Life, 1928-12-14 · page 4 of 48
Life — December 14, 1928 — page 4: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is primarily **advertising**, not satire or political commentary. It's a Metropolitan Life Insurance Company advertisement from the 1920s (dated Dec. 11, 1928). The illustration shows a domestic scene where a man presents a gift to a woman, with the headline "Just One Thing." The accompanying text argues that wives should want their husbands to prioritize **health and longevity** above all else. The ad promotes **medical examinations** as modern scientific tools that can detect disease early—framing this as the ideal New Year's gift. It emphasizes advances in medical technology (blood tests, X-rays, organ examination) and argues that preventive health checkups represent progress and loving care. This is corporate messaging promoting both insurance and the emerging culture of routine medical screening, not social commentary.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Just One Thing “Do you remember, you said you would give me anything I wanted for a New Year's present? Well, what I want is something for you as well as for me. ... Is it a promise?” Ome ccen HERE is one thing that every wife who loves her husband wants above anything else in the world—that he may have good health and a long life. How many thousands of wives there are who are haunted by a secret fear that their husbands are not entirely well—who steal glances, when the other is off guard, in an effort to discover the cause of that constant dragging weariness, those too frequent headaches, those mysterious fleeting pains. Almost every woman knows that sharp thrust of anxiety to her heart, that catch in her throat when she thinks something is wrong with the man she loves. What is it? What can she do? No longer must a doctor judge the physical condition of a man by his unaided senses alone. Now, by means of marvelous instruments, he can actually look inside the body and watch the various organs at work! He can see the heart beat, the lungs contract and expand, he can watch the activities of the digestive tract. He can take x-ray photographs showing nearly every part of the body. _— — —-—- So new are the discoveries of medical science in relation to prolonging life that the majority of intelligent men and women have not heard about them. So amazing are some ~: of these discoveries that they are difficult to believe. That ““ seems to be the only sensible explanation of the estimate that but one person in 500 has an annual health examina- * tion. To determine the value of health examinations, a group of 6,000 policyholders of the Metropolitan Life Insurance - Company were given physical examinations. These per- sawed qeareceery Face! The doctor today who has kept step with the great discoveries in medicirle can sometimes learn important things about the condition of the person he is examining, merely by testing the blood or taking the blood pressure. He can often trace the cause of pain in some remote part of the body to infection in a sinus or tonsil. Frequently ailments of years’ standing have been traced to unsuspected infection at the roots of teeth. Doctors today need not guess. There are means for them to find out. They can detect trouble and in many cases check it before it has had time to damage the body greatly. Often their scientific examina tions show the beginning of serious ailments of which the person examined had not the slightest suspicion. It is folly of the most in- excusable sort to refuse to take advantage of the marvelous aids science has given us to discover and check disease and to prolong life. Make sure that your dear one has a thorough health examination this month. And why not have one yourself? No better: New Year present can be made. | sons were advised to the extent they and their physicians deemed necessary on the proper way to conserve their health. In nine years the saving in mortality in this group was found to be 18 per cent. The Metropolitan has recently prepared a booklet con- taining most important rules for gaining and keeping health. It gives much valuable information that tends to 1 make life both long and happy. Send for booklet 19-F. It Ul , will be mailed without charge. HALEY FISKE, President. METROPOLITAN LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY~NEW YORK Biggest in the World, More Assets, More Policyholders, More Insurance in force, More new Insurance each year LIFE: Published Weekly by Life Publishing Company, 598 Madisoa Ave., New Yo New York Post Offce, under act of March 3, 1879, Printed in U.S.A, Ent'd as 2od jbacription, $5.00. Vol. 92, No. 2406, Dee. 14, 1928. Ent'd as 2nd Clam Matter, June 8, 188 # t the Post Office Dept., Canada. Copyright 1925, Life Pub. Co., in U. 8., England and Beist Possessions, comicbooks.com Own — —— = —A Se. “Sw i sf sro> a = ve Q bre