Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 3 May 1938 — Page 11

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From Indiana = Ernie Pyle

Lo, the Poor Paleface Is Taken For a Ride by the Redskin, Who Does Not Spare the Curio Shops.

TAOS, N. M., May 3.—When a fellow sees he’s been a sucker, the best thing to do is just laugh it off. We were awfully mad at the time, but now we look back and salve ourselves with uproarious self-ridicule. Of course you don’t know what I'm talking about. So here it is. When you come to Taos, naturally you drive out to see the Taos Indian pueblo. It’s only two miles out. This pueblo is very old. Eight hundred Indians live in it. The view is striking when you drive up. There are two great adobe buildings. You might call them apartment houses. Each is five stories high. They are the type of native building which inspired the beautiful Santa Fe architecture that is spreading over New Mexico today. As you drive up you see blanketed- Indians sitting on various roof levels. You pay a quarter, and a guide comes to show you through the pueblo. His black hair hangs in pigtails behind each ear. His feet are in white deerskin moccasins. A bedsheet is draped around his shoulders and body. You feel you are setting out on a strange and romantic journey. The guide says it’s a nice day. You say ves it is, and how old are the pueblos? The guide doesn't know. The guide says he no speak much English. We pass an anthill. The guide stops and says, “What you call them in English?” “Those are ants,” we say. “Ants,” he says. “How you say it—ants? know what you call it in English.” We of the party look at each other, and if our glances had been translated into a word, the word would have been “phooey.” At last the guide ushered us through a door into the pueblo. Or rather into one room. On tables were home-made drums, crude pottery, moccasins, ears of colored corn. “Maybe you want buy something?” said our guide, and went back outside. We realized we were merely in a curio shop. We smiled at the Indian boy in charge, and went out.

No Keys to Church

“Could we see inside the church?” one of the party asked. “No have keys. said.

Never

Can't get in today,” our guide

“Where do you live?” one of our party asked the |

guide. “I take you my house,” he said eagerly. We saw only one room of his house, all the other doors being closed. It too was a curio shop. “Now I show you somebody else's house,” said our guide. He took us through a door, and there we were in another curio shop. And so we finished the one pueblo, and came to midway in our tour. We had seen five .urio shops and not one other thing. We started then to do the other pueblo. I walked up alongside the guide and said, “What will we see in this pueblo?” “Fine curio shops,” he said. “I show them you.” “No you won't,” I said. And with that the entire party furiously and simultaneously abandoned the guide, got in their cars and drove away. He stood there looking after us, in his pigtails and bed sheet, cut to the quick. Or maybe not.

My Diary By Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt

4821 Visitors Are Received at the White House During Month of April.

i 7ASHINGTON, Monday.—I left New York City at midnight last night, after having sat out in the sun at Hyde Park doing nothing for the first time this year. These early spring days give one a tremendous urge to go to the country and dig in the earth and stay in one spot, if it is a spot where you own a little piece of ground and have something you can call your own in which to live.

It is very beautiful here also and the weather is at its best. At 10 o'clock I received a group of women whe were on their way to Norway. It seems that this is the first organized tour of the year. Those taking it ranged from a little boy of 9 to a woman of 77. I can imagine what a joy it must be to go back to see families and friends, who perhaps felt when they were coming to this far-off land that they would never be reunited. At lunchtime, I sat for a few minutes with Mr. Harry Hopkins and my son, Jimmy. They ate their lunch in the middle of the rose garden with the sun pouring down on them, which should have given them a good tan. Then I went over to the lunch at the Willard Hotel in celebration of Child Health Week. The first part of the program was devoted entirely to problems of child health in the District of Columbia, though Miss Katherine Lenroot also gave some figures of national significance. In sections where there are foreign born or Negro popuations in large numbers, it is interesting to see how much these areas in a city suffer from certain diseases. For instance, in childbirth and in the first year of life in Negro groups in the District of Columbia, the mortality far exceeds that of white groups.

Shows Gain Over 1937

You may be interested in the fact that during the month of April, 1937, 3860 people were received in the White House. This year 4821 were received. That. of course, does not include the sightseers, who far exceed last year’s numbers. It looks as though travelers were coming in ever-increasing numbers to their capitol city. In my column a short time ago, I said I was looking up the origin of the egg-rolling custom on Easter Monday and several people have asked me if I have made any discoveries. This morning, in my press conference, I gave most of the details, but you may be interested to know that in Harper's Young People for April 20, 1886, there are some illustrations showing the children on the lawn. The story accompanying the illustrations reveals the fact that this was a custom brought over from England.

New Books Today Public Library Presents—

ONDENSED by a famous political journalist, the Central European situation is presented tersely in a small book whose title, WATCH CZECHOSLOVAKIA (Nelson) conveys an enormous significance to the student of current history. Richard Freud, author of “Zero Hour,” sketches a resume of European strategy; the historical background of that district including Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Slovakia and part of Ruthenia, characterized by Bismarck as “a fortress built by God in the very heart of Europe”; and succeeds with a few deft strokes, in clarifying the temper of the present peoples of this political tinderbox, their characters, nationalties, diplomatic and military policies. Preceding by several months Austria's annexation to the German Reich, this book makes exciting reading in the light of recent map-changing events. Whatever the immediate intentions of the German rulers, says the author, control of Czechoslovakia must be one of their principal ambitions. A glance at the present European setup showing this small kite-shaped republic held literally in the “pincers” of Germany, with the newly acquired Austria lengthening the enclosing “arms,” combined with the realization that the Germans comprise the “largest national minority in any European state, except for the Ukrainians in Pcland,” drives home the certainty that this struggling new nation, born out of the World War, will indeed repay watghing.

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A I A REET Sr

The Indianapolis

Times

Second Section

(First of a Series) By David Dietz

Times Science Editor EATH still stands at the end of the road. Not all the boasted advances of medical science have been able to push aside the gaunt figure whose body is a bony skeleton and whose head a grinning skull. His is still the final triumph. Almost daily, the newspaper reader is shocked to find the news of some great figure in the world of statesmanship, finance, or industry who has suddenly died. Most frequently the age is between 55 and 70, the cause, heart trouble.

Only 20 per cent of the population reach the age of 70. Twelve per cent live to be 80. Less than 3 per cent reach 90.

When a man or woman claims to be more than 100, medical men are extremely suspicious of the birth records, although there are a few authenticated cases. Despite the fact that 20th Century researches have definitely proved that the spatk of life burning in the living cells is potentially immortal, medicine has vet to add a single year to the span of life. What medicine has done is to enable more and more people to realize a greater segment of what seems to be their possible span of life. In more technical language, it has done much to add to the expectation of life of the individual. Until this very century, it was a gamble whether or not an infant would come through its first sum=mer. Digestive upsets, “summer complaint” and a host of complications that we now know were chiefly due to impure water supplies, impure milk supplies, carelessness about the presence of germ-carrying flies, and the like, endangered the life of every baby. Lack of aclequate knowledge upon the subject of the importance of vitamins and sunshine was likewise a source of danger to infants until the 20th Century. Children started life with limbs weakened—sometimes twisted and deformed—by rickets because the value of sunshine and Vitamin D were unknown, Many infants suffered from the dreadful disease of scurvy until medical men learned the miracle that could be wrought by adding orange juice, a source of the scur-vyv-preventing Vitamin C, to their diet. The medical man had done a good job in pushing back the figure of death from the crib of the infant and the bedside of the

TUESDAY, MAY 3, 1938

Three Score and Ten

Medicine Has Yet to Add Single Year to Man's Span of Life

“Death Comes for the Gentleman,” an etching by Hans Holbein,

the younger, is shown at the center.

It is one of 58 etchings in

Mr. Holbein’s famous series, “The Dance of Death.”

At the left is Sid Frederick R. Banting, one of the discoverers of insulin in 1922, which has saved the lives of 2,000,000 Americans suffering from diabetes.

Dr. George R. Minot, right, is one of those whose lives were saved by

insulin.

liver treatment for pernicious anemia.

In his turn, Dr. Minot was one of the discoverers of the

child. There was a time, for example, when medical science was helpless before diphtheria, when nothing could be done as the choking gray membrane spread across the child's tiny throat and snuffed out its life.

Today the doctor fills a little glass syringe with diphtheria antitoxin. He inserts the sharp, needle-like point of the instrument into the child's arm. With a push of the piston he sends the antitoxin into the blood. Death is pushed aside.

” ~ ”

HE conquest of diphtheria and other contagious diseases, not only the contagions of childhood but many of adult life, constitute the greatest victories of medical science to date. Living as we do in the 20th Century, it is difficult for us to realize what conditions once were like. Today a young doctor may graduate from medical school and serve his interneship in a great metropolitan hospital and never see a case of gyphoid fever. Yet at the end of the 19th Century, typhoid epidemics were frequent in the cities of America. Smallpox is another rarity today. But 100 vears ago the pitted scars of smallpox were the rule and not the exception. If an es-

caped convict did not possess them, that fact constituted the surest means of discovering and identifying him. It is difficult today to realize the ravages of the Black Death in the Europe of the 14th and 15th Centuries. In many places the dead lay in city streets or on country roads. In other places the bodies were gathered into carts in the middle of the night to be farown unceremoniously into huge common graves or into rivers. Medical science has likewise made tremendous strides in conquering the acute and sudden afflictions that require surgical treatment. It is hard for us to picture the dangers of surgery without antiseptic methods and the horrors of surgery without anesthetics. Appendicitis will serve as an example of what surgical progress has meant to humanity. The operative procedure is fairly simple today. But until the last decade of the 19th Century, appendicitis was an unconquered and misunderstood scourge. It was not even known as appendicitis. Instead. it was called “phlegmon of the right lower quadrant.” All that physicians knew about the disease in those days was that the patient de=-

veloped a pain in the abdomen which shifted to the right side. The pain got worse, fever and delirium followed, and about 90 out of every 100 patients died.

But by saving mankind from the contagions and the acute afflictions that demand surgical treatment, the medical profession has done only half its job. What it has done, in short, is to save up more people to fall victim to the diseases of old age. These are the so-called organic diseases or degenerative diseases the ills that are due to progressive changes in the tissues and organs. ” ” ” T the head of the list is heart disease. Second is cancer. Others include diseases of the Kidneys, cerebral hemorrhage or “stroke,” diabetes and arthritis. There is also the possibility that the tempo of modern life may be contributing to the incidence of some of these diseases.

Three of these diseases, heart disease, Kidney disease and “stroke,” have their beginning in high blood pressure, which, in its turn, leads to hardening of the arteries. The first step in the conquest of these three has been taken by Dr. Harry Goldblatt, associate di-

Entered as Second-Class Matter at Postoffice. Indianapolis,

rector of the Institute of Pathology of Western Reserve University, who has demonstrated with experimental animals that a reduction in the blood supply of the kidneys leads to high blood pressure, There is reason to believe that further pursuit of these researches may lead to the conquest of high blood pressure, the starting point of the three diseases which together cause one-third of all the deaths in the United States today. When that time comes you will read less often in your newspaper of the sudden death of some important industrial or political figure in the prime of life.

Life expectancy tables tell the stories of medical accomplishments and medical hopes. A child born in the 16th Century had a life expectancy of 21 years. In the 17th Century it had increased to 26 years. In the 18th Century it was 34 years. By 1880 it was 40 years. Today it is 60 years, and by 1970 medical men hope to increase it to 70 years. But in all this, it will be noted, there is nothing about extending the possible life span of man.

In 1902 Dr. Karl Pearson investigated the inscriptions on Egyptian mummies in order to collect statistics about the length of life in the Egypt of 2000 years ago. He found that a man who had attained the age of 68 in ancient Egypt had a better chance of long life from that point than a man who had attained the same age today. A moment's thought will show why. Today medical science preserves the lives of many physical weaklings. A person may reach the age of 68 after numerous illnesses and several surgical operations. But a man who reached the age of 68 in ancient Egypt had to be of the sturdiest type. The law of the survival of the fittest operated relentlessly in ancient Egypt. And so we find ourselves in this century at the point where medical men hope by 1970 to assure every infant that is born the span of life promised him in the Bible, the “three score and ten” of the psalmist. ” ” ” UT must we stop there? Must we regard old age as inevitable? Must we even regard death as inevitable? A decade ago a number of eminent authorities advanced the idea that old age was a disease rather than a natural process, but the great weight of medical opinion is against it. In technical language, the medical profession regards old age as physiological rather than pathological. But even so, why should old age and death intervene if science has proof that the living cell is potentially immortal? To answer this question we must first investigate the nature of the living cell and why potential immortality is claimed for it.

NEXT—How Dr. Carrel conferred immortality upon the heart muscle of a chicken embryo.

Side Glances—By Clark

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RAG U.S PAT OFF. h NEA .

"You just now said that | was probably calling from a bar room in-#

stead of the pffice. Now | resent thatl"

Jasper—By Frank Owen

YAN 7227

rer

"He went out in the hailstorm to brush up on his catching, but he admits he missed a few!"

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

1—In what year did Walter Hagen win his last U. 8S, National Open golf championship? 2—Of which state is Montpelier the capital? 3—What are the colors of New York University? 4—-Who wrote the novel, “The Red Rover?” 5—What is the political affiliation of Donald H. McLean, Representative from New Jersey? 6—On what island did Napoleon reside during his first banishment? T—Who was David Maitland Armstrong? ” ” ”

Answers 1—-1919, 2—Vermont, 3—Violet. 4—James Fenimore Cooper. 5—Republican. 6—Elba. T—American artist. » " o

ASK THE TIMES

Inclose a 3-cent stamp for reply when addressing any question of fact or information to The Indianapolis Times Washington Service Bureau, 1013 13th St, N. W,, Washington, D. C. Legal and medical advice cannot be given, nor can extended research be undertaken,

PAGE 11

Ind.

Our Town

By Anton Scherrer

The City Gave Early Consideration To the Problem of the Interchange Of Railway Freight and Passengers.

N May 3, 1850, the Union Track Railway was organized and began building. And since today marks the anniversary of that date, the least I can do to celebrate the event is to tell you a little more about what Wylie

J. Daniels has to say about it in his “Village

at the End of the Road.” It's the same book I raved about yesterday. To hear Mr. Daniels tell it, “the question of the interchange of passengers and freight at Indianapolis, among the roads then being constructed, apparently received early consideration.” As early as 1849 as a matter of fact, because in December of that year a crowd of railroad men got together and found it “expedient to locate and establish at Indianapolis, a joint railroad track, connecting the Madison and Indianapolis, the Terre Haute & Richmond, the Peru & Indianapolis, and the Indianapolis & Bellefontaine Railroads.” The resolution also contemplated a “joint passenger depot for said coms panies.” They got around to the passenger depot in 1853 says Mr. Daniels. It was the first union station anywhere in America. When finished in 1853, it was 420 feet long, 100 feet wide, and cost $30,000. Col. T. A. Morris (Donald's grandfather) was the engineer in charge of the work. There were five passenger tracks inside the shed, and two freight tracks outside and north of the station. The original depot was enlarged in 1866 by a two-story addition 48 feet wide on the south side. This remodeled structure, says Mr. Daniels, is the “old depot” as it is remembered by many people today. In 1888 it gave way to the present building which in turn has been remodeled.

Nothing to Worry About Today

Mr. Daniels also hazards a guess why they built the depot on the banks of Pogues Run when everybody knew—or should have known-that every spring the creek went on a terrible tear, and wrecked everything in its path. “It is apparent,” says Mr, Daniels, “that a combination of circumstances tended to concentrate the early railroad facilities of the city in the valley of Pogues Run. The first factor was that the Madison Road, more or less by chance, had stopped at South St. The other roads were for several years feeders of the Madison Road, and it was to their advantage to connect with that road. It also happened that the Run and, therefore, the Union Track, ran at such an angle that it was easy to locate tracks and freight houses in the valley.” On the other hand, there was the threat of Pogues Run. It was pretty bad until 1914 when the Run was tamed and turned into a sewer. Since then, there's been nothing to worry about, says Mr. Daniels,

Jane Jordan

Interests Outside the Home Are a Good Cure for Jealousy, Wife Told.

EAR JANE JORDAN-—I am a young wife and have been married almost a year. I do not attend parties, dances or theaters, and my interests are in my home and my husband. But my big problem is jealously. Occasionally my husband speaks of all marriages as a means of tying a man down. He realizes that I am jealous of him. Sometimes his work happens to be close to the home of the girl I am so jealous of, 1 do not know whether he sees her or not. She wrote him numerous letters after we were married but lately she hasn't written any, Do you think he could have told her that I was getting the letters? Do you think it would be wise if I should get a job where I could be with others more? I am a high school graduate and have had experience as a saleswoman and a small amount of office work. What is your opinion? JOHNNY. n ” ”

Answer—A job is about the best thing that can happen to you. If you have a job to manage you won't be so intent upon managing your husband. Imaginary jealousy is a full time job. You have to have plenty of time on your hands to work up a good case. It is smart of you to think of occupying yourself with other things instead of mooning over the real or fancied digressions of your husband,

Every woman should have interests outside of her home and her husband. It is right and fine for you to be interested in your marriage but not to the exclusion of everything else. Like many women you have invested too much and you aren't getting the dividends you expect. Perhaps every man resents the sacrifice of his freedom to marriage at some time or other, particu= larly when his wife irks him. But I notice that most widowers lose no time in getting married again; so after all the urge to have a wife is greater than the urge to be free. It shouldn't be a surprise to a woman that her husband has two attitudes toward his marriage. It is comparatively seldom that the yen to be free attacks your husband and your cue is to be so pleasant about it that he admits there is something to be said for marriage after all. All of us like to be loved but few of us like to be loved too much. An emotional dependent can become a dead weight around our necks which we struggle to shake off. Your husband cannot lose himself in you and you shouldn't expect it.

Suppose that your husband did tell his former sweetheart to stop upsetting his wife with letters. He should put a stop to such nonsense. Why on earth should you be jealous? Another thing: Why do you cast all diversion out of your life. Parties, dances and theaters are good for people because they divert them from their problems and make them easier to live with. Divide your life between work and play and you will be happier yourself and make your husband happier. JANE JORDAN.

Put your problems in a letter to Jane Jordan, who will answer vour questions in this column daily.

Mr. Scherrer

Bob Burns Says—

OLLYWOOD, May 3.—You use 'ta be able to judge people pretty well by their clothes but now since moving pictures have set the styles for the nation, pret’ near everybody dresses alike. Not long ago, I was callin’ on my doctor uncle down home and while I was there, a lady called on my uncle for an examination. After he was in the room with her for a while, he comes out to where I was sittin’ and he said “Did you see whether this lady came here in a limousine or a wagon?” I says “She come in a wagon.” He says “Well, I couldn't tell by her clothes whether to prescribe three months in Saratoga or sulphur and molasses,” (Copyright, 1038)

Walter O'Keefe—

OLLYWOOD, May 3.—The weather in southern California is sufitering from the recession. There's no need to “prime the pump” out here at all. The place has been dripping for months. Infants are being taught to swim before they can walk. One movie company is sending a crew of technicians and actors to New York so that they can ge$ some outdoor scenes in the sunlight. In Hollywood they have open-air theaters where you can sit in your parked car and watch the movies. Last night I was unable to tell whether the story had a happy ending. Right in the middle of the picture my windshield wiper stopped working.