Fashion in Disease.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIX, Issue XII, 20 September 1902, Page 717

Fashion in Disease.

It is asserted by an English journal that since the Kings recovery from his illness, perytiphlyt-is, the disease from which he suffered, has been alarmingly on the increase, or, more correctly speaking, the number of folks who admit to being victims of the disorder has greatly increased. This curious circumstance we must attribute rather to the loyalty of His Majesty’s subjects than to any special physical weakness in the region of the vermiform appendix; and chiefly to the tyranny which a desire to be in the highest fashion exercises over sick and hale. The fashionables seek to be fashionable in their diseases as well as their dress and manners. But even the unfashionable in most things conform to the prevailing mode in the matter of sickness. Of course in the case of infectious maladies such conformity is not always a matter of choice; but non-contagious diseases acquire a vogue, just as a certain shape of hat, or a certain cut ofcoat does. New ailments our grandmothers never heard of eome rabidly to the front, like new patent medicines. Half a century ago there was a great run on the liver, as the.seat of disease, ami no medicine in the market could vie in popularity with the blue pill. Few of the rising generation ever heard of blue pill, and the centre of physiological interest has shifted from that organ of which in the sixties one used to hear so much. No doubt the world suffers just as much from biliousness as in the days of yore, but we don’t take special medicines directed against it—and are we much the worse? Fashions are proverbially changeful, however - , and it is quite possible that before we die we may penitently return to the faith of our fathers in the matter of a liver. Rheumatism, a most favourite ailment with our grandfathers, was laughed at, by Our fathers, and made a subject of jokes, but I notice a growing tendency among the young to take up the homely old trouble again. -- Of recent years heart complaint has been, much to the fore. A great deal of it is merely flatulence, otherwise wind, and our fathers called it by its true name, but we prefer to call it heart disease, and attribute it to the rush and worry of modern life, and take sedatives. There is only one conclusion one can draw from this change of fashion in disease and in remedy - . It is that we know very little about our internal economy, and that the poor organs go on doing their duty, to the best of their power, whether we' make them the subject of our special care or rigorously leave them alone.