BRIDGE WRECKS.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15907, 20 August 1923, Page 2

BRIDGE WRECKS.

are you one? A DOCTOR’S QUESTION. “Why don’t you.” said a wellknown' Harley Street physician, “write about Bridge wrecks? I can assure you that I have quite a num her of them amnog my patients—men and women, whose neives have been shattered by playing cards too much. I know them at a glance when they come into the consultingroom.”

Well, it is hardly my promise to renresent Bridge as a vice like dra m- drinking or cocaine-sniffing. But, without being a doctor, I have in my time advised quite a number of people to give up Bridge and take to some quieter game. There is no doubt that Auction Bridge is a nerve-racking game which is unsuitable for certain kinds of temperamental persons. They get worried and harassed over it. They are haunted by their hands. They wake up in the middle of the night and see with painful clarity the faults they have committed, the things that might have been. And yet it has a fatal fascination for them which they are powerless to resist. It is a poignant pleasurepain which has all the lure of a vice. They love it and hate it at the same time.

This is no exaggeration. I have seen men and women at the Bridge table whose hands shake as they deal and play the cards, whose faces are pale, worn, jaded and anxious. You wonder why they play when they seem so pained over it. 'But they do. They can’t help it. There are some people who cannot play Auction Bridge even in moderation without getting upset. They take it too hardly and too seriously. The short-comings of their partners prey upon their minds. They become morbid over the game. But most Bridge wrecks are made by excess. Bong hours spent in stuffy, smoke-laden card rooms day after day and night after night, of- | ten with the accompaniments of endless cigarettes, cocktails and “nips,” try the nerves of even the strongest and hardiest. They are particularly bad for women, among whom are some of the worst cases of Bridge addicts. Sensible people not. only take their Bridge in moderation, but also they intersperse .it with physical exercise. iGolf and Bridge go very well together, and it is astonishing how much more one enjoys a rubber of Auction after a strenuous round of golf. To all who find themselves getting “nervy” at Bridge I recommend knocking off for a time and never sacrificing outdoor exercise for the pleasures of the card-table. A. E. Manning Foster in the London Daily Mail,