Williston graphic. (Williston, Williams County, N.D.) 1895-1919, 1896-08-07
AGE OF lNYALlplSM.
I1l-ueslth Never So Popular . Topic -
1t 10 Now.

AGE Of tNVA.SOuSWs
I1l-ueslth Never So Popular . Topic -
1t 10 Now.
In an age when new triumphs of medl-
cal and sanitary science are being pro-
claimed almost daily we fret and worry
about our health in q way that would
have excited the contempt of our un-
scientific ancestors. Go where one will,
people are found discussing ailments,
comparing symptoms, recommending
remedies and exchanging the addresses
of specialists. We seem to go about feel
ing each others pulses, looking at each
others tongues and reveling in the mu-
tual diagnosis of functional TROUBLES
The old-fashioned notion that it was
undesirable to refer in public to ones
internal economy has long since been
exploded. Indeed, the liver has become
not merely standing topic of CONVEX
sation, but dominant factor of mod
ern social life, a fetish to which all ages
and all conditions pay exaggerated wor-
ship.
A complaint once supposed to be the
speciality of sun-dried Anglo-1ndians is
now claimed by apparently robust and
healthy young persons of both sexes.
and is made the excuse for every kind
of weird dietary eccentricity. 1t has
recognized "brigade" of valetudinarian
cavaliers named in its honoF,Iwho treat
! their morning canter as solemn act OF
homage to their dreadful idol, and a
still larger phalanx who now seek to
| avert it's terrors by the aid of the pro-
pitiatory "cycle." There is something
positively grotesque in the intensity of
self-coddling which prevails in these
times. The eagerness with which peo-
pie fly at new specific and hail new
mineral water is only surpassed by the
| meek complaisance with which they
troop across the channel to he annually
stepped in hot mud, suffocated with
mephitic vapors and ''cured" with the
indescribably nasty products of regula-
ton quelle.
fetched description, is too extravagant
| to secure ready and alarmed attention.
Even with the protection of their rusks
and milk buildings, their minced chicken
| and plain outlets, their all-wool vesture
and their 25-mile "spins," our modern
| sanitarians are never thoroughly at rest.
They are forever forswearing this, warn
| ing their friends against that, discov-
ering outrages to the liver god and in
vitations to chronic dyspepsia in the
other, until one begins to doubt whether
a fatal illness would not be, all things
considered, welcome alternative to a
life conducted on the latest sanitary
principles.
Avast proportion of this health-fanat-
jcism is, of course, nothing but the ex-
preston of a particularly unlovely form
of modern egotism. 1t is akin to that
other variety of self-pity which prompts
So many moderately busy people to
pose as martys to overwork. AS mat
ter of fact, there is not the least reason
why, with all it's enormous advantages,
the existing generation should not be
sounder in health and digestion than
the men and women of time when
sanitary science was unknown, when
medicine was in its infancy and when
cooking had not yet taken its place
among the fine arts.
Our rude forefathers," who could eat
anything and knew nothing of diet
tables, did not waste time in fussing
about their livers, and were probably
unaware, for the most part, that they
possessed such membranes. Itwould
be by no means bad thing if a SINH
lar wholesome ignorance prevailed in
our day, when a smattering of medi-
cine and anatomical knowledge com
hines with a good deal of morbid self
consciousness in procuring recruits fol
the ''liver BRIGADE" AS it is, we might dc
worse than revive the abrogated law OF
the social code which held it breach
of good taste and good manners to draw
attention to ones personal ailments and
Affections. Those who are unlucky
enough to be relegated. or to relegate
themselves, to an invalid diet are out
of place at the tables of their friends
Until their recovery, it would be fa1
better for the doors to be locked upon
them, that they might play the valetu
dinarian nowhere but in their owl
houses.-London World.
''Unlucky" Opals.
It is not fashionable to be supcrsti
tious about wearing opals. Ten year.
ago the woman who wore an opal was
a brave woman indeed. To-day, experts
admit, more opals are bought than any