Public Health Leader Urges Teaching of Birth Control Source

Public Health Leader Urges Teaching of Birth Control Source: The Science News-Letter, Vol. 26, No. 700 (Sep. 8, 1934), p. 148 Published by: Society for Science & the Public Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3910332 Accessed: 29/11/2009 14:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=sciserv. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Society for Science & the Public is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Science News-Letter. http://www.jstor.org
148 SCIE NCE NEWS LETTER for September 8, 1934 ASTRONOMY Clefts or "Canals" Are Now Discovered on the Moon See Front Cover D ITCHLIKE," straight line depres- sions on the surface of the moon are exciting the interest of astronomers. "Canals," some observers have been tempted to call them, by analogy with the famous and oft-disputed markings on the planet Mars. The journal of the British Astronomi- cal Association has brought some newly recorded markings on the moon to the attention of European scientists through the publication of drawings by L. F. Ball, fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Mr. Ball has made the draw- ings available to America through Science Service. One of them is shown on the cover of this week's SCIENCE NEWS LETTER. Some of the moon "ditches" are so straight and regular that uninformed observers might believe they were dug by the hands of a lost race of moon- men. Astronomers call the regular mark- ings "clefts." In the region of Weigel four great moon craters are shown, illuminated just at what would be sunset on the earth, when the sun is low on the moon's horizon and the shadows are long. Into two of the craters runs the ditchlike cleft with the forked end. The origin of the clefts discovered on the moon is a matter of conjecture. As- tronomers place no faith in any belief that they are the work of "moon-men." One theory says that the clefts are geological faults in the moon's surface, that is, a place where the land sudden- ly sank or rose to form a cliff like the Palisades of the Hudson River. Many of the clefts on the moon, which have been referred to as ditchlike depressions because of their appearance, are really towering cliffs. The black, dark area that looks like a ditch is the shadow of the cliff on the neighbor- ing moon countryside. Science News Letter, September 8, 1984 PUBLIC HEALTH Public Health Leader Urges Teaching 0r Birth Control MARRIAGE advice bureaus operated by public health departments to give advice on all problems of health in marriage, including the teaching of birth control, were advocated by Prof. Haven Emerson of Columbia Univer- sity in his presidential address at the meeting of the American Public Health Association. "Let us teach for the sake of women the knowledge which will permit them to choose the time and circumstance of their own childbearing," Prof. Emer- son declared. "Whatever may be one's intuitive, traditional, social, religious or medical preference in the use of contraceptive information as a proper application of knowledge for the protection and in- tegrity of the family and to reduce the evidence of inherited and congenital dis- ease and defect, the almost universal familiarity with half-truths on this sub- ject and the evident effect of their wide application in the falling birthrate makes it incumbent on physicians and health officers to familiarize themselves with organized efforts in this direction at home and abroad." Prof. Emerson sees the marriage ad- vice station as a suitable outgrowth of the prenatal clinics and child welfare stations at present conducted by health departments and private health agencies. Rather than let these marriage advice centers grow in a disorderly, amateur and more or less irresponsible way, as is the present tendency, he urged their de- velopment through such channels as health departments and hospitals. Health officers should confer with medical schools, hospitals, outpatient and social agencies of their communities in order to develop such centers with- HARNESSING SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES an address by Dr. P. G. Agnew Secretary of the American Standards Association j Wednesday, Sept. 12, at 3:30 p. m., Eastern Standard Time, over Stations of the O Columbia Broadcasting Sys- tem. Each week a prominent scientist speaks over the Columbia System under the A auspices of Science Service. out offense to church or other social groups which may still hesitate to lend their influence or approval to this movement. "Both mental hygiene and social hy- giene should benefit by the official in- clusion of a marriage advice service un- der the health department or in con- nection with the outpatient service of a general hospital," he said. The clientele of these stations falls into the groups of those planning mar- riages, of those seeking advice on pre- marital problems, on uncertainties and difficulties related to childbearing in marriage and on sex and other problems in and out of wedlock. These stations can be of great service in preventing venereal disease and pelvic cancer as well as in giving competent professional education in birth control, he pointed out. Science News Letter, Septe,nber 8, 1934 SEISMOLOGY Baffin Bay Region Shaken by Quake THE REGION of Baffin Bay was I shaken by a strong earthquake that occurred three minutes after midnight on Friday, Aug. 31, and recorded itself on American seismographs. The loca- tion was determined by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey from reports wired Science Service by seismological ob- vatories at Ottawa, Ann Arbor, Tucson, Ariz., Pasadena and Berkeley, Calif., St. Louis, Mo., Chicago, and Washing- ton, D. C. This quake was in the same region as one that occurred last fall. Science News Letter, September 8, 1934 Roman and Semitic noses are believed to have appeared late in racial evolu- tion in southwest Asia.