NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21968, 27 November 1934, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

NOISE ABATEMENT Lord Horder, the famous physician, in his 8.8.C. talk on noise abatement, said: —''Doctors are convinced that noise wears down the human nervous system, so that both the natural resistance tP disease and the natural powers of recovery from disease are lowered. To succeed in the campaign of noise abatement we must get it into our heads that making a noise is a form of bad manners —one of the things that aren't done. If we can once , succeed in breaking up this present house of din who knows but that we may find the greatest of all sources of health as well as happiness—a quiet mind?" ARMY OF DISTRIBUTORS ""Who is the producer of the suit of clothes I am wearing? Is it the farmer in Australia who bred the sheep —or the shipper—or the spinner, dyer or weaver in a Yorkshire factory—or the London tailor? Who is the distributor?" asked Mr. H. G. Selfridge, junr., at a recent meeting of shareholders in London. "Every one of thenr has done part of the work of distribution; work that is only finished when the suit is fitted to me. It is sometimes hard to realise that a pair of shoes in the factory is not the same as that pair of shoes in your cupboards It is not the same, of course, any more than is the coal in the ground the same as that coal in your fire. The money value of the work done by the distributive and transport trades is grater than the money value of the work done by all the productive industries put together. Retail distribution gives work to one and threequarter million employees; this is more than half as many again as are employed in the whole of the great engineering and electrical industries. On the continued prosperity of distribution depends a weekly salary payment that is greater than that of any other industrial group. The average wage of employees in department stores is nearly half as much again as is paid, for instance, in the textile industry; it is just about the same as is paid in the engineering industry, where the employees are predominantly men. Shops and kindred businesses contribute to municipalities over 30 per cent of their total revenue from rates. Less than o per cent comes from all kinds of manufacturing business put together and this in spite of the fact that shops create the value of their other big source of income, house property, while factories detract from it." DOCTORS AND PATIENTS "To-day the danger »is no longer that men and wojmen are cramped by authority, hut that they may be fatigued, or even run themselves to destruction, by their freedom," said Lord Horder, in his presidential address to the Medical Society of London. "Realising that the causes of their unhappiness, as of their physical ills, lies in the biological sphere, they seek the physician rather than the priest. Bewildered by the prospect which their liberty opens out, and all unaccustomed to deal with the raw material of their natures as now revealed to them, they come to the physician for guidance. To them the doctor is the realist, the link between the 'fine abstraction' which still beckons, and the 'particular application' for which they still hope. He is in the privileged position of the Almighty; he has, or he can have, if he will, all the evidence before hitn. 'He that sinneth before his Maker, let him fall into the hands of tho physician.' Why? Because to the physician the individual is not a metaphysical constant, but a physical variable, and this outlook enables him to; lift up the wpary head and comfort the sorrowing heart. First the explanation, then the guidance, and hope, that best of tonics, is reborn. Clearly the doctor must needs be priest as well aji physician. He, too, must be shriven. For the patient may have gone too far along thef road toward scientific economy, placing his trouble in a lower category than that to which it rightly belongs. It may be the losß of his aspirations and his ideals from .which he is suffering, not a mere failure to adjust his physiological or psychological balance." POLICE AND THE PRESS "There is one important and valuable arm of defence and offence that is sadly neglected. I refer to the lack of efficient co.-operation between the police and the public," says exSuperintendent Percy Savage in his book, "Savage of Scotland Yard." "When a murder or other grave crime is committed, why should not the public be informed at once of the essential facts, consistent, of course, with tho interests of justice? And yet, what happens? Information is frequently u ithheld from the press—the sole medium of communication with tho public—and tho consequence is that details which ought to be known are not divulged, false rumours are started, and the investigating officers grope about in an atmosphere of chaos and doubt. Tho police want information. The public have it. Why not effect .a working partnership? It is urged by those who favour the policy of silence that the press are mors concerned with getting a 'good story' than with the interest? of justice, and that they would magnify or distort, any facts which were officially Supplied. Personally, I think that anybody who is afraid of the press is afraid of himself. Newspapers are quite capable of taking care of themselves, and they know full well the limits to which thoy can go in any given case. In my capacity ns a senior officer, I always used my discretion and gave tho press all tho information I could. On not a single occasion have I known newspapers to go beyond these facts or to give publicity to facts which I asked them not to mention. ... I could quote cases in which murderers and other criminals have not been caught because the public have not been told points on which their assistance was wanted by the police. The police aro not thought-readers or wonderworkers. If they are not told, they cannot know. If thoy do not know, all the scientific aids, all the mechanical devices, all knowledge and experienqo are in vain. Information first, then common sense, then the resources of science—that is detective work. The fastest motor-car is useless unless the driver knows where he is going."