Less Medicine, More Exercise.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1815, 25 July 1891, Page 2 (Supplement)

Less Medicine, More Exercise.

It is remaikable how people welcome any medicine that proroiees great cures. Even though they may not need it, they take the keeneet pleasure in its discovery, and if their imaginations are abnormally active, they easily percuade themselves that a dose or co will do them good. It is an age of medicine, an era of prescriptions, a season of experiments. The general crass for cures ol ills real and ills imagined supports a dozc-n drug stores where one f oruitrly struggled, builds up enormous fortunes for patent-medicine proprietors and makes millions of invalids out el people who ought to be healthy. There is a great need for a change in the popular mind. The craze for cures should cease to monopolise everything and allay itself with tbe gospel of prevention. In other words the people ehouid take leas medicine and more exercise, should give up some of their doses and substitute allopathic allowances of fresh air. Already there ia a noticeable improvement manifested, es1 pecially in our best schools and colleges, j Common sense is having a say in the cut I and arrangement of clothing. More attention ia being paid to out-of-door sports. The girl who can take a long walk or play tennis or ride for an afternoon is worth a half-dozen of Miss Languish, to whom five squares is exhaustion. Men and women are beginning to see the tremendous importance of physical soundness and to appreciate its absolute necessity as an element of domestic happiness. The young man of to-day wants a healthy wife and the young woman wants a healthy husband, lnvalidism ia becoming ; lees fashionable and less popular than it was, I snd tbe woman of to-day is trying to grow pre-eminently vigorous. The more she succeeds the better men like her and the better ebo likes herself.

Exercise, of course, is not ail. There aro rules of health, simple but rigid, that must be observed. Wholesome food, regular hours, moderation and perseveranoe are eseential. Spasmodic efforts will not satisfy the demands of health any more than spasmodic eating will satisfy the stomach. The people are improving in theee things, however, and the tendency is undoubtedly in the direction of more common sonße. It will take come time to counteract the craze for oures, but the work has been begun and its results grow constantly. It is gradually teaching the people that it is better to keep from being sick than to get sick and depend upon cures.