Lifesaving station

“ Sanitary necessities are never to be rejected, on account of the trouble they give or of the means of cleanliness which they render necessary. Because the saving of life, not the saving of trouble, is the object of all sanitary appliances, Hospitals among the number. And the saving of life is the only real economy. ”

“ But the fact stands that every year hundreds who come helpless cripples walk jauntily to the station on their departure, and many thousands of sufferers from rheumatic ills and the wear and tear of strenuous living return to their homes restored. ”

“ Yet the Red Cross does more than cope with emergencies. During the past year, volunteers collected and processed nearly six million units of lifesaving blood for our Nation's hospitals and educated more than 11 million Americans through health and safety courses. ”

“ This marks the beginning of the life-saving service of the United States.
In 1849 Congress appropriated $20,000 for life-saving purposes. With this sum eight life-saving stations were built on the Long Island coast and six additional stations erected on the shores of New Jersey. While these newly established life-saving stations were not manned by regular drilled crews of surfmen, as at present, they often proved of great value at times of disaster, and in 1850 Congress made another appropriation of $20,000 for life-saving purposes. ”

“ What is the Existing Machinery of Public Health in what are called—with a grim sarcasm—our Rural Sanitary Districts? Is health or sickness, life or death, the greatest miracle in the present condition of things? To some of us the greatest miracle, repeated every day, is that we can live at all in the surroundings which our ignorance and neglect create. ”

“ As we have seen, the death-rates in the country, except for pneumonia, are not noticeably higher than in the city. But by minor ailments, with the resulting loss of daily efficiency, the rural communities are sadly overburdened. As Irving Fisher says in his Report on National Vitality:—
"But prevention is merely the first step in increasing the breadth of life. Life is to be broadened not only negatively by diminishing those disabilities which narrow it, but also positively by increasing the cultivation of vitality. ”

“ Nor is it necessary to remain in the same town during the entire season; indeed a change of scene is generally most beneficial, for which the railway as well as the steamers affords every facility. “I would strongly advise every person who goes abroad for the recovery of his health, whatever may be his disease or to what climate soever he may go, to consider the change as placing him merely in a more favourable situation for the removal of his disease ”

“ In America, however, our coasts are so extensive, and so much of the dangerous part of them is far away from villages, or even a farmhouse, that the government has been obliged to do whatever was necessary. Thus came about the Life Saving Service, which now has its stations close together along our whole sea-coast, and upon the great lakes, covering more than ten thousand miles in all. ”

“ If therefore, some of the general laws which govern the preservation of health be simply stated and illustrated, it may be the beginning of much good, by teaching or inciting men to become the guardians of their own health. One of the primary laws of health is to have a good supply of fresh air. The voice of nature cries aloud for fresh air, the cry comes to us alike from the newly born babe in the cellar, and the aged sufferer worn out in life’s troubles in the garret. ”

“ One community compelled a railroad to build and maintain an expensive overhead bridge at a cost of $1,500 a year to prevent one death and the aldermen appropriated only $150 to prevent fifty deaths. The first thing in treating sick social organisms is to restore consciousness. ”

“ An increase in this important, positive health-related exercise can have a significant effect on the enhanced quality and life span of those who practice it. It is an invigorating form of self-care that can contribute to the reduction of preventable death, disease, and disability and to the containment of health care costs. ”

“ Clean streets and houses, clean milk and pure water, sanitary housing, and careful medical inspection all do their part in maintaining a low rate of illness and death, thus reacting upon the health of the citizens of the future. ”

“ I feel the deepest conviction that no sanitary system can be adequate to the requirements of the time, or can cure those radical evils which infest the under framework of society, unless the importance be distinctly recognised and the duty manfully undertaken of improving the social condition of the poor.... ”

“ The labouring man, above all others, should rise in the morning refreshed by nature’s sweet restorer—balmy sleep. But, by neglecting ventilation, it is not so. Drowsiness, sickness, headache, and languor are his lot; and in order to bring himself up to the mark, he is obliged to have recourse to artificial stimulants. Scavengers are necessary to maintain the comfort and cleanliness of our streets, so oxygen is necessary to maintain the health and comfort of our bodies. By depriving our bodies of pure air, we deprive them of the power to throw off infectious diseases. ”

“ To an unremitting attention, not only to food, cleanliness, ventilation, and an early administration of antiseptic provisions and medicines, but also to prevent as much as possible the chance of indisposition, by prohibiting individuals from carelessly exposing themselves to the influence of climate, or unhealthy indulgences in times of relaxation, and by relieving them from fatigue and the inclemency of the weather the moment the nature of their duty would permit them to retire, is to be ascribed the preservation of the health and lives of sea-faring people on long voyages. ”

“ It is all very well to patch up the diseased man with drugs or what not. But at best that is a makeshift method. The Consumptive Sanatoriums have aroused enthusiasm, and they also are all very well. But the Charity Organisation Society has shown that only about 50 per cent. of those who pass through such institutions become fit for work. It is not more treatment of disease that we want, it is less need for treatment. And a State Medical Service is the only method by which Medicine can be brought into close touch with Hygiene. ”

“ The cost of certain preventable diseases a year is estimated by various authorities as:
A hopeful sign of awakening is the endeavor by life insurance companies to bring [8] home to the people the possibilities of race betterment. One company sends out among its policy holders trained nurses, who give plain talks on health subjects and offer practical suggestions as to hygienic living. This, to be sure, is on the economic basis of money saving, but if that is the only thing that will appeal to the people is it not wise to seize upon it as a lever to lift the standard of well-being? ”

“ The influence of living-habits and the significance of physical disabilities and abnormalities, and especially of personal and family history, upon large masses of insured lives, form the body of the rapidly developing science of medical selection. By combining this intrinsic knowledge with the readily available extrinsic data relating to personal hygiene, the medical officers of a life-insurance company are, or should be, especially well equipped to guide their policyholders toward safe and sane living-habits. ”

“ Manufacturers continue to improve the safety features of farming equipment; protective clothing and safety gear can reduce the exposure of workers to the health threats posed by chemicals, noise, dust, and sun; training in first-aid procedures and access to good health care can often mean the difference between life and death. ”

“ Now let us rejoice over the fact that we not only know how to reduce this waste, but that thanks to those who have aroused the life conservation sentiment in this country, a general improvement in the public health service is taking place in many States and cities. The experiment has been successful. We now know what we can do. We have the wealth and knowledge, and the machinery is organized throughout the country to rapidly correct our appalling record of life waste. Our work is to induce our people to use it. ”

“ To supply the arm strong to labour, to substitute productive for unproductive citizens, to decrease the death-roll of the young, and to protract life beyond the present span, these are the tasks that sanitary science imposes on us. ”

“ America's community health centers are a vital part of our healthcare safety net, providing primary care services to uninsured, low-income families and individuals, regardless of their ability to pay. ”

“ Has the wife of the wage-earner domestic help such as her well-to-do sister possesses? Is there a nurse to help her even when the children are sick, much less while they remain fairly healthy? How often has every kettle-full of water to be heated separately on a stove? Under such circumstances is it reasonable to expect the cleanliness which is an indispensable condition of health? Is there a clean supply of milk for every working-man’s family and are there arrangements for sanitary and cool storage of food in his dwelling? ”

“ Such a health center may include a hospital with well equipped laboratories and clinical facilities, or it may be nothing more than a room in a small village, equipped with scales for weighing children, with first aid kits for accident cases, and used for occasional clinics for the examination of babies and children of pre-school age and for classes in home nursing or first aid; but every community of any size should have some place which will be a headquarters for its local health Service, equipped as may be most practicable to meet its needs, according to the size of the community. ”

“ PARKES, GUY, SIMON, AND PUBLIC HEALTH. “Prevention is better than cure” is the homely proverb which marks out a large proportion of the work of sanitary science. The prevention of disease and of its spread, and the promotion of the general healthiness of the people—these are objects which modern progress has brought into view. When they are completely attained we shall all die of old age unless cut off by accidents or violence; and this is a goal which many sanitarians of the present day have vividly before their mind. ”

“ The saddest and most pitiful tragedies which the consumptive health-resort physician can relate are those of wretched sufferers,—even in a comparatively early stage of the disease,—whose misguided but well-meaning friends have raised money enough to pay their fare out to Colorado, California, Arizona, or New Mexico, and expect them to get work on a ranch, so as to earn their living and take the open-air treatment at the same time.
Three things are absolutely necessary for a reasonable prospect of cure of consumption. One is, abundance of fresh air, day and night. ”

“ The American Heart Association, a not-for-profit volunteer health agency, and the Federal government, primarily through the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, are providing hope. In 1948, those two organizations joined forces to seek ways to reduce early death and disability from heart disease, stroke, and related disorders. ”

“ We went to Battle Creek, Michigan, where we found a million-dollar institution, equipped with every resource of modern science, and with more than a thousand nurses, physicians and helpers, all devoting their time to the teaching of the new art of keeping well. And thus, little by little, with backslidings, mistakes, and many disappointments, we worked out our problems, and found the road to permanent health. We do not say that we have entirely got over the ill effects of a lifetime of bad living ”

“ Americans continue to take responsibility by exercising extra care around the house, as well as by using items such as infant and toddler car seats and seat belts, smoke detectors, flame-retardant clothing, and child-proof packaging; and emergency medical services are developing still greater capacities in the prevention of death and of serious aftereffects of injury. ”

“ In other words, it has seemed to us unwise simply to discharge a man upon recovery from an acute or chronic illness without taking pains, through a medical social service, to see that he was readjusted to the community on a basis which would prevent his reversion to a state of ill health and perhaps his readmission to hospital. ”

“ Doubtless the United States Life-Saving Service system appears to be an expensive and elaborate one, but it must be remembered that, putting aside entirely the consideration of the value of human life, which is beyond computation, it saves many times its cost in property alone, and that it fulfils the functions usually allotted to several different agencies. ”

“ To keep himself alive when attacked by disease, the medicine man and later the healing art were evolved. Now he insures not only against death but against the partial death involved in the loss of limbs, accident, and illness; he safeguards his person and his goods by codes and law courts; and regulates diet, regimen, mores, and social hygiene with a view to more and fuller life. All these institutions are impelled by the instinct of self-preservation, reinforced as it now is in man by the knowledge of his mortality. Man may thus be redefined as the death-shunner. ”

“ Amazing in magnitude and usefulness are the health organizations, public and private, devoted to securing more efficient methods of sanitation and the prevention of disease, recent statistics in New York City showing as a result of such work that the mortality rate has decreased fifty per cent. ”