A New Disease.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 2, 10 July 1912, Page 11

A New Disease.

essov Bernhard in the course ot .. lecture delivered in Berlin anuounees the arrival of a new disease. He calls it “pension hysteria,” and he attributes its devastating ravages to the pension legislation in which Germany was a pioneer. He points out that as soon as physical disabilities become profitable they also become interesting. The man who knows that a headache or a pain under the pinafore may result in a pension and therefore nothing to do forever and ever will naturally feel a tender inclination toward headaches and pains under the pinafore. He will watch for them like angels' visits, and it need hardly be said that he will get them. Possible pension beneficiaries all over Germany are therefore spending their spare time in looking at their tongues, taking their temperatures, and feeling their pulses. In fact they are becoming first-class valetudinarians, for we all know that nothing can be worse for one’s “innards” than an undue solieitmle. The royal road to health is that divine carelessness so much recommended by philosophy, but 4horo can be no such virture where a pension is the reward of ill health. „