The Indianapolis journal., 1885-10-18
TWELVE PAGES.
The Sunday Journal has the largest and
best circulation of any Sunday paper in In
diana. Price five cents.
FIGHTING HOBBIES.

come others to kill them. 1t is manifesto
zion of divine mercy, hardly less striking than
any in all the dealings of Omniscience with
the frailties Of mortality, that the whims and
follies of men are so disposed in the economy
of the universe that they check and balance
each other. A religious caprice takes hun
areds into the useless seclusion of convent,
TO spend their lives in prayers that car do no
good to anybody else. An opposite hobby
sends hundreds about through the country to
play at a religious crusade. They do as much
harm as good, probably, but they fill the
gap the other hobby makes The vivisection-
ist has no mercy on dog that he thinks he
can cut, and stick, and disembowel to the i'm
provement of surgical skill in dealing with
human injuries, and sooth to say, he has ac-
complished some wonderful feats of restora-
zion to damaged humanity by his cruelty to
the other sort of animals To offset his hob
by comes Henry Bergh and the Association
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,
with a hobby that is as cruel to the human
race as the other is to the race of this societys
special guardianship, and as silly as it is cruel.
1t would punish the student Of processes for
4he relief of human suffering through observa-
zion of the sufferings Of lower animals as
criminal, as it Furnishes the fellow who ham,
mers balky horse over the head with truck
pin or the butt Of whip, or kicks a cow in
the ribs till she bawls in agony. Both hobbies
are carried too far and the excess of one bal
ances the other.
One dentist claims that the teeth should be
carefully brushed and washed with clean
water after every rneal. Another-we quote
the statement from a current newspaper
1tem-"a promire ent dentist says that tooth
brushes and tooth powders do the teeth more
harm than good" One eminent physician at
tributes most of the ills of mortality to the
'fbad habit of breathing through the mouth"
He says: ''You tell one of these mouth
breathers anywhere the moment you see them.
From disease of the nose bislips are retracted,
his mouth is continually open, his gums re-
cede and his teeth protrude, particularly those
In the upper jaw; the flesh that forms the
lower part Of the nostrils is shrunken, the
openings Of the nostrils are diminished in
size there are wrinkles at the outer edges Of
the eyes, and deep lines run from the nos
trils to the angles Of the mouth. These all
give the person either an expression of idiocy,
stiffness or suffering" On the other hand.
we have seen the opinions of other eminent
sPhysicians that ga man ought to breathe
Through his mouth in all severe exertion of
muscular force or endurance and, moreover,
he must do it because he can't help it,
Some men have hobby that walking is a
sort of cure-all when it is not prevent-all-
good to prepare the system to repel disease,
equally good to strengthen it to overcome dis
ease. Against their hobby some months ago
distinguished English Doctor peremptorily
asserted that walking, except at so rapid
pace as to make it positive and fatiguing
exertion, was of no use as hygienic prepara-
tive, whatever it might be as preparation for
dinner. One dietetic hobby insists that every
article of food at any meal should be weighed
or measured, and its consumption rigidly con-
fined to a given amount, possibly varying
little with variations Of bodily condition.
This was the hobby of Cornaro, who reformed
a life of dissipation at forty or fifty,
and lived to be hundred. The
teachers and preachers of hygienics and
dietetics nowadays are almost all of the Cornaro
school, given to running food through scales
and quart measures, and making indispensa-
Sle certain proportions of nitrogenous ma
terial, and certain other proportions of car
Sonaceous matter Something to make blood,
something to make muscle, something to
make fat, something even to make brains
And poor humanity, supposing that these
teachers speak by authority, and not as the
common doctors who dose us with quinine for
The chills and prescribe chicken broth after
fever, strives to follow the inculcations, and
starves hearty appetite to keep within the
rules. On the other side are other even more
distinguished doctors, like Abernethy whose
rule of dietetics was very simple and sensible,
too Doctor" said a gouty nobleman to
him, sis venison wholesome9" 'Do you like
its" "Yes." docs it agree witty "Yes."
''Then it is wholesome" Probably that is a
better rule, after all, than the chemical COM
plexities and careful measurements of the
mechanical feeding school.
The latest whim or hobby that we have en-
ycouutered is that reported in the Milwaukee
Sentinel recently. We quote it as We find it,