Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1893-03-04
Self Examination or Suicide as q
Fine Art.
Tread by Prof. Laverty at the Teachers' meeting
in Ellis, Feb. 4, 1881
TContinued from last week I

in Ellis, Feb. 4, 1881
CONTINUED from last week.
Babies ale rebelliously recuperative by
nature, but thanks to the self satisfied ig-
norance they can be crushed body, mind
and future, and 25 per cent. of them
killed outright. By improper diet we
can bring robust stomachs to their proper
delioacy, by indoor confinement we can
rob the child faces of their buoyant flush
and Jingle; by social tyrannies we can
make adolescent seedlings from the
nursery at once into women of the period;
by our glorious modern inquisition-the
free school system, we can curve their
spines, deform their shoulders, reduce
their muscles to habbiness that is the
delight OF the pathologist. We can
squeeze their lungs till the cell, and
child, are dead, hollow their chests till
the victims are consumptive, drug them
at home with nostrums that would be
death on rats, corset them into deformity
and disease, teach daughters to be more
ashamed of waist left as God has made
it than at being caught in ie-in short,
standing proudly on the Bible and the
constitution of free people, we can IN
blushingly import every extravaganza
and deformity of heathendom, every
disease and pollution of despotism, every
mismanagement of life that time has con-
demned by failure and stamped with
Judgment and death. To this sublime
height have we, nation of servile imita-
tors, risen. Sons can drawl like English
d1des, daughters dress like Partisan
courtesans, children reared for pets, and
the homes of luxury through ignorance,
wilfulness and selfshness reproduce
those forms of disease that formerly ap-
peared only in the mud huts of pauper-
Used peasantry. Truly, every advance is
an improvement. It will be observed
that take hopeful views of life. 1 do,
and from principle as well as from the
fact that the outlook is encouraging.
Cholera has cost Europe this last year
$100,000,0O0. How much more than that
it will cost US this year remains only as
happy anticipation. But why do we
speak of cost? The world must have
cholera at any cost. If civilization, so
called, should turn in and clear up the
lowlands of Russia and Bengal, or put a
sanitary Gordon of fire and law about the
plague spot, few years would practical
ly end the reign Of terror from this
scourge, but what would our morning
papers do for head lines of alarm? Be
comforted. Egypt will still be dirty, rags
will still import infection. The newspa-
pers will still have inspiring items for the
breakfast table.
The bright side of this question lies in
this: The world has got into such jan
gle with its disarranged functions, dislo-
Gated sensations and snarled up nerves
that taking into view the rush in which
we live (Which, of course, must be kept
up) it is matter of better economy to
die rather than to take the time to allow
nature to pick out the tangled skein and
recommence to reel off the frightening
and peaceful years with moderation.
There is another hopeful fact. Forty years
ago the maxim was settled beyond dis
pute that it was mans duty to be sick
and woman's shame Gf she be LADY,
to be anything than fragile, pale, Ian
guild, interesting looking, nervous. We are
reaping the benefits of that noble senti-
ment Not only that-our fathers and
brothers are heroically doing their part
to carry on that same praiseworthy de-
terioration. Cigarettes, cigars, pipes,
navy plug and other refining and purify
ing influences are paid for without grudg-
ing by poor and rich as missionary ne
cessities, and consumed without stint,
with devotion, that not only sets many
of the devotees very early among the
martyrs, but mercifully consigns their
children to sanitariums, retreats for the
feeble minded, mad houses, or other
lordly residences, established by the mu-
nifcence OF our government for the most
fortunate Of our people.
The skies brighten though we have
small help from the doctors.
Yet the benifcent notion is now thor
oughly established in all we'll informed
communities that it is a great deal
cheaper and more efficacious as cure to
take medicine than to stop unhealthy
living, thus putting nature on her metal
with two things to fght-a disease and q
deadly drug. This notion is 30 well es-
tabliehed that years will elapse before
the precedent can be overcome OF rum
ming for the latest quack liniment, what
ever has gone wrong in the animal econ
omy, from a sore toe to stroke Of
apoplexy.
We have now $50 diseases on our side |
old and new; let us maintain them with
pious care and religiously hand them
down intensified and rendered more viru-
lent If possible for the benefit OF poster. |