TOO YOUNG AT FORTY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 8 September 1926, Page 8

TOO YOUNG AT FORTY

No woman should feel that she has launched upon middlo age at 40. Forty is the period at which she should be enjoying the full bloom of her youth, having shed the follies and incompe tencies of inexperience, being yet many years off from the incapacities and weariness of old ago, and in possession of a mature, healthy body and a ripe, well-stocked mind that can appreciate and make the best of all the good things of life! One is appalled by the frequency with which one meets women of 40 who are complacently contemplating impending decrepitude. The superstition that the turning point of life has ben reached is so potent that they have seen nothing to do but to accept senility with resignation. Whatever was true in tlio past, the slogan of this generation should be “Too young at 40.” Indeed, enough is known about thc'preservation of youth lo make 40 a ridiculous under-estimate. There is a well-known medical epigram that “a man is as old as liis arteries.” A woman is ns young as her arteries, niii] at 40 her arteries are very young indeed, younger than a man’s of the same age. Tier organs are vnung, her mi ml is young, and if her mirror and tier feelings tell her otherwise it is in. most eases because her mind is suggesting the thoughts of age instead of youth, and her organs, being part of a maciiiiie, give the. impression of breaking up, when all that is required is a certain amount of overhauling. Why do most women never get themselves overhauled until there is something seriously the matter? A manufacturer who failed to overhaul his machinery until something went wrong with the works would soon he ruined. And servo him right. The function of overhauling is prevention, which is easy; not cure, which is often impossible. Tfc is often a very small handicap indeed, a very slight organic ailment that gives a sense of departed youth. Neglected, Hint same ailment may create a vicious circle of ever-developing ailments.; checked in time, its massing can offer* a real rejuvenation. If every woman of 40 privately adopted fhc Phi no so system of paying her doctor to keep her well. there is no reason why we should not very son find ourselves, in the words of Bernard Shaw. “Back to Methuselah.”