MEN AND WOMEN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXI, Issue V, 30 July 1898, Page 146

MEN AND WOMEN.

At a woman’s congress held in Paris resolutions have been adopted to the effect that all families must secure certificates of health from intending Isons-in-law in order to guard the daughters of the Republic from risk and to prevent hereditary maladies in the fathers of a later generation. America is undoubtedly the happy hunting-ground of the woman doctor. The increase in her numbers has within the last twenty years been phenomenal. It is estimated that there are now about forty-five hundred women practitioners in that country as against five hundred and twenty-seven in 1870. The majority of these are of course general practitioners, but there are as well homoeopathists, hospital physicians, and surgeons, professors in schools, specialists for diseases of women, alienists, orthopaedists, oculists, aurists, and electro therapeutists. Doubtless, like their brothers, they suffer from the stress of keen competition, but it is stated that most of them succeed in making good headway, while one or two of the leading lights are credited with amassing the eminently satisfactory income of £ 5,000. Medical circles in Berlin are much agitated over a statement made by a prominent physician of that city to the effect that the nurses in the private hospitals are in league with the und’ertakprs, who distribute among them circulars offering as much as £5 by way of gratuity for a good job.

Mr Chamberlain, when a little boy, was playing one day with his sister at a game of ‘battle’ — each child having a regiment of toy soldiers and a popgun to fire at the enemy. The little girl’s soldiers went down very- quickly, but his stood firm, and he was proclaimed the victor. He had glued his men to the floor! —‘Pearson’s Weekly.’ ‘I am tired at the close of the day, ’tis true, but I always try to remember that my wife may be tired as myself.’ If all husbands would not only think this, but act upon it, many weary women would smile, and feel half their burdens drop at once from their shoulders.

A hand or body warmer which can be carried in the pocket is one of the novelties of the season. The pocket ‘lnstra,’ as it is called, is the first practical means by which slow burning fuel has been made available for heating the human body in a safe and cleanly manner. So small an amount of fuel is used that a refill, which lasts three or four hours, weighs only one-seventh of an ounce. To show their safety ‘Tnstras’ have been habitually carried in the same pocket mixed up with gunpowder cartridges, and they are equally effective in their cleanliness. Possibly the pocket Tnstras’ will be most popularly carried in the lady’s muff, or in the pocket to give warmth to the body, but we can also imagine them to be very useful to travellers by road or rail, particularly as they are quite free from smell.

So many engagements are made on board ship, and so many happy marriages result from them, that a captain of one of the largest Atlantic liners states that men, who, for some reason or other, are unable to secure wives at home, take a. trip over to America on the chance of meeting a girl on the boat, The Supreme Court of Georgia recently passed upon the novel question whether the contract of marriage is such a contract as is contemplated by the law which provides that contracts entered into and signed on Sunday shall be illegal and void. In 1850 a Mrs Cone married a Mr Underwood, and in her marriage contract reserved her estate for herself and her children. Mrs Cone’s grandson, in a suit for the ownership of the property, was not permitted to introduce the marriage as evidence, the defence showing that it was concluded on a Sunday. The lower court held that a Sunday marriage contract was as void, so far as its effects on property rights was concerned, as any other Sunday contract in regard to labour or employment. This decision was reversed by the Supreme. Court, which held that the Legislature, in enacting Sunday laws, can regulate only ordinary employment, ‘while entering into a marriage contract is not ordinary employment.’