To Your Good Health
By Paul G. Donohue, M.D.
1 in 4 Heart
Attacks Produce No Pain
DEAR DR. DONOHUE:
Please answer some heart attack questions for me.
I can’t find the answers. Is it possible to
have a heart attack and not know it? What’s
going on when a heart attack happens? What’s
considered standard treatment? -- P.R.
ANSWER: A heart
attack takes place when there’s an
obstruction of blood flow in an artery serving a
particular area of heart muscle. It’s when
plaque ruptures. Plaque is a mound of
cholesterol, fat, protein, platelets, white blood
cells and other material that clings to the walls
of arteries. Some plaque is called
"vulnerable." It is covered by a
fragile coat that tears easily. When the tear
occurs, the body attempts to repair it by
covering it with a clot. The clot grows and
completely occludes the artery. The heart muscle
that is deprived of blood dies. That’s a
heart attack.
Usually a person
having a heart attack feels crushing or squeezing
pain in the left chest. Pain can radiate from the
chest to the neck, jaw, teeth, shoulders, arms or
the back. In older people, pain is often less
intense, and they might complain of suddenly
feeling very short of breath or of feeling quite
dizzy.
In as many as
one-quarter of victims, regardless of age, there
is no pain, or, if there is, it is so minor that
people dismiss it.
Standard treatment
of a heart attack is the administration of
clot-preventing drugs like aspirin and heparin.
Oxygen, morphine and medicines to raise blood
pressure are given as needed. Then a decision is
made about using clot-busting medications or
arranging for immediate angioplasty. Angioplasty
is the procedure where a catheter -- a flexible,
soft tube -- is passed into the clotted-off heart
artery from an artery in the groin. When the clot
site is reached, a balloon at the catheter tip is
inflated to smash the clot.
LETTERS from
a SELF-MADE
MERCHANT
to his SON.
by George Horace
Lorimer
First published October,
1902
Being the Letters
written by John Graham, Head of the House of
Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago,
familiarly known on ‘Change as "Old
Gorgon Graham," to his Son, Pierrepont,
facetiously known to his intimates as
"Piggy."
No.15
FROM John Graham, at the
Union Stock Yards in Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, at The Scrub Oaks, Spring Lake,
Michigan. Mr. Pierrepont has been promoted again,
and the old man sends him a little advice with
his appointment.
XV
CHICAGO, September
1, 189-
Dear Pierrepont: I
judge from yours of the twenty-ninth that you
must have the black bass in those parts pretty
well terrorized. I never could quite figure it
out, but there seems to be something about a fish
that makes even a cold-water deacon see double. I
reckon it must be that while Eve was learning the
first principles of dressmaking from the snake,
Adam was off bass fishing and keeping his end up
by learning how to lie.
Don’t
overstock yourself with those four-pound fish
yarns, though, because the boys have been
bringing them back from their vacations till
we’ve got enough to last us for a year of
Fridays. And if you’re sending them to keep
in practice, you might as well quit, because
we’ve decided to take you off the road when
you come back, and make you assistant manager of
the lard department. The salary will be fifty
dollars a week, and the duties of the position to
do your work so well that the manager can’t
run the department without you, and that you can
run the department without the manager.
To do this you
will have to know lard; to know yourself; and to
know those under you. To some fellows lard is
just hog fat, and not always that, if they would
rather make a dollar to-day than five to-morrow.
But it was a good deal more to Jack Summers, who
held your new job until we had to promote him to
canned goods.
Jack knew lard
from the hog to the frying pan; was up on lard in
history and religion; originated what he called
the "Ham and" theory, proving that
Moses’ injunction against pork must have
been dissolved by the Circuit Court, because Noah
included a couple of shoats in his cargo, and
called one of his sons Ham, out of gratitude,
probably, after tasting a slice broiled for the
first time; argued that all the great nations
lived on fried food, and that America was the
greatest of them all, owing to the
energy-producing qualities of pie, liberally
shortened with lard.
It almost broke
Jack’s heart when we decided to manufacture
our new cottonseed oil product, Seedoiline. But
on reflection he saw that it just gave him an
extra hold on the heathen that he couldn’t
convert to lard, and he started right out for the
Hebrew and vegetarian vote. Jack had enthusiasm,
and enthusiasm is the best shortening for any
job; it makes heavy work light.
A good many young
fellows envy their boss because they think he
makes the rules and can do as he pleases. As a
matter of fact, he’s the only man in the
shop who can’t. He’s like the fellow on
the tight-rope--there’s plenty of scenery
under him and lots of room around him, but
he’s got to keep his feet on the wire all
the time and travel straight ahead.
A clerk has just
one boss to answer to--the manager. But the
manager has just as many bosses as he has clerks
under him. He can make rules, but he’s the
only man who can’t afford to break them now
and then. A fellow is a boss simply because
he’s a better man than those under him, and
there’s a heap of responsibility in being
better than the next fellow.
No man can ask
more than he gives. A fellow who can’t take
orders can’t give them. If his rules are too
hard for him to mind, you can bet they are too
hard for the clerks who don’t get half so
much for minding them as he does. There’s no
alarm clock for the sleepy man like an early
rising manager; and there’s nothing breeds
work in an office like a busy boss.
Of course, setting
a good example is just a small part of a
manager’s duties. It’s not enough to
settle yourself firm on the box seat--you must
have every man under you hitched up right and
well in hand. You can’t work individuals by
general rules. Every man is a special case and
needs a special pill.
When you fix up a
snug little nest for a Plymouth Rock hen and
encourage her with a nice porcelain egg, it
doesn’t always follow that she has reached
the fricassee age because she doesn’t lay
right off. Sometimes she will respond to a little
red pepper in her food.
I don’t mean
by this that you ever want to drive your men,
because the lash always leaves its worst soreness
under the skin. A hundred men will forgive a blow
in the face where one will a blow to his
self-esteem. Tell a man the truth about himself
and shame the devil if you want to, but you
won’t shame the man you’re trying to
reach, because he won’t believe you. But if
you can start him on the road that will lead him
to the truth he’s mighty apt to try to
reform himself before any one else finds him out.
Consider carefully
before you say a hard word to a man, but never
let a chance to say a good one go by. Praise
judiciously bestowed is money invested.
Never learn
anything about your men except from themselves. A
good manager needs no detectives, and the fellow
who can’t read human nature can’t
manage it. The phonograph records of a
fellow’s character are lined in his face,
and a man’s days tell the secrets of his
nights.
Be slow to hire
and quick to fire. The time to discover
incompatibility of temper and curl-papers is
before the marriage ceremony. But when you find
that you’ve hired the wrong man, you
can’t get rid of him too quick. Pay him an
extra month, but don’t let him stay another
day. A discharged clerk in the office is like a
splinter in the thumb--a centre of soreness.
There are no exceptions to this rule, because
there are no exceptions to human nature.
Never threaten,
because a threat is a promise to pay that it
isn’t always convenient to meet, but if you
don’t make it good it hurts your credit.
Save a threat till you’re ready to act, and
then you won’t need it. In all your
dealings, remember that to-day is your
opportunity; to-morrow some other fellow’s.
Keep close to your
men. When a fellow’s sitting on top of a
mountain he’s in a mighty dignified and
exalted position, but if he’s gazing at the
clouds, he’s missing a heap of interesting
and important doings down in the valley. Never
lose your dignity, of course, but tie it up in
all the red tape you can find around the office,
and tuck it away in the safe. It’s easy for
a boss to awe his clerks, but a man who is feared
to his face is hated behind his back. A competent
boss can move among his men without having to
draw an imaginary line between them, because they
will see the real one if it exists.
Besides keeping in
touch with your office men, you want to feel your
salesmen all the time. Send each of them a letter
every day so that they won’t forget that we
are making goods for which we need orders; and
insist on their sending you a line every day,
whether they have anything to say or not. When a
fellow has to write in six times a week to the
house, he uses up his explanations mighty fast,
and he’s pretty apt to hustle for business
to make his seventh letter interesting.
Right here I want
to repeat that in keeping track of others and
their faults it’s very, very important that
you shouldn’t lose sight of your own.
Authority swells up some fellows so that they
can’t see their corns; but a wise man tries
to cure his own while remembering not to tread on
his neighbors’.
In this
connection, the story of Lemuel Hostitter, who
kept the corner grocery in my old town, naturally
comes to mind. Lem was probably the meanest man
in the State of Missouri, and it wasn’t any
walk-over to hold the belt in those days. Most
grocers were satisfied to adulterate their coffee
with ground peas, but Lem was so blamed mean that
he adulterated the peas first. Bought
skin-bruised hams and claimed that the bruise was
his private and particular brand, stamped in the
skin, showing that they were a fancy article,
packed expressly for his fancy family trade. Ran
a soda-water fountain in the front of his store
with home-made syrups that ate the lining out of
the children’s stomachs, and a blind tiger
in the back room with moonshine whiskey that
pickled their daddies’ insides. Take it by
and large, Lem’s character smelled about as
various as his store, and that wasn’t
perfumed with lily-of-the-valley, you bet.
One time and
another most men dropped into Lem’s store of
an evening, because there wasn’t any other
place to go and swap lies about the crops and any
of the neighbors who didn’t happen to be
there. As Lem was always around, in the end he
was the only man in town whose meanness
hadn’t been talked over in that grocery.
Naturally, he began to think that he was the only
decent white man in the county. Got to shaking
his head and reckoning that the town was plum
rotten. Said that such goings on would make a
pessimist of a goat. Wanted to know if public
opinion couldn’t be aroused so that decency
would have a show in the village.
Most men get
information when they ask for it, and in the end
Lem fetched public opinion all right. One night
the local chapter of the W.C.T.U. borrowed all
the loose hatchets in town and made a good,
clean, workmanlike job of the back part of his
store, though his whiskey was so mean that even
the ground couldn’t soak it up. The noise
brought out the men, and they sort of caught the
spirit of the happy occasion. When they were
through, Lem’s stock and fixtures looked
mighty sick, and they had Lem on a rail headed
for the county line.
I don’t know
when I’ve seen a more surprised man than
Lem. He couldn’t cuss even. But as he never
came back, to ask for any explanation, I reckon
he figured it out that they wanted to get rid of
him because he was too good for the town.
I simply mention
Lem in passing as an example of the fact that
when you’re through sizing up the other
fellow, it’s a good thing to step back from
yourself and see how you look. Then add fifty per
cent. to your estimate of your neighbor for
virtues that you can’t see, and deduct fifty
per cent. from yourself for faults that
you’ve missed in your inventory, and
you’ll have a pretty accurate result.
Your affectionate
father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
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