Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1896-04-23
AN AGE OF INVALIDISM.
JlI-HeaIth Never So Popular a Topic
1t is Now.

as 1t is Now.
From the London World.
In an age when new triumphs of medical
and sanitary science are being proclaimed
almost daily we fret and worry about our
health in way that would have excited
the contempt Of our unscientific ancestors.
Go where one will, people are found dis
cussing ailments, comparing symptoms,
recommending remedies and exchanging
the addresses of specialists. We seem to
so about feeling each others pulses, look
ing at each others tongues, and reveling
in the mutual diagnosis of functional "trou-
bles" The old-fashioned notion that 1t
was undesirable to refer in public to ones
internal economy has long since been ex-
ploded Indeed, the liver has become not
merely a standing topic of conversation,
but a dominant factor of modern social life,
fetish to which all ages and all condi-
lions pay exaggerated worship.
A complaint once supposed to be the
specially 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
eccentricty. 1t has a recognized brigade"
of valetudinarian cavaliers named in its
honor, who treat their morning canter a
solemn act of homage to their dreaded IDOL
and still larger phalanx who now seek to
avert it's terrors by the aid Of the propi-
lively grotesaue in the intensity of self
coddling which prevails in. these times.
The cagerness with which people fly at a
new specific and hail a new mineral water
Ia only surpassed by the meek complaisance
with which they troop across the channel
to be annually STEPPED 10 hot mud, suffo-
Gated with mephitic vapors and "cured"
with the indescribably nasty products of
No health scare, even OF the most far
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 AMI
their twenty-fve-mile spins" our modern
sanitarians are never thoroughly at rest.
They are forever forswearing this, waning
their friends against that, discovering out
RACES to the liver god and Invitations to
chronic dyspepsia in the other, until one be-
gins to doubt whether a fatal illness would
not be, all things considered, welcome
alternative to life conducted on the latest
sanitary principles
A vast proportion of this health fanat-
icism is of course, nothing but the express
sion of a particularly unlovely form OF
modern egotism. 1t Ia akin to that other
variety of self-pity which prompts so many
moderately busy people to pose the mar
tyrs Of overwork As a matter of fact,
there is not the least reason why, with all
| its enormous advantages, the existing gem
Grafton should not be sounder in health and
digestion than the men and women of a
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 forefathcrs." who could eat
anything, and knew nothing of diet tables,
cid not waste time in fussing about their
livers, and were probably unaware, for the
most part, that thsy possessed such in
cumbrances. 1t would be by no means a
bad thing IL simlar. wholesome ignorance
prevailed in our own day, when a smatter-
| ing of medical and anatomical knowledge
combines with a good deal of morbid self
consciousness in procuring recruits for the
liver brigade" AS 1t is, We might do
worse than revive the abrogated law of The
social code which held it a breach of good
| taste and good manners to draw attention
to ones personal ailments and Affections.
| Those who are unlucky enough to be rela-
gated or to relegate themselves to an ill.,
valid diet are out Of place at the tahlas CT