Page 3
jumping
sould
statistical
groups.
heart-
and at
riding
inducted e avail-
loration e scien-
n, Matti of the
lilh, and orgran of
inter of ennswick.
e heart
wasers was
be sta-
the first
is ele-
during
the 5-
was no
ences.
nobi scientiens pent the iwish the iweep was. This sharp for
Summer Session Kansan
— The Health,
eaction—
nt Ken-
am—was
G. An-
Kansas Sociologist Sees Hospital Need
A Kansas sociologist suggests that small-town hospitals can best meet the needs of their patients by being more patient themselves.
Wayne C. Rohrer, associate professor of economics and sociology at Kansas State University, wrote his opinions in the summer issue of "Hospital Administration," quarterly journal published in Chicago by the American College of Hospital Administrators. His article was based upon a study of population and social changes in the rural areas of Kansas.
In the larger city, the hospital serves a somewhat different function, Mr. Rohrer said. The modern urban industrial society needs a hospital so that other members of the family may make an uninterrupted contribution to the family, job, or community. But this particular condition, he wrote, does not bear so directly on nonmetropolitan hospitals. Numerous small-town patients will be retired from the labor force. They will be members of two-person families or, in many instances, live alone. The small-town
The continuing movement of America's rural population toward the larger cities has left the smaller communities with a disproportionate number of older people, according to Prof. Rohrer, since it is usually the younger people who move away. Further, he wrote, people in small towns who need major hospital care now often travel to the nearest larger city for this treatment. The rural and small-town hospitals thus receive a larger percentage of older patients who are not acutely ill but require long-term convalescent care.
"The community hospital," the author asserted, "can afford to be less busy, less schedule bound, and less impersonal than the larger urban institution. Where the pace is less hurried, the patient can be treated patiently and with forebearance. Let others than the patient manifest 'patient' behavior."
hospital often will not return its patients to jobs but to a spouse or to a household without other members—or to a nursing home.
Aging people, the sociologist pointed out, have a higher incidence of chronic, terminal illnesses than do most patients in general hospitals. Because of age composition of rural areas, he said, they will contain a higher proportion of patients in the convalescent phase.
Under these circumstances, Prof Rohrer asserted the emotional context in which the patient and the family exist is substantially different from that in larger cities. He suggested that nurses in rural areas should receive some training in medical social work and that some of the larger hospitals in rural communities employ medical social workers who have specialized training in geriatrics, the care of elderly people.
The people who take care of these patients will experience more morale and communications problems than are usually found in larger institutions. The author warned that poor morale will not only characterize patients' behavior, "but medical personnel will also have to become content with treating patients who do not, while under treatment, achieve the completely cured status."
Looks Are Deceiving
The wife of comedian Joey Adams, in one of several columns she wrote for a village community newspaper in New York during her husband's government-sponsored tour of Southeast Asia, said:
("There was) the time I personally kept calling a certain prime minister 'honey.' I don't know what a prime example of a prime minister is. I only know that whatever he should look like, this dear soul didn't."
'Self Release Latest Idea For Prisoners
Kansan Classified Ads Get Results
WASHINGTON — (UPI) — There was this lady who called me up and reported that she had been "teaching freedom" to prisoners at the local jail.
By Dick West
"You're a professional lock-picker or something like that?" I asked.
"No, no," she said. "I mean 'inner freedom.' I teach them self release."
An inner voice told me that I should hang up right there, but I was a prisoner of my own curiosity.
"How is this inner freedom through self release achieved?" I said.
Friday, July 20, 1962
And that is how I became acquainted with Miss Millicent Linden, creator of "the Linden stretch program" and author of a book entitled "Why You Should Not Exercise."
"By stretching." she replied.
Most people, she added, make the mistake of trying to stretch like a cat. They are unable to do this because "the process of evolution is incomplete," she said.
Recently, she has been giving lectures on stretching to inmates in the District of Columbia jail. Several prisoners have written testimonials describing the stretches as the next best thing to a writ of habeas corpus.
I don't know what Miss Linden meant by that. In fact, I'm not even certain that I'm quoting her correctly.
During my interview with her, Miss Linden illustrated certain points by stretching her limbs and torso this way and that. Miss Linden wore a tight-fitting dress. Such conditions are not conducive to note-taking.
If she and gravity remain on good terms, she will soon publish a second book called "How To Make Your Muscles Sing." It also should make a hit with the jail birds.
U.S. Water Use Rises; Scientists Plot Solutions
Americans are using more water than ever to keep cool, clean, and occupied.
Water consumption by factories, farms, and homes has jumped more than 12 per cent in the past six years. The United States guils its liquid assets at the rate of 270,000 million gallons per day.
The greatest water glutton is not the hot tennis player or suburban gardener but American industry. Industrial cooling processes account for more than half the water consumed in this country. It takes 65,000 gallons of water to produce a ton of finished steel, 200,000 gallons for a ton of rayon, and no less than 600,000 gallons for a ton of synthetic rubber,
Sheer waste takes a heavy toll. Even during New York's severe water shortage of 1949-50, engineers estimated that 200 million gallons a day dripped from leaky faucets and pipes alone.
Irrigation farmers rank as second largest users of water, followed by individuals at work, play, and home.
BILLIONS of gallons go down the drain annually from such modern conveniences as showers, sprinklers, swimming pools, dishwashers, laundromats, and garbage disposals.
However, more than 70 per cent is used by growing plants or returned to the atmosphere by evaporation and breathing. Storage lakes, reservoirs, and canals lose nearly half their water in vapor.
Moreover, water is not evenly distributed. Mountainous regions of Hawaii may be deluged with a foot of rain a week, yet Nevada averages only nine inches all year. Some areas which are flooded in the spring suffer drought by late summer.
Water-hungry America fortunately can draw on a nationwide rainfall averaging 30 inches a year, or ten million gallons for every man, woman, and child, says the National Geographic Society.
The Herculean task of supplying water to arid zones and cities where demand exceeds supply is being approached in several ways; conservation measures, notably antipollution and the reuse of water; the building of larger aqueducts; and conversion of fresh water from the sea.
SCIENTISTS HAVE been experimenting with a chemical spray which blankets reservoirs and lakes with a film to cut evaporation losses.
Attempts to unscramble sea water are being intensified by governments and private industry. Success on a large and inexpensive scale could open up a vast new resource, for oceans cover almost three-quarters of the earth's surface.
New Atom Particle Found By UCLA
LOS ANGELES — (UPI) — A group of UCLA physicists yesterday disclosed the discovery of a new atomic particle — the Xi star — with a life span of only a fraction of a second.
The Xi star, one of the subnuclear particles called "resonances," has a life span comparable in time as one second is to a million billion years, or the equivalent of a fraction of a second represented by the number 5 preceded by 23 zeroes.
UCLA scientists and a team from Brookhaven National Laboratory and Syracuse University made simultaneous reports on their independent discoveries in the current physical review letters, published by the American Physical Society.
The Xi star was reported to have a mass of 1,530 million electron volts, or 3,000 times the mass of an electron. It has no electric charge and an isotopic spin of one-half. Isotopic spin is a characteristic of each nuclear particle indicating how the particle will interact with other particles.
Patronize Your Kansan Advertiser
Dinner with a Professor Series Sponsored by S.U.A. Dr. Oswald Backus will speak on "The Soviet Mind: A New Outlook"
Alcoves of the Kansas Union 6:00 p.m. Wednesday, July 25
Participants may take advantage of Cafeteria food service. Make your reservations at the Information Desk at the Kansas Union.