Sponsored
by:
Mornin' Mail |
To Your Good Health
By Paul G. Donohue, M.D.
Vaccine for
Cervical Cancer Prevention
DEAR DR. DONOHUE:
Why isn’t the cervical cancer vaccine given
to women in their 30s and 40s? Also, please
discuss Pap smears and the new and better Pap
smear. Why is it better? -- Anon.
ANSWER: Gardasil,
the new vaccine for prevention of papillomavirus
infection -- the cause of cervical cancer -- is
not as likely to be effective in preventing
cervical cancer in women already infected with
the papillomavirus. It works best before exposure
to the virus. Therefore, the principal target is
younger women, between the ages of 9 and 26, with
girls of 11 and 12 being the ones chosen to be
the concentrated focus of immunization. More
studies are needed to ascertain the
vaccine’s effectiveness in older women and
in men.
Doctor George
Papanicolaou deserves the credit for saving the
lives of an uncountable number of women through
his work in devising the Pap smear for detection
of cervical cancer. The standard Pap smear is
still an excellent way to detect what was once a
very common cancer.
The
"new" Pap smear is a new technique in
processing cells taken from the cervix. The
technique is called liquid-based cytology,
"cytology" being the microscopic study
of cells. The sample cervical cells are suspended
in liquid and then spun in a centrifuge. The
cells collect at the bottom of the centrifuge
tube and are more plentiful than cells put
directly on a slide after obtaining them from the
cervix. The sensitivity of this test -- its
ability to detect abnormal cervical cells -- is
increased. That’s not to say that the
standard test is not good or reliable.
OLD GORGON
GRAHAM
More
Letters from
a
Self-Made
Merchant
to
His Son
by
George Horace Lorimer
First Published 1903
From 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, at the Union Stock Yards.
No. 8
From John Graham, at the Union Stock Yards,
Chicago, to his son, Pierrepont, at
Yemassee-on-the-Tallahassee. In replying to his
father’s hint that it is time to turn his
thoughts from love to lard, the young man has
quoted a French sentence, and the old man has
been both pained and puzzled by it.
VIII
CHICAGO, January
24, 189-.
Dear Pierrepont: I
had to send your last letter to the fertilizer
department to find out what it was all about.
We’ve got a clerk there who’s an Oxford
graduate, and who speaks seven languages for
fifteen dollars a week, or at the rate of
something more than two dollars a language. Of
course, if you’re such a big thinker that
your ideas rise to the surface too fast for one
language to hold ‘em all, it’s a mighty
nice thing to know seven; but it’s been my
experience that seven spread out most men so thin
that they haven’t anything special to say in
any of them. These fellows forget that while
life’s a journey, it isn’t a palace-car
trip for most of us, and that if they hit the
trail packing a lot of weight for which they
haven’t any special use, they’re not
going to get very far. You learn men and what men
should do, and how they should do it, and then if
you happen to have any foreigners working for
you, you can hire a fellow at fifteen per to
translate hustle to ‘em into their own fool
language. It’s always been my opinion that
everybody spoke American while the tower of Babel
was building, and that the Lord let the good
people keep right on speaking it. So when
you’ve got anything to say to me, I want you
to say it in language that will grade regular on
the Chicago Board of Trade.
Some men fail from
knowing too little, but more fail from knowing
too much, and still more from knowing it all.
It’s a mighty good thing to understand
French if you can use it to some real purpose,
but when all the good it does a fellow is to help
him understand the foreign cuss-words in a novel,
or to read a story which is so tough that it
would make the Queen’s English or any other
ladylike language blush, he’d better learn
hog-Latin! He can be just the same breed of
yellow dog in it, and it don’t take so much
time to pick it up.
Never ask a man
what he knows, but what he can do. A fellow may
know everything that’s happened since the
Lord started the ball to rolling, and not be able
to do anything to help keep it from stopping. But
when a man can do anything, he’s bound to
know something worth while. Books are all right,
but dead men’s brains are no good unless you
mix a live one’s with them.
It isn’t what
a man’s got in the bank, but what he’s
got in his head, that makes him a great merchant.
Rob a miser’s safe and he’s broke; but
you can’t break a big merchant with a jimmy
and a stick of dynamite. The first would have to
start again just where he began--hoarding up
pennies; the second would have his principal
assets intact. But accumulating knowledge or
piling up money, just to have a little more of
either than the next fellow, is a fool game that
no broad-gauged man has time enough to sit in.
Too much learning, like too much money, makes
most men narrow.
I simply mention
these things in a general way. You know blame
well that I don’t understand any French, and
so when you spring it on me you are simply
showing a customer the wrong line of goods.
It’s like trying to sell our Pickled
Luncheon Tidbits to a fellow in the black belt
who doesn’t buy anything but plain dry-salt
hog in hunks and slabs. It makes me a little
nervous for fear you’ll be sending out a lot
of letters to the trade some day, asking them if
their stock of Porkuss Americanuss isn’t
running low.
The world is full
of bright men who know all the right things to
say and who say them in the wrong place. A young
fellow always thinks that if he doesn’t talk
he seems stupid, but it’s better to shut up
and seem dull than to open up and prove yourself
a fool. It’s a pretty good rule to show your
best goods last.
Whenever I meet
one of those fellows who tells you all he knows,
and a good deal that he doesn’t know, as
soon as he’s introduced to you, I always
think of Bill Harkness, who kept a temporary home
for broken-down horses--though he didn’t
call it that--back in Missouri. Bill would pick
up an old critter whose par value was the price
of one horse-hide, and after it had been pulled
and shoved into his stable, the boys would stand
around waiting for crape to be hung on the door.
But inside a week Bill would be driving down Main
Street behind that horse, yelling Whoa! at the
top of his voice while it tried to kick holes in
the dashboard.
Bill had a theory
that the Ten Commandments were suspended while a
horse-trade was going on, so he did most of his
business with strangers. Caught a Northerner
nosing round his barn one day, and inside of ten
minutes the fellow was driving off behind what
Bill described as "the peartest piece of
ginger and cayenne in Pike County." Bill
just made a free gift of it to the Yankee, he
said, but to keep the transaction from being a
piece of pure charity he accepted fifty dollars
from him.
The stranger drove
all over town bragging of his bargain, until some
one casually called his attention to the fact
that the mare was stone-blind. Then he hiked back
to Bill’s and went for him in broken
Bostonese, winding up with:
"What the
skip-two-and-carry-one do you mean, you old
hold-your-breath-and-take-ten-swallows, by
stealing my good money. Didn’t you know the
horse was blind? Why didn’t you tell
me?"
"Yep,"
Bill bit off from his piece of store plug;
"I reckon I knew the hoss was blind, but you
see the feller I bought her of"--and he
paused to settle his chaw--"asked me not to
mention it. You wouldn’t have me violate a
confidence as affected the repertashun of a pore
dumb critter, and her of the opposite sect, would
you?" And the gallant Bill turned scornfully
away from the stranger.
There were a good
many holes in Bill’s methods, but he never
leaked information through them; and when I come
across a fellow who doesn’t mention it when
he’s asked not to, I come pretty near
letting him fix his own salary. It’s only a
mighty big man that doesn’t care whether the
people whom he meets believe that he’s big;
but the smaller a fellow is, the bigger he wants
to appear. He hasn’t anything of his own in
his head that’s of any special importance,
so just to prove that he’s a trusted
employee, and in the confidence of the boss, he
gives away everything he knows about the
business, and, as that isn’t much, he lies a
little to swell it up. It’s a mighty curious
thing how some men will lie a little to impress
people who are laughing at them; will drink a
little in order to sit around with people who
want to get away from them; and will even steal a
little to "go into society" with people
who sneer at them.
The most important
animal in the world is a turkey-cock. You let him
get among the chickens on the manure pile behind
the barn, with his wings held down stiff, his
tail feathers stuck up starchy, his wish-bone
poked out perky, and gobbling for room to show
his fancy steps, and he’s a mighty
impressive fowl. But a small boy with a rock and
a good aim can make him run a mile. When you see
a fellow swelling up and telling his firm’s
secrets, holler Cash! and you’ll stampede
him back to his hall bedroom.
I dwell a little
on this matter of loose talking, because it
breaks up more firms and more homes than any
other one thing I know. The father of lies lives
in Hell, but he spends a good deal of his time in
Chicago. You’ll find him on the Board of
Trade when the market’s wobbling, saying
that the Russians are just about to eat up
Turkey, and that it’ll take twenty million
bushels of our wheat to make the bread for the
sandwich; and down in the street, asking if you
knew that the cashier of the Teenth National was
leading a double life as a single man in the
suburbs and a singular life for a married man in
the city; and out on Prairie Avenue, whispering
that it’s too bad Mabel smokes Turkish
cigarettes, for she’s got such pretty curly
hair; and how sad it is that Daisy and Dan are
going to separate, "but they do say that
he--sh! sh! hush; here she comes." Yet, when
you come to wash your pan of dirt, and the lies
have all been carried off down the flume, and
you’ve got the color of the few particles of
solid, eighteen-carat truth left, you’ll
find it’s the Sultan who’s smoking
Turkish cigarettes; and that Mabel is trying
cubebs for her catarrh; and that the cashier of
the Teenth National belongs to a whist club in
the suburbs and is the superintendent of a
Sunday-school in the city; and that Dan has put
Daisy up to visiting her mother to ward off a
threatened swoop down from the old lady; and that
the Czar hasn’t done a blame thing except to
become the father of another girl baby.
It’s pretty
hard to know how to treat a lie when it’s
about yourself. You can’t go out of your way
to deny it, because that puts you on the
defensive; and sending the truth after a lie
that’s got a running start is like trying to
round up a stampeded herd of steers while the
scare is on them. Lies are great travellers, and
welcome visitors in a good many homes, and no
questions asked. Truth travels slowly, has to
prove its identity, and then a lot of people
hesitate to turn out an agreeable stranger to
make room for it.
About the only way
I know to kill a lie is to live the truth. When
your credit is doubted, don’t bother to deny
the rumors, but discount your bills. When you are
attacked unjustly, avoid the appearance of evil,
but avoid also the appearance of being too
good--that is, better than usual. A man
can’t be too good, but he can appear too
good. Surmise and suspicion feed on the unusual,
and when a man goes about his business along the
usual rut, they soon fade away for lack of
nourishment. First and last every fellow gets a
lot of unjust treatment in this world, but when
he’s as old as I am and comes to balance his
books with life and to credit himself with the
mean things which weren’t true that have
been said about him, and to debit himself with
the mean things which were true that people
didn’t get on to or overlooked, he’ll
find that he’s had a tolerably square deal.
This world has some pretty rotten spots on its
skin, but it’s sound at the core.
There are two ways
of treating gossip about other people, and
they’re both good ways. One is not to listen
to it, and the other is not to repeat it. Then
there’s young Buck Pudden’s wife’s
way, and that’s better than either, when
you’re dealing with some of these old
heifers who browse over the range all day,
stuffing themselves with gossip about your
friends, and then round up at your house to chew
the cud and slobber fake sympathy over you.
Buck wasn’t a
bad fellow at heart, for he had the virtue of
trying to be good, but occasionally he would walk
in slippery places. Wasn’t very sure-footed,
so he fell down pretty often, and when he fell
from grace it usually cracked the ice. Still, as
he used to say, when he shot at the bar mirrors
during one of his periods of temporary elevation,
he paid for what he broke--cash for the mirrors
and sweat and blood for his cussedness.
Then one day Buck
met the only woman in the world--a mighty nice
girl from St. Jo--and she was hesitating over
falling in love with him, till the gossips called
to tell her that he was a dear, lovely fellow,
and wasn’t it too bad that he had such
horrid habits? That settled it, of course, and
she married him inside of thirty days, so that
she could get right down to the business of
reforming him.
I don’t, as a
usual thing, take much stock in this marrying men
to reform them, because a man’s always sure
of a woman when he’s married to her, while a
woman’s never really afraid of losing a man
till she’s got him. When you want to teach a
dog new tricks, it’s all right to show him
the biscuit first, but you’ll usually get
better results by giving it to him after the
performance. But Buck’s wife fooled the
whole town and almost put the gossips out of
business by keeping Buck straight for a year. She
allowed that what he’d been craving all the
time was a home and family, and that his rare-ups
came from not having ‘em. Then, like most
reformers, she overdid it--went and had twins.
Buck thought he owned the town, of course, and
that would have been all right if he hadn’t
included the saloons among his real estate. Had
to take his drinks in pairs, too, and naturally,
when he went home that night and had another look
at the new arrivals, he thought they were
quadruplets.
Buck straightened
right out the next day, went to his wife and told
her all about it, and that was the last time he
ever had to hang his head when he talked to her,
for he never took another drink. You see, she
didn’t reproach him, or nag him--simply said
that she was mighty proud of the way he’d
held on for a year, and that she knew she could
trust him now for another ten. Man was made a
little lower than the angels, the Good Book says,
and I reckon that’s right; but he was made a
good while ago, and he hasn’t kept very
well. Yet there are a heap of women in this world
who are still right in the seraphim class. When
your conscience doesn’t tell you what to do
in a matter of right and wrong, ask your wife.
Naturally, the
story of Buck’s final celebration came to
the gossips like a thousand-barrel gusher to a
drilling outfit that’s been finding dusters,
and they went one at a time to tell Mrs. Buck all
the dreadful details and how sorry they were for
her. She would just sit and listen till
they’d run off the story, and hemstitched
it, and embroidered it, and stuck fancy rosettes
all over it. Then she’d smile one of those
sweet baby smiles that women give just before the
hair-pulling begins, and say:
"Law, Mrs.
Wiggleford"--the deacon’s wife was the
one who was condoling with her at the
moment--"people will talk about the best of
us. Seems as if no one is safe nowadays. Why,
they lie about the deacon, even. I know it
ain’t true, and you know it ain’t true,
but only yesterday somebody was trying to tell me
that it was right strange how a professor and a
deacon got that color in his beak, and while it
might be inflammatory veins or whatever he
claimed it was, she reckoned that, if he’d
let some one else tend the alcohol barrel, he
wouldn’t have to charge up so much of his
stock to leakage and evaporation."
Of course, Mrs.
Buck had made up the story about the deacon,
because every one knew that he was too mean to
drink anything that he could sell, but by the
time Buck’s wife had finished, Mrs.
Wiggleford was so busy explaining and defending
him that she hadn’t any further interest in
Buck’s case. And each one that called was
sent away with a special piece of home scandal
which Mrs. Buck had invented to keep her mind
from dwelling on her neighbor’s troubles.
She followed up
her system, too, and in the end it got so that
women would waste good gossip before they’d
go to her with it. For if the pastor’s wife
would tell her "as a true friend" that
the report that she had gone to the theatre in
St. Louis was causing a scandal, she’d thank
her for being so sweetly thoughtful, and ask if
nothing was sacred enough to be spared by the
tongue of slander, though she, for one,
didn’t believe that there was anything in
the malicious talk that the Doc was cribbing
those powerful Sunday evening discourses from a
volume of Beecher’s sermons. And when
they’d press her for the name of her
informant, she’d say: "No, it was a
lie; she knew it was a lie, and no one who sat
under the dear pastor would believe it; and they
mustn’t dignify it by noticing it." As
a matter of fact, no one who sat under Doc Pottle
would have believed it, for his sermons
weren’t good enough to have been cribbed;
and if Beecher could have heard one of them he
would have excommunicated him.
Buck’s wife
knew how to show goods. When Buck himself had
used up all the cuss-words in Missouri on his
conduct, she had sense enough to know that his
stock of trouble was full, and that if she wanted
to get a hold on him she mustn’t show him
stripes, but something in cheerful checks. Yet
when the trouble-hunters looked her up, she had a
full line of samples of their favorite commodity
to show them.
I simply mention
these things in a general way. Seeing would
naturally be believing, if cross-eyed people were
the only ones who saw crooked, and hearing will
be believing when deaf people are the only ones
who don’t hear straight. It’s a pretty
safe rule, when you hear a heavy yarn about any
one, to allow a fair amount for tare, and then to
verify your weights.
Your affectionate
father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
P.S.--I think
you’d better look in at a few of the branch
houses on your way home and see if you can’t
make expenses.
|
