SHORTER LIFE

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21147, 24 April 1934, Page 3

SHORTER LIFE

TOO MANY COCKTAILS

'*Mv women friends all» take heed, the experts are saying that the statistics of feminine show that you must not expect to live as long as your grandmothers did —and this m spite of smaller families, greater care of the mother in childbirth, healthier conditions in the home, and the fact that 'a ten-year-old girl's expectation of life (according to her health at that age) is sixteen years more than that of her grandmother in 1883.' An anticlimax to it all? Why is it?" states a writer in "Everylady's Journal." "That great man, Sir Thomas Barlow, who has attended three generations of British sovereigns—he was physician to Queen Victoria —says 'cocktails and smoking.' This is how he compares the present generation of women with those of fifty years ago. 'The > start,' he says, 'with the advantages of better-teeth, healthier bodies, saner clothing, and greater comforts, but in my youth young women took a glass of elderberry wine; to-day they take brandy absinthe, and gin, indulge in late hours, and smoke.' Victorian and Edwardian women tight-laced; the present generation slims, and 'slimming is the worse evil,' says Sir Thomas, adding: T would put all women who diet on games. Hiking is the best sign of the times.' He sums the matter up thus: 'Women's ailments fifty years ago were dua to repression; to-day they are due to over-expression, over-stimulation, and exertion in an over-crowded life. Consequently the treatment of nervous cases has radically changed since I started out as a practitioner. As a young man I used to put women with nervous breakdowns straight on to alcohol; to-day, I take them straight off it.' "Sir Thomas leaves the matter there and does not ask the question which, naturally arises—What can be done about it? At his time of life—he 88—lie has, of course, realised that only experience brings wisdom, and that is where the pity of it all comes in, for wisdom so often comes too late. Time corrects the mistakes of each generation, but the benefit thereof is always for the succeeding generation, which meanwhile goes on and makes its own mistakes—sounds disheartening, doesn't it? Human progress is very like that of the snail in the old riddle, the snail who crawled up the pole three feet each day and slipped down two—a slow business, but after all, the net result is 'Excelsior,' isn't it?" Lord Brougham and Vaux has sold Brougham Hall, near Penrith, Westmoreland, to Major Geoffrey CarletonCowper. of Carleton Hall, Penrith, an estate adjoining Brougham. Lord Brougham had previously disposed of his outlying estates. All the valuable furniture and art treasures of Brougham Hall were sold by auction at Penrith about 18 months ago. This sale closes the centuries-old connexion of the Brougham family as one of the principal Cumberland and Westmoreland land-owners. They had lived in those counties since the Norman Conquest. Gorlitz claims a distinction which is probably unique in the world. A clock in this ancient Silesian city has not shown correct time for more than 650 yerirs. In 1253 a conspiracy was formed to murder the councillors as they left the town hall at noon. Conscience, however, overtook one of the conspirators, and he put the clock forward seven minutes, as a result, the would-be assassins arrived on the scene too early and were arrested by the watch. To-day the clock is still kept seven minutes fast in memory of the councillors' I escape.