. 3-SHE MAKES HER BAG CLEAN AND ORDERLY BEFORE LEAVING. 4-SHE CARES FOR MOTHER AND BABY DAILY FOR NINE DAYS, ORDERING PROPER FOOD FOR MOTHER, AND REGULAR BREAST FEEDING FOR BABY.

Personal Accounting as a Factor to Success

ALICE M. SMITH. M.D.

Personal accounting, in the opinion of the writer, is a short-cut to judgment, efficiency, and good citizenship. By studying our balance-sheets we are better able to determine our assets and liabilities and our chances to win or loose the goal of our ambitions.

In the opening of this personal account. between ourselves and Society, we should first consider our heredity and financial advantages as Assets and our personal handicaps as Liabilities and in finding the Trial Balance assume that our assets are good for face value and, therefore, give our special attention to our chances to overcome all handicaps or to turn them into assets.

Life being a process of adjustment-the brain and nervous system forming its mechanism and health a condition of perfect adjustment, it naturally follows that any interference with these conditions to the extent of producing disease and changes in one's personality, or "Makeup," which represents our mode of adjustment to our environment-it logically follows that our success or failure is the result of the adjustment of our personalities to Society.

We know through observation and experience that certain impulses produce definite reactions by which means our education and judgments are acquired, for which reason it is well occasionally to pause and take stock of our assets and liabilities as a guide to our further activities.

At the outset of our careers we should find Religion, of inestimable value as a source of inspiration, moral strength, consolation, and poise, all of which tends to preserve our sanity in times of stress and for that reason becomes a powerful asset to strengthen our mental force because of the

let during great emotional upheavals and thereby enable us to maintain a nice balance with the other verities of life; hence, we must not let our religious convictions degenerate into a mere superstitious form of church-worship, for which reason, in selecting our Creed, we should be guided by its results among the masses of its followers and note whether it promotes good-fellowship, education, morality, justice, temperance, loyalty, in short, all those forces included in good-citizenship, because any system of ethics or dogma that establishes. these principles of conduct in the lives of the great majority of its believers is eminently worth while, whereas, any Creed which fails to produce these results among its followers is ultimately dangerous not only to the individual but to the nation.

Irreligion is a definite liability in that it robs our minds of the soothing and sustaining power which a sincere belief in an Allwise and Protecting Providence gives, hence, there is more liability of interference with the mechanism of adjustment of the brain and nervous system and the development of some physical or mental disorder as a natural sequence to our inevitable periods of stress.

Health is the second asset of importance and, in inverse ratio, disease becomes a serious liability. Morality, temperance, and hygiene are the best forms of life insurance to maintain health; whereas, vice, intemperance, and bad hygiene are absolute liabilities to disease.

Education-if combined with sagacity, resolution, industry, economy, and goodbreeding are tremendous potential business assets; but ignorance, stolidity, irresolution, selfishness, indolence, wastefulness, and churlishness are liabilities insuring almost

Appearance as to neatness and smartness but not the extremes of fashion is universally recognized as both a business and a social asset; whereas untidiness, outlandishness, or extremes of style are repellant to the fastidious and must be classed as liabilities. Appearance as to conduct is also essential. "Avoid the appearance of evil" is as great an asset today as when the words were first uttered. Though innocent of evil, yet if appearances are against us, we may be misjudged and our advancement and reputation blasted past reparation. As professional women, we owe other women the precept and example of right-living and faithfulness to duty. If we do not exercise self-control we are not fitted to govern others. Any one may yield to temptationthe heroic conquers self and others nearly as much by the moral force displayed as by good judgment and strategy.

Manner betrays our essential mode of adjustment. Are we frank and genial in our intercourse with people, yet deliberately cautious in matters of personal and business affairs requiring discrimination, loyalty, secretiveness, and the courage to keep faith with friend or foe and are we possessed of the requisite tact to disarm suspicion? If so, we have assets of sterling value to the business world. If, however, we are unnecessarily secretive and cold, lack love for our family or fellow-citizens, or are rashly careless in our discussion of personal and business affairs, should we prove indiscreet and disloyal to a trust, or through moral cowardice wilfully betray a confidencewhich does not involve high treason murder-then we are heaping up liabilities against our future success.

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Are we humane in our dealings with others, magnanimous with our enemies, honest with ourselves and with others? Do we remember our obligations and discharge them as we would our personal debts? Are we truthful or non-commital? Do we plan to the future and anticipate business opportunities and social transfor

mations? Are we thrifty-always maintaining our standards of efficiency on the highest plane and the smallest expenditure of our incomes until assured of a competency for life, when we become liberal without ostentatious display of generosity? If so, we have assets to spare in our final summing up for our trial balance-sheet; if not, are we cruel, ignobly taking advantage of our position to demonstrate our power over our inferiors or our enemies and dishonest for selfish advancement or gain? Do we accept obligations indiscriminately and straightway forget them? Are we liars making mischief for others that we may further our own base ends? Do we so mismanage our affairs that the turn of events finds us unprepared for the emergencies of life? Are we so avaricious that we are dishonest in the little as well as in the big things of life, even to the lowering of our standards to point where health must suffer through our niggardliness? Do we make misers of ourselves and glory in our meanness? If so, we have piled up insurmountable difficulties and liabilities.

Do we reckon with certainty in business. and take a fair and honest chance only after having estimated our assets and our liabilities and reaching a decision that our balancesheets total largely in favor of success, or do we gamble in uncertainties and with. such a load of liabilities as must inevitably

end in failure?

Finally, only when we learn to be fair to ourselves and others in our estimation of assets and liabilities shall we grow in the strength, judgment, and resourcefulness necessary to turn our liabilities into assets and thus through the discovery of our weaknesses and faulty modes of adjustment to Society be enabled through re-education to overcome our faults and record a satisfactory balance-sheet. Let us be honest with ourselves, because it is good to think respectfully of the one person from whom we can

not be separated save by death.

The American Red Cross Health Center; What It Is and How It Functions

First Article:

It was a long step from the forest where, through superstitious fear, the savage abandoned the sick, to the inn where the Good Samaritan brought the dying stranger because he had compassion on him. It was another long step from the inn of compassion to the modern hospital where spiritual compassion is happily blended with scientific medical skill.

Now an institution is in process of development in this country which, it is hoped, will mark as important an advance in the ethical and physical progress of mankind as did the hospital. This institution is the Health Center where the preservation of health rather than the cure of disease is the sole object of its program of procedure and activities.

Medical science has helped to develop compassion into something much more broad and comprehensive. It has helped compassion, primarily aroused by individual suffering, to enlarge its scope and to expand into the all-embracing sense of social responsibility. Compassion dictates the tender care and a skillful treatment of the sick, a well developed sense of social responsibility dictates that every means be employed to prevent such sickness and suffering.

Scientific medical research has brought to light the causes of many diseases and has discovered the means of prevention of and protection against not a few of them. Health and sanitary laws to enforce prevention and protection principally with reference to communicable diseases have been enacted in consequence. Public health departments have been created to enforce these laws. Many private health organizations have come into existence, each attacking

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in some specialized health activity.

The American Red Cross has definitely decided upon health service as its principal peace-time activity. In line with the League of Red Cross Societies, it has adopted the following health service program:

(a) To stimulate and maintain interest in public health work.

(b) To support and, if need be, supplement the work of government agencies.

(c) To disseminate useful knowledge concerning health through demonstrations, education and otherwise.

The American Red Cross has decided that it can best carry out this health service program through the medium of the Health Center. This decision was arrived at largely upon recommendations of leading health experts in the United States. The health service of the American Red Cross, then, is chiefly concerned with the establishment of Red Cross Health Centers in this country.

The American Red Cross takes a general practical interest in the problems of disease prevention and health preservation as a whole. It is not exclusively interested in combating any one disease. It does not center its attention on any one group of people. It desires to be of practical and effective service to all the people and to all the health interests of any community. It is ready to act only in response to the demands of the social sense of any community. The establishment of a Red Cross Health Center is a matter for local determination by the Red Cross Chapter or Branch, and it is never imposed upon any community by either a Divisional or the National Head

The Red Cross Health Center is just what its name implies-a voluntary local health agency established, maintained and operated by the Red Cross Chapter or Branch. It does not attempt to treat or to cure disease; hence, it is not a hospital. It does not give out any drugs; hence, it is not a dispensary. It is not solely or primarily interested even in the diagnosis of disease; hence, the Red Cross Health Center is not merely a clinic or a collection of clinics.

The Red Cross Health Center is a separate and distinct health promotion agency. Its primary function is to teach well people how to keep well. It gives out information on how people should prevent disease, how they should protect themselves and others against disease, when they should avail themselves of medical advice and treatment. The Red Cross Health Center is for the physical life and development of folks what the church is for their spiritual life and development, and the school for their mental life and development. The Red Cross Health Center promotes a healthy environment and a healthy body, the basic material for a healthy mind and a healthy spirit.

The organization of Red Cross health service has been welcomed as a stimulating, supplementing and coordinating influence in the public health field. If it is ever to become such a potent influence, it can become so only by undertaking health work in its most elementary forms, by using the simplest means and methods that will interest and inspire because of their very simplicity, by performing the most obvious tasks that are usually overlooked because they are. SO obvious.

The rules of personal hygiene are simple rules. The methods of prevention and protection are simple methods. The people who need to learn these rules and methods should be treated simply as folks. The health forces that are to work together in any community should simply work to

gether. Health work should be play work, play work should be team work. Health work should be a pleasant, exhilarating exercise. Health work should be healthy work.

The Red Cross Health Center is a simple institution teaching simple things in simple language by simple methods. It proceeds upon the belief that no normal person deliberately chooses to be weak or sick, or to die an untimely death; that no normal person wants his children, relatives, friends and neighbors to be weak, or sick, or to die an untimely death. It believes that people naturally want to be well, strong and happy, and that they want their children to be hale and hearty. It believes, therefore, that as people have learned to appreciate the value of doctors, drug stores, and hospitals, so they will learn to appreciate the value of health centers.

It

The Red Cross Health Center deals in health as a commodity that can be bought and sold. It is a health business that has learned many of the trade secrets of the modern live-wire merchant who, in spite of the severest competition, manages to carry on a thriving business. The health center, like the merchant, carefully selects its business location. It chooses people (director. advisors and others) who believe in this health business, who have the kind of personality that will please customers. scours the markets for the best quality of goods (health literature) in which it has the fullest confidence and which it can highly recommend to its customers. It advertises its goods by all legitimate means that are effective (newspaper stories, announcements, dodgers, window cards, bulletin boards, mile posts, health films, talks and lectures). It displays its goods (health exhibits and demonstrations) to the best advantage. It keeps its window trimmed in the most attractive and pleasing manner, changing or rearranging the window display from time to time in order that it may be a constant attraction to passers by.

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