The Banner-Democrat. [volume] (Lake Providence, East Carroll Parish, La.) 1892-current, 1896-07-18
AGE or iNvALIDIsM.


A0E Ut uIywt&esSs><ssss
m-Health Never So Popular Topic -
1t IL Now.
In an age when new triumphs Of medi-
cal and sanitary science are being pro-
claimed almost daily we fret and worry
about our health In way that would
have excited the contempt of our UNI
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 q standing topic of CONVEX
sation, but q dominant factor of mode
ern social life, fetish to which all ages
and all conditions pay exaggerated wor-
ship.
A complaint once supposed to be the
speciality of sun-dried Anglo-IndianS 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 honor, who treat
| their morning canter as solemn act OF
| homage to their dreadful idol, and q
still larger phalanx who now seek to
avert its 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 be annually
steeped in hot mud, suffocated with
mephitic vapors and 'cured" with the
indescribably nasty products of regula-
ton quelle.
No health scare, even of the most far
fetched description, is too extravaganza
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
fatal illness would not be, all things
considered, welcome alternative to q
<hA
principles.
Avast proportion of this health-fanat
icism is, of course, nothing but the cx
: preston of a particularly unlovely form
E of modern egotism. 1t is akin to thai
other variety of self pity which prompts
J. SO many moderately busy people tt
pose as martys to overwork. AS mat
b ter of fact, there is not the least reason
y why, with all its enormous advantages
: the existing generation should not b
o sounder in health and digestion thar
= the men and women of time wheI
e sanitary science was unknown, whe1
Q medicine was in its infancy and wheI
: cooking had not yet taken its plac'
% among the fine arts.
# Our "rude forefathers," who could ca
+ anything and knew nothing OF die
. tables, did not waste time in fussinl
. about their livers, and were probabl.
l. unaware, for the most part, that the.
, possessed such membranes. Itwoul'
h be by no means a bad thing II SIM
n lar wholesome ignorance prevailed 4
Ie our day, when q smattering OF medl
e cine and anatomical knowledge com
h bines with a good deal of morbid sell
d consciousness in procuring recruits TO
l. the oliver brigade" Asst is. we might d
lie worse than revive the abrogated law
q the social code which held it breac
'. of good taste and good manners to draS
W attention to ones personal ailments an
m Affections. Those who are unluck
Of enough to be relegated, or to relegat
al themselves, to an invalid diet are on
of place at the tables of their friends
,e Until their recovery, it would be "a
IN better for the doors to be locked upo
lie them, that they might play the valett
T. dinarian nowhere but in their ow
d houses.-London World.