To Your Good Health
By Paul G. Donohue, M.D.
Viral Ear
Infection Makes People Dizzy
DEAR DR. DONOHUE:
I have been looking every day for an answer to my
question: What is a virus infection of the inner
ear that causes dizziness? My ears were checked
for wax and fluid, and they have neither. An MRI
of my brain showed nothing wrong. I am so afraid
of another attack, especially when I might be
away from home. What are the chances of that? --
K.K.
ANSWER: The inner
ear houses our balance organ. That organ is like
a carpenter’s level, which has a tube filled
with fluid in which there is a bubble. If the
carpenter has a board in perfect alignment, the
bubble is in the center of the tube. When we are
in perfect balance, as we are most of the time,
our balance organ sends a clear signal to the
brain that all is well. When the balance organ is
on the fritz, it bombards the brain with
confusing information, and that makes a person
dizzy. It’s a bit like being constantly
seasick.
One of the common
causes of such imbalance is a viral infection of
the inner ear, which often follows on the heels
of a cold or a similar respiratory infection. The
illness is called vestibular neuritis. It’s
also called labyrinthitis.
Once the inner-ear
irritation quiets down, the dizziness leaves.
That can take a number of weeks. An antihistamine
such as meclizine (Antivert) can make symptoms
less formidable. Some doctors favor giving
prednisone (a powerful anti-inflammation
medicine) at the onset of symptoms.
Could it come
back? It’s unlikely to come back again, even
if you live the same number of years you have
already lived.
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. 4
FROM John Graham, at the
Union Stock Yards in Chicago, to his son,
Pierrepont, at Harvard University.
Mr. Pierrepont finds Cambridge to his liking, and
has suggested that he take a post-graduate course
to fill some gaps which he has found in his
education.
IV
June 25, 189_
Dear Pierrepont: Your letter of the seventh twists
around the point a good deal like a setter pup
chasing his tail. But I gather from it that you
want to spend a couple of months in Europe before
coming on here and getting your nose in the
bullring. Of course, you are your own boss now
and you ought to be able to judge better than any
one else how much time you have to waste, but it
seems to me, on general principles, that a young
man of twenty-two, who is physically and mentally
sound, and who hasn’t got a dollar and has
never earned one, can’t be getting on
somebody’s pay-roll too quick. And in this
connection it is only fair to tell you that I
have instructed the cashier to discontinue your
allowance after July 15. That hives you two weeks
for a vacation - enough to make a sick boy well,
or a lazy one lazier.
I hear a good deal
about men who won’t take vacations, and who
kill themselves by overwork, but it’s
usually worry or whiskey. It’s not what a
man does during working hours, but after them,
that breaks down his health. A fellow and his
business should be bosom friends in the office
and sworn enemies out of it. A clear mind is one
that is swept clean of business at six
o’clock every night and isn’t opened up
for it again until after the shutters are taken
down next morning.
Some fellows leave
the office at night and start out to whoop it up
with the boys, and some go home to sit up with
their troubles - they’re both in bad
company. They’re the men who are always
needing vacations, and never getting any good out
of them. What every man does need once a year is
a change of work - that is, if he has been curved
up over a desk for fifty weeks and subsisting on
birds and burgundy, he ought to take to fishing
for a living and try bacon and eggs, with a
little spring water, for dinner. But coming from
Harvard to the packing-house will give you change
enough this year to keep you in good trim, even
if you didn’t have a fortnight’s leeway
to run loose.
You will always
find it a safe rule to take a thing just as quick
as it is offered - especially a job. It is never
easy to get one except when you don’t want
it; but when you have to get work, and go after
it with a gun, you’ll find it as shy as an
old crow that every farmer in the county has had
a shot at.
When I was a young
fellow and out of a place, I always made it a
rule to take the first job that offered, and to
use it for bait. You can catch a minnow with a
worm, and a bass will take your minnow. A good
fat bass will tempt an otter, and then
you’ve got something worth skinning. Of
course, there’s no danger of your not being
able to get a job with the house - in fact, there
is no real way in which you can escape getting
one; but I don’t like to see you shy off
every time the old man gets close to you with the
halter.
I want you to
learn right at the outset not to play with the
spoon before you take the medicine. Putting off
an easy thing makes it hard, and putting off a
hard one makes it impossible. Procrastination is
the longest word in the language, but
there’s only one letter between its ends
when they occupy their proper places in the
alphabet.
Old Dick Stover,
for whom I once clerked in Indiana, was the worst
hand at procrastinating that I ever saw. Dick was
a powerful hearty eater, and no one ever loved
meal-time better, but he used to keep turning
over in bed mornings for just another wink and
staving off getting up, until finally his wife
combined breakfast and dinner on him, and he only
got two meals a day. He was a mighty religious
man, too, but he got to putting off saying his
prayers until after he was in bed, and then he
would keep passing them along until his mind was
clear of worldly things, and in the end he would
drop off to sleep without saying them at all.
What between missing the Sunday morning service
and never being seen on his knees, the first
thing Dick knew he was turned out of the church.
He had a pretty good business when I first went
with him, but he would keep putting of firing his
bad clerks until they had lit out with the petty
cash; and he would keep putting off raising the
salaries of his good ones until his competitor
had hired them away. Finally, he got so that he
wouldn’t discount his bills, even when he
had the money; and when they came due he would
give notes so as to keep from paying out his cash
a little longer. Running a business on those
lines is, of course, equivalent to making a will
in favor of the sheriff and committing suicide so
that he can inherit. The last I heard of Dick he
was ninety-three years old and just about to die.
That was ten years ago, and I’ll bet
he’s living yet. I simply mention Dick in
passing as an instance of how habits rule a
man’s life.
There is one
excuse for every mistake a man can make, but only
one. When a fellow makes the same mistake twice
he’s got to throw up both hands and own up
to carelessness or cussedness. Of course, I knew
that you would make a fool of yourself pretty
often when I sent you to college, and I
haven’t been disappointed. But I expected
you to narrow down the number of combinations
possible by making a different sort of a fool of
yourself every time. That is the important thing,
unless a fellow has too lively an imagination, or
has none at all. Your are bound to try this
European foolishness sooner or later, but if you
will wait a few years, you will approach it in an
entirely different spirit - and you will come
back with a good deal of respect for the people
who have sense enough to stay at home.
I piece out from
your letter that you expect a few months on the
other side will sort of put a polish on you. I
don’t want to seem pessimistic, but I have
seen hundreds of boys graduate from college and
go over with the same idea, and they didn’t
bring back a great deal except a few trunks of
badly fitting clothes. Seeing the world is like
charity - it covers a multitude of sins, and,
like charity, it ought to begin at home.
Culture is not a
matter of a change of climate. You’ll hear
more about Browning to the square foot in the
Mississippi Valley than you will in England. And
there’s as much Art talk on the Lake front
as in the Latin Quarter. It may be a little
different, but it’s there.
I went to Europe
once myself. I was pretty raw when I left
Chicago, and I was pretty sore when I got back.
Coming and going I was simply sick. In London,
for the first time in my life, I was taken for an
easy thing. Every time I went into a store there
was a bull movement. The clerks all knocked off
their regular work and started in to mark up
prices.
They used to tell
me that they didn’t have any gold-brick men
over there. So they don’t. They deal in
pictures - old masters, they call them. I bought
two - you know the ones - those hanging in the
waiting-room at the stock yards; and when I got
back I found out that they had been painted by a
measly little fellow who went to Paris to study
art, after Bill Harris had found out that he was
no good as a settling clerk. I keep ‘em to
remind myself that there’s no fool like an
old American fool when he gets this picture
paresis.
The fellow who
tried to fit me out with a coat-of-arms
didn’t find me so easy. I picked mine when I
first went into business for myself - a charging
steer - and it’s registered at Washington.
It’s my trademark, of course, and
that’s the only coat-of-arms an American
merchant has any business with. It’s
penetrated to every quarter of the globe in the
last twenty years, and every soldier in the world
has carried it - in his knapsack.
I take just as
much pride in it as the fellow who inherits his
and can’t find any place to put it, except
on his carriage door and his letter-head - and
it’s a heap more profitable. It’s got
so now that every jobber in the trade knows that
it stands for good quality, and that’s all
any Englishman’s coat-of-arms can stand for.
Of course, an American’s can’t stand
for anything much - generally it’s the
burned-in-the-skin brand of a snob.
After the way some
of the descendants of the old New York Dutchmen
with the hoe and the English general storekeepers
have turned out, I sometimes feel a little uneasy
about what my great-grandchildren may do, but
we’ll just stick to the trade-mark and try
to live up to it while the old man’s in the
saddle.
I simply mention
these things in a general way. I have no fears
for you after you’ve been at work for a few
years, and have struck an average between the
packing-house and Harvard; then if you want to
graze over a wider range it can’t hurt you.
But for the present you will find yourself pretty
busy trying to get into the winning class.
Your affectionate
father,
John Graham.
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