One writer ascribes it to the "exceeding restlessness and the desire to be
doing something which are predominant and indomitable in the Anglo-Saxon
race;" another to the passion which almost all families have for seeming
richer and more fashionable than their means will allow. In these, and in
most of their other theories, they are only working round and round, as
doctors so often do, in the dreary circle of symptomatic results, without
so much as touching or perhaps suspecting their real centre. How many
people are blistered for spinal disease, or blanketed for rheumatism, when
the real trouble is a little fiery spot of inflammation in the lining of
the stomach! and all these difficulties in the outworks are merely the
creaking of the machinery, because the central engine does not work
properly. Blisters and blankets may go on for seventy years coddling the
poor victim; but he will stay ill to the last if his stomach be not set
right.
There is a close likeness between the doctor's high-sounding list of
remote symptoms, which he is treating as primary diseases, and the hue and
outcry about the decadence of the home spirit, the prevalence of excessive
and improper amusements, club-houses, billiard-rooms, theatres, and so
forth, which are "the banes of homes.
Pages:
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265