The Ogden standard. [volume] (Ogden City, Utah) 1902-1910, 1909-03-27
P,ROIONGlNG LIFE.

Saving It would be possible TO add
five. ten or more years to the aver.
age lives of policyholders by having
them examined medically every five
years. DR.. Burnside Foster, editor of
the st. Paul Medical Journal, before
the Association Of Life Insurance pres
idents. urged the advisability OF life
insurance companies adopting such a
plan. The suggestion will be consid.
cred by the associations life exten-
sion committee. which is already busy
with the proposal Of Prof Irving Fish
er of Yale university, to have the life
insurance companies expend money In
a campaign of health education.
DR.. Foster claims that the medical
examinations he proposes would indi-
cate the beginning OF unsuspected dis
eases which would thus be discovered
In time TO effect cures, or to have their
progress materially arrested Such
examinations would be free to policy
holders and Dr. Foster said that the
expense to the companies would be
trivial.
Modern medicine has. above ALL
two chief aims. the prevention of dis
ease and the recognition Of its ear
liest signs in the individual" said DR..
Foster, In todays address "In both
of these aims the business of life In
surance has an immense interest,
since the nearer we approach to their
accomplishment, the more we add to
human longevity Prof Fishers re-
cent plea for concerted action on the
part of life insurance companies to
lend their financial aid to the cause of
preventive medicine is one which
meets with my hearty sympathy and
approval.
Preventive medicine becomes
more nearly an exact science all the
time and while its possibilities are
far from being realized, this is not be-
cause of its own inexactness OF short
comlngs, but because the people have,
not yet awakened to the fact that
those diseases which cause the great
est number of deaths and the greatest
amount Of suffering are actually pre-
ventable, II money enough is spent
IN No -
list all the people actively in the cru
SADIE against preyentable disease is to
present the subject as an economic
one, which 1t surely is, and one which
appeals directly to their pocket-books
| am glad that life insurance compan-
les are beginning to be interested in it
from this point Of view. Its study Will
prove profitable to them and will
afford q most valuable object lesson
to the people,
There is probably not q physician
who has not many times in his exper-
ience detected. while examining pa.
tient for some other purpose, the early
signs of some beginning organic dis
ease, of which the patient had no sus.
picion. In such cases the early recog-
milton OF the first evidence of the dis
ease has enabled the physician to so
order the life of his patient as TO pre-.
vent the further progress OF the dis
ease, II 1t Is durable one, or To retard
its progress and to enable the patient
to live much longer than he would
have lived had the disease not been de-
tected until later.
Many persons die OF kidney dis
ease. of tuberculosis, Of cancer. of dia-
betes. OF heart disease. and of other
diseases every year, and many millions
OF dollars are paid by the life insur-
ance companies which have issued
policies on the lives OF these persons,
who were sound when the policies
were issued, and who might have lived
much longer and paid many more an.
nual premiums II the diseases which
caused their deaths had been recop-
ni2ed and properly treated in their ear
Hest stages. These are the very dis.
eases which flgureNmost largely in NOR
tally tables"