The San Francisco call., 1896-10-11
Women With Shattered Nerves and the Medicine Habit

Scarcely paper appears without the
story CT suicide or some insane act of a
nervous woman. They seek the unknown
> side of death, or send another to find it,
for reasons too trivial to notice. Some one
loves a man too well, another moi
enough; parent has spoken harshly to q
daughter, or a daughter has failed in hel
duty to her parent; something has hap
pened or something has not. The only
remedy is suicide or the murder of all
other. There must be a desperate condi-
ton of mind when woman deliberately
sends her soul from her body, or else there
is a diseased condition CT the nerves, and
from the causes alleged the latter seems
true more often than the former. 1t has
been grayely advanced that girls all have
this desire for self-destruction; that it is
born with them and stays with them until
the age of twenty-five. Why twenty five
And why are girls born SO more than
boys? 1t is all moonshine. a healthy
girl never has any idea of leaving this
world until she must. Sometimes 1t is
nerves, sometimes liver, and oftener than
either the lack of wholesome work.
There was a girl affected with melan-
cholia who was miserable herself, from no
earthly reason, and who made every one
about her miserable. A fond father took
her to Europe, brought about her all the
people of culture and strove in every way
to lift her mind from its slough of de-
spond, without avail. 1t may be cruel,
but l never thought of her or saw her
without wishing to take her away from
her leisure, her beautiful home, and her
kind parents, and put her where she
must labor for her daily bread, and help
some one else who had none. Work, an
object in life, and wholesome self-sacrlfice
would soon have driven away the mel
ancholia.
Fresh air and exercise are wonderful
cures for low spirits. In fact 1 feel sure
that half the blues, dependency and
thoughts of death are caused by lifeless
air, sluggish liver and Iaziness. Women
are not as a rule victims OF the liquor
habit, but they have some little habits of
their own which work sad havoc with
nerves and their bodies generally. The
very worst one Is the medicine habit.
How many women of your acquaintance,
when they feel i'll, look at their own
habits and food to see what they have or
have not done to upset naturee Do they
not, all of them, fly to medicine bottle,
and that without knowing whether the
medicine is good for them or not? Find
me woman who does not dose herself
promiscuously and l will show YOU a
strong woman. 1t is worse in the coun-
try than in the cities, or else I have
noticed it more. I nave thought it comes
partly from the absence of a near physi-
clan.
The country is the faker's paradise. He
can sell anything If he only puts diseases
enough on the wrapper. Why have seen
shelf after shelf full of medicine bottles
in farmhouses, full of more kinas of
messes than I ever knew were brewed.
All these remedies were swallowed, too.
and the swallower lived to tell the tale.
The stories told of the cures would fill
volumes, and each season calls forth new
one. l have been advised to kill myself
with hundreds of medicines while my
health has been perfect. After a hard
days work, when fatigue caused pallor
iand heavy eyes, whose remedy is sleep,
have been pressed and importuned to take
S> little of Somebody's Invigorator. with
the assurance that if / took it regularly
Ia never become tired like this. It must
be rare medicine to overcome the effect of
cause. But never tried it.
You need medicine in the spring to
thin your blood after the cold Of winter.