"MY MT: Two youthful dental experts examine bicuspids in (he mouth-and-throat exhibit, see why tenth need brushing
by Jack Pollark
How would you like to learn how to stay
healthy and live longer? People living
in Cleveland can do it easily, thanks to a
unique institution, a Health Museum — the
first in the Western Hemisphere. The latest
wrinkle in health education, it has helped
Cleveland become one of America’s healthiest
communities. Besides thousands of local
people, the museum attracts enthusiastic
visitors from all over the globe — including
busy government health officials.
Unlike most museums — which usually re
semble mausoleums — this lively 39-room
former mansion has no hawk-eyed guards,
roped-off exhibits or “Hands Off” signs. In
stead, you are invited to push buttons,
pull levers, twirl knobs and turn cranks
of some 4,000 mechanical and electrical
exhibits, designed to show you how you
tick, from birth through old age.
These tricky but instructive models make
you stop, look, listen and remember. Aware
that the average American knows more about
his automobile than his body, and that count
less deaths and diseases stem solely from
ignorance, the museum uses dramatic devices,
advertising techniques and even gimmicks
to get across its health message.
lie*— mm Baby'a Taeth
You are urged to test your eyes, lungs,
heart, head, hands and — thanks to a mail
man’s recommendation — your feet. You
press a foot treadle to straighten the slumping
Posture Lady. You turn a crank and discover
in what order baby’s teeth usually come. To
save your own remaining molars and bicus
pids, a mechanical apparatus shows you how
to brush them correctly.
To judge who has tuberculosis, you look
at photographs — and learn that only X-rays
can really tell. Another peepshow previews
your possible 4B future: Bulges, Bifocals,
Bridges and Baldness.
One man, while waiting for his wife, amused
himself with an eye-testing machine. To his
surprise, he found he could see only faintly
out of his left eye. He visited a specialist the
following day who scolded him: “You’ve
been almost blind in one eye and didn’t even
know it!”
Several Metropolitan stars recently spent
a noisy afternoon playing the museum’s voice
organ, discovering exactly how high — if not
how well — they could sing. When I took a
deep breath to test my own lung capacity
and “blowing power” on the Vitalometer, I
made a belated New Year’s resolution to
smoke less, sleep and exercise more.
70 Tick* to tko Minot*
You cai) even dial your life expectancy
based on insurance company tables — as a
spry 92-year-old woman recently did. After
ward she grumbled, “Young man, according
to your machine I should be dead by now.”
But the museum wants you to “live long
and like it.” Its huge foyer clock — aided by
a hidden metronome — ticks 70 heartbeats
instead of 60 seconds per minute. Your own
delicate ticker, you are told, beats 100,000
times a day.
To see how your blood circulates, you flick
a switch and watch a moving red light make
a complete circuit through the human body.
Observing how his 31 trillion blood cells,
spread in a single layer, could Cover a square
city block, a college student confessed,
TW—5-U-4S