The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7242 p454
29 March 2003

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Mystique and medicine [more]
Having a break [more]
Houses and homes [more]

Mystique and medicine

The other day I encountered a series of strange portents while cycling down to my local post office. In the first place, it was a Friday, though not the 13th day of the month. There is an ancient belief that to undertake a journey, and particularly a sea voyage, on a Friday bodes ill fortune. And I recollected that it was asking for trouble to start a task or a letter on a Friday, or to be born or get married on that day. But it was reassuring to remember that I had indeed been married on a Friday and for many years had found no fateful impact from that occasion.

The next portent was that a single magpie flew across my path, reputedly a sinister omen. Being on a bicycle, I could neither raise my hat nor bow, actions that are supposed to offset the evil. Then a flock of wild swans swept screaming overhead, disconcertingly, and a pair of ravens circled above, croaking dismally. I thought: "The raven himself is hoarse / That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements." In the event, my Friday venture did bring a minor misfortune, the displacement of the chain from my pedal drive. This I accepted as all in the day's work, and was glad there was nothing worse.

The train of events reminded me of other mysterious happenings that have come my way. Some years ago I was intrigued to come across, in a stone circle on the moors near Land's End, a voodoo emblem composed of twigs interwoven with coloured wool and feathers, and obviously deliberately placed on the leading stone. In such a lonely place, in a howling gale, this seemed sinister. And only recently when I revisited the site of an ancient holy well on the moors the thicket surrounding the well was draped with tinsel and cloth fragments, the work of some strange cult-driven persons. Such ornaments are sadly defacing to the landscape, and I wonder about the mentality and motives of the perpetrators. Such eyesores are apparently on the increase.

In another sphere we have to reckon with some mystical manifestations of traditional folk medicine. Herbal lore has long had its darker aspects, and today we see a rather illogical recourse to folk remedies whose efficacy is far from proven and whose ill effects are suspected.

Worst of all, we learn that some animal species are in danger of extinction because certain of their organs — horns and livers for example — are being shamelessly exploited as miraculous remedies for human ailments, particularly in the East. Surely it is high time that the trade in such organs was vigorously discouraged and extinguished.

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Having a break

We hear nowadays a great deal about motorists who drive dangerously because they refuse to recognise the need to take short breaks during a long journey. In other monotonous pursuits there is a similar hazard to be reckoned with. Shifts of work in a factory are attended by the same sort of risk unless a deliberate attempt is made to take periodical breaks for relaxation.

A research paper from the University of Wales and Loughborough University, published in The Lancet for 22 February, reports a study of the benefit derived from regular working breaks in a car assembly plant in the United Kingdom over a three-year period. The researchers studied a work force of some 2,000 people, who participated in alternate night and day shifts, altering every two weeks. Apart from a few senior supervisors who broke the monotony of their work by having to attend management meeting occasionally, the workers experienced constant environmental factors such as lighting, noise, heat and humidity during their two shifts. Continual repetitive movements largely governed by the needs of machines, or otherwise beyond individual control, were typical of the work undertaken. Two-hour work periods were separated by a 15-minute rest break, a 45-minute meal break and a further 10-minute rest break.

The risk of accident rose significantly over the successive four half-hour segments comprised in a two-hour work period. More accidents occurred among the day shift than among the night workers. The rest breaks reduced the accumulation of risk of accident during two hours, but this restorative influence was short-lived. It appears that having frequent short periods of rest from routine work also improves performance of the work. However, if a rest break involves a potentially hazardous shutting-down of a machine and its restarting-up there could well be an increase in the accident risk to which workers are exposed.

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Houses and homes

There is a great deal of difference between a house and a home, and it never fails to irritate me when I see an advertisement offering "luxury homes for sale". You can buy a house, but never a home, which is the house plus all the human factors that go with it. The sooner we correct this misrepresentation the better.

Some of the results of a change in our social habits as reflected in the demand for more and more individual residences are discussed by an Oslo economist, Nico Keilman, in Nature for 30 January. As he remarks, households in many countries have become smaller in recent decades. Twenty years ago it was usual for a family to continue to inhabit the parental house until the younger members married and set up a new establishment. Now it has since become the rule for children to set up new abodes, sometimes even before leaving school or college, so that even relatively spacious houses become the abode of a pair of ageing parents, their children having moved to small flats or bungalows. Thus, while the world's population has increased, so has the proportion of small households.

These changes, reinforcing each other, mean that the demand for food, water, arable land, energy, transport facilities and energy sources, in both less and more developed countries, has increased. Even if a local population remains constant, household members no longer share their space, furnishings, energy and transport demands, which causes these to demand more of them. Small households are less energy efficient than larger ones and also multiply.

As Keilman remarks, "social, economic and cultural theories of demographic behaviour point to a variety of reasons why individuals prefer to live in small households". They include relaxation of strict social norms, less "religiosity" and increased individual freedom in ethical matters, more insistence on and acceptance of symmetrical gender roles, including access to education and employment, increased economic aspirations and more freedom in residential decisions.

Population ageing has an important effect on the overall picture. Increased longevity means that there are longer periods when children do not live with their parents, and the greater mortality of men and the age difference between spouses result in more widows having to live alone, usually in smaller houses. As a group of researchers in the United States argue in a letter published in the same issue of Nature, the change in living habits must exert a significant adverse effect on biodiversity conservation measures and increase the challenge to those bodies responsible for it.

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