Ounces of Prevention

Though some farsighted corporations have set up first-rate medical departments for their employees, U.S. industry as a whole has left the initiative, where workers' health is concerned, to the doctors. This week representatives of management and medicine got together, jointly announced formation of the Occupational Health Institute to further research and encourage expansion of industrial medical programs. Of the institute's trustees, half are drawn from management, while the rest are physicians, nurses and public-health experts.

Almost inevitably, their chairman is Dr. Robert Collier Page, 46. Medical director for the Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey and new president of the Industrial Medical Association, Dr. Page is the nation's most articulate pleader for a sweeping program of preventive medicine at the plant. Instead of waiting for a worker to get sick and then treating him, he argues, management should protect its investment in his health by doing everything possible to keep him from ever getting sick.

Trucks Before Men. Dr. Page likes to quote Jonathan Edwards' dictum of 200 years ago: "Man is entirely, perfectly and unspeakably different from a mere machine." However, he says, "in all too many American corporations, management may be aware of this but, for some inexplicable reasons, devotes more concern to the machine than the man. It is not uncommon to find an executive who worries more about tire replacement on his fleet of trucks than the health of his employees."

The periodic health inventory of employees is an absolute essential, to Dr. Page's way of thinking. It begins before placement in a job and should go far beyond the usual perfunctory pre-employment checkup. It should be followed at regular intervals by a comprehensive survey of the worker's sociological position, emotional factors, his reaction to stress and strain, the character of his home life

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