The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-12-30

on life on account of 1t at "a poor dying stage"
 Modern surgery has minimized the peril to humanN life until death is fain to retire abashed from the doctors firing line. Death Is not yet driven from the battlefield or the deck of the battleship. He still cuts wide swath with cannon and smokeless powder,
 but in the hospital ward le Is routed
 inch by inch. The so per cent. mor-
 tality in critical operations familiar
 twenty five years ago has been reduced
 to so, to 30 and to 10 per cent, and at
 the present writing IS stated to be 2
 per cent. Life is victor. If you have anything the matter with you, have re- course to the hospital at once. You are far safer there than in q railway car-
 riage, ferryboat or an automobile,
 much safer than in crossing crowd ed thoroughfare, and safer, too, than
 In the vicinity of friend who keeps pistols for pIayth,ngs and may shoot you some moonlight night. quite by accident.
 But let us hark back to nervous prostration. When a trained nurse af- ter a weary campaign is laid aside with this mafady we easily comprehend the case. When 1t attacks a tired teacher who has spent many consecutive years in the schoolroom this. too, is easily understood. Yet neither nurses, teach aTs saleswomen, washerwomen or hard working Journalists succumb to ner- vous prostration or nervous exhaustion or any other form of nervous trouble so readily as do society women with every thing in their favor. The lady who apparently has nothing to do except to enjoy herself, who has a summer resort in the hot season and a winter resort in the cold, who crosses the ocean as If 1t were a bit of a river. and spends her time as she will with husband can lavish. or a worn-out American husband beaueath, is laid aside and neither specialists nor rest cures seem quickly to restore her boise. How shall we account for it?
 Possibly those of us who have never had much to do with fashionable so- ciety are unaware of the strain 1t in- wolves. It must be very wearygng to have to change one's clothing a half dozen times a day, to be obliged to purchase no end of beautiful toilets which prove unsatisfactory after we have them because less beautiful than those other women possess and, most of all, the drudgery of incessant amuse-
 
 To live forever sot the front of the stage, to rush from one engagement to another, never to let up on the dizzy whirl must undoubtedly be Q serious tax.
 Apart from this. however. 1t Is to be feared that the cult of nervous pros tration is a swing of the pendulum in the other direction from the cult of hoydenlsh health, which little while ago was the fashion. In our grand mothers day it was inelegant to have 6 good appetite, and fine ladies picked dainty at a chicken wing in public. Nothing would have so distressed them as to have appeared honestly hungry. Some of our women in these days af- feet nervous prostration as condition of some elegance. They could shake 1t off if they tried, but they do not try. Like poor Mrs. Dombey, they de, or at least fade, because they cannot make an effort Unlike her, they have no ex- cuse for either dying or fading. This century Is very stimulating, and It's air is tonic. It Is absurd not Co take ad- vantage of it's wonderfully hygienic att and keep well. Nervous pros tration Is disgraceful where 1t is a pose.