xxPage 6B EUGENE REGISTER-GUARD, Tuei.. Sept. 4, 1962 1
To Your Good Health
Diverticulosis
A Common
Disorder
By OR. JOSEPH G. MOLN'ER
Dear Dr. Molner: I wa told
after a barium-enema X-ray
that I have diverticulosii.
What medication and diet
does thia condition require?
la it curable? D.A.M.
You, sir, are one of many
and as time goes on diverti
culosis will become familiar
to more and more people.
The longer we live, the
more chance of having it, and
the more chance of finding it.
But don't jump to the con
clusion that something awful1
Is happening. Diverticulosis is
simply a pouch or bulge that
occurs somewhere In the in
testinal tract not unlike the
Way an automobile tire, years
ago, used to develop a bulgy
place. We called it a "stone
bruise."
Tires are much better now,
hut there has been no basic
change in human physiology.
We are still subject to acquir
ing these little pouches. Some
experts say at least one per
son in four has diverticulosis.
As a general rule, these
pouches don't do any mischief
and don't require medication
or special diet. They are there,
and there is no "cure" short
of surgery to repair the place
in question.
But it is pretty rare that
surgery is needed. Just let the
pouch stay there. Don't bother
It unless it bothers you.
How can It bother you?
Well, it may become irritated
and painful. It may even
bleed. In such cases, natural
ly, treatment is necessary.
The avoidance of seedy
fruits, nuts and foods with an
undue amount of rough fibers
may at times be the first step
in stopping the irritation.
Regular bowel action also is
desirable, and if necessary a
patient may need one of the
common bulk-producers to
encourage regularity.
If the pouch becomes in
flamed, meaning that some In
fection is starting, then ap
propriate m e d i c a tion is
needed.
Only In the most severe
cases is surgery suggested,
because most of them calm
down with conservative meas
ures. I'll repeat: In the vast ma
jority of cases, a person never
knows he has diverticulosis,
and most are found through
X-rays taken for some other
purpose.
So don't let it alarm you if
your doctor, in going over
the X-rays, comments that
"you have a diverticulum," or
"you have diverticulosis." It
doesn't deserve more than a
casual comment unless, oc
casionally, one of them be
comes irritated. Then is time
enough to do anything about
It.
1
-Ask Andy-
Light Travels Fastest
How fast does light go?
One of history's greatest astronomers was
named Galileo and he tried to clock the speed
of light more than 300 years ago. He wanted
to know how long it took the light from a
lantern to cross from one hilltop to another
hilltop a few miles away. The flash seemed
to take no time at all and Galileo decided
that light flashed across the vast reaches of
space in no time at all. He was wrong.
Scientists have been trying to clock the
speed of light for more than 300 years. All
kinds of machines and gadgets have been in
vented to do the job, but men of science
were not satisfied with their figures until
about 30 years ago. Even then they were not
quite satisfied. In fact, a new experiment is
just starting to check the figure we have for
the speed of light. Scientists think they know
the speed of light almost exactly, but they
want to be as accurate as possible.
The sunbeam that kisses your nose with
a pretty brown freckle traveled eight min
utes and 18 seconds to reach you. The earth
is more than 92 million miles from the sun
and it takes light eight minutes and 18 sec
onds to flash across this distance from the
sun to the earth. If the sunbeam missed the
earth, it could go on traveling another seven
hours and maybe fall upon Pluto, the lonely
little planet which pedals around the outside
rim of the Solar System.
Suppose we could make a sunbeam run
around and around the world. It would whiz
around the equator seven and a half times in
a single second. The sun's light pours forth
in all directions and only a small part of it
falls on the planets. The rest goes on and on
into outer space. Here it travels in a vacuum
with no air or solid bodies to get in its way.
Air and clouds and drifting dust slow
down the speed of light a tiny fraction. So
when we give the speed of light, we mean the
time it takes to travel through the vacuum of
space.
Its speed is about 186,300 miles a second
which is roughly 669 million miles an hour.
Light is the fastest traveler known.
Scientists are orderly people and they like
to keep their figures neat and tidy. The neat
est number system goes in tens: A kilometer
is equal to 1,000 meters and a meter equals
100 centimeters. On this system, light travels
almost exactly 300,000 kilometers a second
which equals three hundred thousand million
centimeters a second.
Are flies of any value?
If we like our luxury planet the way it is,
then we must allow a place for every living
thing upon it. Flies, however, have no place in
the kitchen because they carry germs on their
furry feet. But they do have a place outdoors.
They supply food for the frogs that sup
ply food for raccoons and all kinds of four
footed charmers. Many of our song birds also
dine on fly meat and if we lost all the flies
many of our sweet warblers would starve to
death. We would also lose many pretty swifts
and swallows.
(1 Andy Awards each day a full let ol Lba
ii IVnrlrf Unnk rn.u.Inn.ill. nK ,h. ,1 . ..,
J ha selects to answer When a aecond question $
i It answered a large world globe or atlas Is u
rFITNOU.') I
r i
awarded. Questions are accepted from teen-aee
or lest-than-teen-age readers They should be
i addressed to the Register-Guard. 91b High St.
i Eugene Andy prefers that questions be wrlt
ten on postcards rather than In letter form f
i q
20 Skeletons Unearthed
Scientists Probe Cliff Cities
WASHINGTON Excavations
by the National Park Service
and the National Geographic
Society of three cliff cities in
Colorado's Wetherill Mesa have
recently uncovered 20 skeletons
and seven storerooms filled with
pottery and corn husks.
Archeologists are seeking a
clearer understanding of the
culture and history of cliff
dwellers who vanished mysteri
ously before Columbus discov
ered America. When winter
halts work early in the fall,
scholars will analyze the new
discoveries at the main labora
tory in Mesa Verde National
Park and associated laboratories
around the country. Digging
will resume in the spring.
Indians settled the Mesa Verde
area about the time of Christ,
then abandoned it 1,300 years
later. Tree-ring studies indicate
that a prolonged drought parch
ed the region between A D. 1276
and 1209. Warring tribes also
may have helped drive the In
dians away, even as they forced
them earlier to build fortress
cities on the cliffs.
The corn found in the Mesa's
Step House points up the im
portance of food grain to the
Indians. Without it nomadic
hunters probably could never
have settled down to a life of
farming; they would not have
had leisure time to build the
cities which stand as their mon
uments today.
Cliff - dwellers supplemented
their corn with beans and
squash. They raised turkeys, and
hunted deer and smaller game.
Skeletons, such as the 20 dis
covered in Big Juniper House,
suggest how the people looked
and lived. Women averaged five
feet tall; men a little more.
They had to stay trim to squeeze
through doorways only two feet
high and a foot and a half wide.
Cadets are not the only
things kept under strict sur
veillance at West Point, N.Y.
The largest part of the gov
ernment's stockpile of sil
ver bars is kept there. This
silver is used for monetary
purposes and represents ap
proximately 40 per cent of
the silver mined every year.
Q Encyclopedia Britannic.
Their simple, gritty foods
were apparently as hard on
teeth as today's rich ones are.
Few skeletons show complete
sets, and many of their teeth
had been ground down.
For a time, archeologists be
lieved that two tribes inhabited
the Mesa Verde and Wetherill
Mesa. The earliest skeletons
possessed long, narrow heads.
Later skeletons had wide, flat
ones. Actually, the tribe was
the same, but the method of
child care had changed.
When the Indians moved from
prairie houses to cliff cities,
they possibly feared their ba
bies would suffer crippling falls.
So mothers bound infants to
pillowless boards, which left the
skulls permanently flattened in
back.
The cliff cities were lost to
man for 600 years after the In
dians abandoned them. Then
on a snowy day in 1888, two
cowboys rode through the sinu
ous canyons of Mesa Verde,
searching for lost cattle.
Richard Wetherill and Charles
Mason had heard rumors from
neighboring Ute Indians of
dwellings in the cliffs, but they
hardly believed them.
Suddenly - a silent stone city
sheltered by an enormous cave
loomed across 'the canyon. It
was Cliff House, a complex of
200 dwellings and many cere
monial rooms. Some 800 other
ruins lie scattered among the
nearby mesas, many of them on
Wetherill.
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