WAR ON HAND-SHAKING

Otago Witness, Issue 3590, 2 January 1923, Page 28

WAR ON HAND-SHAKING

A MENACE TO HEALTH. “REFORMERS” IN AMERICA. EFFORT TO STOP PRACTICE. Tie reformers are on the warpath to eliminate another danger (says the Pittsburg correspondent of a London paper), and if they succeed the hand-shake will in a few years have gone the way of the roller towel, the family toothbrush, and the insanitary drinking cup. Prominent doctors agree 'that- hand-shaking is not only a carrier of disease germs, but is extremely harmful to the nervous system. Dr S. R. Haythorn, until recently chairman of the Sanitation Committee of the Allegheny County Medical Society, when Questioned on the subject, said; “During the influenza epidemic bulletins were put out by the United States publ?s health service warning people against shaking hands. I think that hand-shaking is very bad during an epidemic. Although I do not think it a very serious menace ordinarily, it is probably a bad practice. No person with tuberculosis ought to shake hands.” General handshaking was condemned by Miss Nan L. Dorsey, superintendent of the Public Health Nursing Association. “While there are a. great many factors to be considered, and I think in some instances, such at the home, hand-shaking is all right, indiscriminate hand-shaking is very bad,” she said. “I have been told that President Harding and the late Theodore Roosevelt had to have masseurs to manipulate their hands, and there was almost evidence of paralysis after they had shaken hands constantly.” Mrs Enoch Raub, director of the Department of Public Onarities, and formerly president of the Council of Jewish Women, who has always been actively interested in the welfare and general health of the public, expressed her opinion as follows: “I think that hand-shaking ought to be eliminated from society, and agree that it is a germ carrier. Many germs congregate on the hands, and we cannot be washing our hands constantly. I think it is a good thing to abolish hand shaking, just as I think it is to do awav with kissing. I have been one of the kissers, and love to kiss, but I do not think it is sanitary. I have been told that hand-shaking is of great harm to ihe nervous system, and that certain public people who have been called upon to shake hands a great deal have discontinued it because of its prostrating effect on the nerves. One can be just as cordial without shaking hands.” Dr C. J. Stybr, president of the North Side branch of the Allegheny County Medical Society, said that he thought ordinarily hand-shaking wavs not very dangerous, but in cases of highly infectious disease, bacteria can accumulate on the hand's, and when a slice of bread or other food ,s touched it is contaminated.