SHAM INVALIDS.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 345, 18 July 1885, Page 4

SHAM INVALIDS.

The semi-invalidism that used to be fashionable, is now, says a lady correspondent, happily, becoming quite out of date, but there are still a class of - women who betake themselves to a semi-invalid indulgence on very slight provocation. They make an artistic business of it. They recline gracefully on the sofa in a becoming neglige costume, and are served with invalid's dainties, and the sympathising friends congregate, and the fair one is petted and pitied till a slight indisposition, that in nine cases out of ten would have yielded io a pleasant walk or to some other new and bracing influence, becomes really an illness. Of course this does not apply to actual disease ; but there is a very large proportion of so-called illness that is really only a matter of imagination and nerves. It is the kind that will yield to the new sanitary treatment of proper food, proper sleep, pleasant walks, and happy thoughts. There are many women who are temperamentally inclined to feeling blue, as they express it. The attack of low spirits conies without known cause and it is very apt to result in headache, and general indisposition for the time. It is a tendency to be faced with courage and common sense and resolution-. One may not be able to wholly eradicate the tendency, but any woman of strong will-power can successfully eradicate her giving way to it. Let her recognise it for what it is— a defect of nature — and set herself resolutely to conquer it.