The record-union., 1897-03-08
INCREASE or NERVOUSNESS.
Sweets and Patent Medicines Hurt Am0ri
CAN Women.
Improper Diet and Care Of Them
selves Cause Early Fading
Danger i'm Narcotics.

Candy and nerves are not often as
sociated. but a New York man, Dr..
W. j. Tripp, who has treated many wo-
men in all stages of nervous trouble,
says that sweets and an improper diet
have great deal to do with the in
crease of nervousness among American
women
Patent medicines have been another
cause Of the breakdown of many wo-
| men, he says. He will not allow his
patients to fatter themselves that
their nervous troubles are inherited.
He holds that a nervous trouble is OF
the nerves, and not of the blood and
cannot be transmitted.
We find that nervousness among
American women is increasing" said
the doctor to reporter. Il suppose q
great deal of it is due to their mode of
living and neglect of themselves. They
do not have a proper diet or hours OF
rest, and they then hurt themselves
with quantity of patent medicine.
Women are too fond of eating
things that do not nouriSh the system
candy and sweets. They like a great
deal Of sugar with q little tea or a
little coffee. Too many sweets taken
into the stomach are the cause Of de-
deneratiOn, and are an element which
produces much annoyance and lays the
foundation for serious organic trouble.
| There is no doubt of it. / have a case
where a woman cannot eat sugar at
all, and yet she has not symptom of
diabetes.
1t would be better for the children
to eat more fat pork than candy, or
| more fats than sweets, though & little
candy will do no harm. / believe the
people would be as we'll as in our
grandfathers' days if they would live
more outdoors and eat salt pork. Peo-
pie lived better in those days. They ate
more substantial food. Women are de-
generating, l think They are now
hardly - when they begin to fade
Take the shop girls and the girls in
the offices in the CITY, and think how
many of them there are. The majority
OF girls by far are those who earn their
own living. What do they eat? In the
morning they get up and hurry off with
a light, unsubstantial breakfast. They
have a light luncheon Of some sweet
stuff al noon, and at night they go home
to have hearty dinner. By that time
they are nearly starved and they eat
heartily. They are tired and their
stomachs are not in a fit condition to
dispose of the food that they have TAX
en- hastily and half masticated
They have been working all day in
close, bad air, and the result is they
soon break down You do not find
the same conditions among men. They
work in pits, in chemical laboratories.
in mines, in hot engine rooms, in all
kinds of unWholesome places, and are
able to stand it because they have q
different kind Of diet You see a labor
er eating his dinner on the street He
has not a tempting meal, but il is
coarse and substantial. If a girl has a
good diet she can stand the bad air.
Il do not object to tea and coffee in
| moderate quantities, and ales and beer
are all right. They are better than
malt extracts
Cases l have had illustrate the idea
that nervousness is not inherited and
also show the harm of patent medi-
cdnes. The young woman who is ex-
tremely nervous is the daughter of an
old soldier, a man who served through
the Mexican and Civil wars, and the
mother is a woman Of phlegmatic dispo-
sition. Hers was merely a local trouble,
which needed treatment. l took a
woman from an insane asylum, where
| she had been for nine months, after
taking patent medicines for two or
three years, and she was entirely well
in eight months.
had ono+ Iar- ticpt yI-bn had not
walked across the room for fourteen
years and had been in bed for seven,
whose trouble was nothing more or less
than patent medicines There was a
case of a woman in the middle part Of
this State in the cellar of whose house
were stored 300 patent medicine bot
ties, the contents of which she had taken.
Still another case on Long Island is that
of a woman who has taken patent med
icnes for thirty years. She is an imbe-
cile Do you wonder l think patent
medicine is dangerous?
'In the majority Of cases there is
some local trouble, and the patient, in
stead Of going to a good physician,
takes some medicine that is recon-
mended to her When a patient first
comes to me l ask If she has taken all
the patent medicines she wants. II
not, she can go away and finish it, and
then come to me.
Narcotics have something to do with
nervousness, and that is the reason
druggists should be restrained from
selling them except with a prescription.
The morphine habit is on the increase,
aHd we have to be careful in using the
hypodermc syringe.
Nervous people who have an ache or
a pain in the back are apt to think they
have a spinal trouble, and they are the
ones who are in danger of becoming ad-
dicted to morphine. One of the dam