Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-11-24
INVALIDS BY PROFESSION.
WOMEN HYPOCHOEDRIACs ON THE
SUBJECT OF THEIR ILLS.
The Woman who Lives in the Contem-
plation of Her Symptoms-yari-
eties of the Species.

There are many professions which are
sorry enough, and in no wise to be coveted
by those who can do better Scavengers
and chimney hangmen ard rag
| pickers, for instance, are not the folk we
envy or desire to dispossess. Nevertheless,
these are honest trades in their own way,
albeit they do leave the hands grimy, and
dull the sharp refinement of the senses.
And they are necessary to society at large,
which gives them their own dignity and
redeems their outside denominations. We
might enumerate other trades ON which
the world looks down, yet without which
society would be disorganized; but cata-
logues make dreary reading, and some
thing must be left to the readers own
mind and memory. Of one profession,
however, we would say few words not
wholly unnecessary-th profession of an
invalid, which is adopted by certain, both
men and women, but, for reasons easy to
be understood, by more women than men.
Mrs. E. Lynn Linton, in late paper,
discusses this class of people in a vigorous
manner. She says that the profession of
an invalid is, of all others, the most disas-
trous, and the Invalid by profession is, of
| all human beings, the one to be the most
profoundly pitied. To the small subtratum
of fact in her arrangement of health
she adds a monstrous superstructure of
fancy. She lives in the contemplation of
her symptoms, and her symptoms are Of a
kind to make short work of Hercules if
! he had them. She has the most extraor-
binary complication of disorders-a very
network of maladies running through
every organ, and encompassing her inside
and out, so that what is good for one dis
| ease is bad for another; and thus radical
cure is impossible. And these symptoms,
these diseases, come and go with such
marvellous rapidity At o'clock an Sin
ternal Inflammation" has set in with one
of these invalids by profession--an inham.
nation SO acute that she may not put her
feet to the ground, nor rise from the sofa
when her friend goes to visit her. At
5 she was up and out, taking a
brisk walk on her own account; /;
and the next day she wants to go up
a mountain in the burning noon Of trop-
| ical summers day. One day she cannot
bear the glare from the road for a ten
minutes walk; another, she encounters
| that and the binding dust for two-hours'
| drive, seated on the box next the coach
| man. Sometimes she cannot go up three
j flights of shallow stairs; at others she
yearns for vigorous companion to go fast
up the steep hills which surround the val
ley where she has her temporary home.
With nerves all on edge, she drinks quarts
! of strong tea without milk or sugar. With,
on occasion, the timidity of an ingenue,
she goes to the crowded Exposition unac-
companied, and elbows her way to the
Eifel Tower alone. 1t is all part of the
same thing-that invalidness which comes
and goes according to the mood of the
moment, and the desire of the invalid to
do what she likes to do, and not to do what
she does not like to do. And her profess
sion makes the cloak, the capuchon by
which she hides the truth and puts on ap-
pearance.
The profession of an invalid induces
selfshness which eats away the moral fiber
of character as cancer eats flesh. Accus-
! toned to the exclusive consideration paid
to weakness, the invalid by profession can
an equal kind of give and take. All
| must be arranged for her special conven-
ience, else she is dispirited, if she is of the
sweeter sort, or cross if of the sourer. If
any one has aught that is better than her
| own share, she feels aggrieved and wronged.
A larger room, lighter window, the small
est good is enough to undo the whole fabric
of content. And when an invalid by pro-
fession is not content others suffer. The
| intense egotism by which her nature is in
terpenetrated blinds her eyes to itself. 1t
| is only when we have fault by halves
that we are able to see it and condemn it.
When we have it en- gros we cannot judge
of it at ALL The windows of our soul are
darkened and the light of conscience
| cannot penetrate. So with the self
ishness of an invalid by profession,
chronic invalid, whose incessant self
| contemplation makes her exaggerate her
state and falsify her sensations, and whose
symptoms are three parts hysteria to one
of unimportant fact She is so accustomed
| to hold herself person whose condition
makes her ever inferior to others, that the
| consideration, the giving up which we
must all practice more or less, according to
circumstances, is utterly impossible to her.
| Her mind has become so weakened under
the pressure of self-contemplation that she
ends by having no moral stamina left in
her. The barrenness of sacrifice to self
spreads over all her inner being, and the
generosity of love dies like a flower in the
drought. She cannot love. She may like
| one person more than others; the one she
likes being probably the one who best min
listers to her self-worship. But love-love
which means Observation-Disclosures
| ing, self-sacrifce; love which is the ami
hilation of self-of that, poor creature, she
| is as incapable as one paralyzed is incapa-
BILE of swift motion and vigorous hitting
| Such person as this as wife and mother
is a disaster quite as great as if she were
other things more openly reprehensible.
Incapable Of love, her children do not hold
her. The care they demand is tribute
taken from herself, and she leaves them to
| those coarser creatures, nurses and govern
esses, who have no nerves. no mysterious
symptoms, and are far from the network of
maladies by which she is so fast bound.
| She passes the greater part of her day in
her bedroom, with the door carefully
locked, even against her maid. One of
| this kind was affected with some obscure
disorder, and would not sleep without the
most appalling amount of opiate, nor wake
without the application of an electric bat
| terry; nor put her feet to the ground were
her very life in danger. She went out a
great deal in society, but she went reclin-
ing on picturesque chaise Tongue done up
in lace and old brocade, which two tall
footmen carried between them. She had
a special carriage built for her and her
chaise Tongue, and on this, with face
| painted the ghastliest white and eyes sur
rounded by deep lines of bistre color, she
used to go to evening receptions and the
like, looking as If she were a corpse for the
moment imbued with speech and move
ment. One day her little son, looking
through the keyhole of her locked door,
cried out in Joy, "Mamma is running about
the roomp In the solitude of her own
chamber, and when she thought herself
absolutely secure she flung off the mask of
her invalidism by profession. The elec-
trie battery was not needed. The chaise
Tongue was useless. There were no hand
some young men to commiserate her with
that pity which is SO very near akin to
love, no women to wish that they too
could look so lovely in that half corpse
like condition; so much more fascinating
than their own rude, robust, unsentimental
! J