Medicine: Direful Pick, Salutary Hoe

In the summer of 1934 when jobless men from factory and skyscraper turned to pick out PWA highways or to hoe subsistence gardens, Surgeon General Hugh Smith Gumming of the U. S. Public Health Service searched for a relationship between a man’s occupation and his health. Death proved to be the best indicator of such relationship, providing the following rates, which Dr. Gumming published last week:

Deaths per 1,000

Population

Agricultural workers 6.2

Professional men 7.0

Proprietors, managers and officials. 7.4

Clerks and kindred workers 7.4

Skilled workers and foremen 8.1

Semiskilled workers. 9.9

Unskilled workers 13.1

Thus it is twice as risky to be an unskilled member of a pick-&-shovel gang as it is to be a farmer or a lawyer. Cause: partly, the accidents incident to unskilled labor, but principally the manner of life which the occupation entails (diet, housing, medical care, contact with infected persons).