Part 12 (2/2)
woman was said to have slept--”rested,” according to the commandment--on Sunday. On this charge, and because a speaker in returning to my house after a Sunday address took a ride in the last half hour of the day in a street-car, a resolution of endors.e.m.e.nt of the W. C. T. U. failed to pa.s.s in a Louisiana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and we were cruelly hurt by the tone of the discussion.
General Conference lifted us out of despair by n.o.ble resolutions against licensing the liquor traffic, and thereafter clerical dignitaries broke our hearts by a masterly inactivity--or took a scourge of small cords and proceeded, as it were, to drive us out with the hue and cry of ”women's rights,” lest, should a woman vote, her natural function should cease, and the sound of the lullaby and sewing machine be no longer heard in the land. It was comical sometimes to see how the bishops and politicians moved on the same line and for the same reason. But like some of our good bishops of slaveholding times, these certainly will not s.h.i.+ne with l.u.s.tre in the sky of history. Humbler ministerial brethren endured reproach with us and fought our battles; then we had sometimes the sorrow of seeing them removed from places of influence to obscure points in the service of the church. At last we and they tacitly understood that a preacher who wrought valiantly for prohibition jeoparded his ”prospects.” So it came that some who had led us ”went back” in the holy cause, and ”standing afar off,”
justified themselves, saying, ”I'm as good a prohibitionist as you are, but I'm more practical.” Desperation seizes the soul of women in reform work when a preacher or politician uses the word ”practical”; we know we shall get his ”sympathy” but never his influence or his vote. And the diplomatic brother who has to _explain_ that he is a temperance man, may hold clear qualifications for a citizens.h.i.+p in heaven, but is of no account whatever as a citizen of the militant kingdom Of G.o.d on earth, that must fight against ”princ.i.p.alities and powers” if it would win the world to the principles of Christ.
It should be clearly understood that the legitimate work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union is to close the open saloon, and not, as many mistake, to interfere with personal liberty by forcing total abstinence upon the individual. The members of the organization in the interests of consistency must be total abstainers; and because science p.r.o.nounces alcohol a poison and an active peril in the human body, a vigorous educational propaganda is kept up in order that future generations may be protected by knowledge against the dangers of alcoholic drinks. The main point at issue is that the State has no right to license an inst.i.tution which is a corrupter of public morals and a menace to social life. The Supreme Court of the United States has so interpreted. It is the sole duty of the State to protect and develop citizens; to protect their lives, their property, their morals and their rights; to develop the highest type of citizen that education by law and schoolhouse can produce. The saloon hazards the well-being of every citizen that is born to a State; it annuls the work of the church and the college; it disintegrates, degrades and destroys family life--the unit of the State; it impoverishes the home, pauperizes the child and debases manhood; it fills almshouses, jails and insane asylums; it lays the burden of the support of these inst.i.tutions on the State; the taxes which all the people have paid for their mutual protection and development are unrighteously diverted to the sustenance of the victims of the saloon; the State protects a small cla.s.s of citizens in doing injury to the interests of all other cla.s.ses. For revenue, and for revenue only, it gives a right and a power to the saloon to make an unending army of criminals, paupers and lunatics out of the sons and daughters which every mother has gone down into the shadow of death to deliver into the keeping of her country.
The motherhood of the enlightened world is arousing against this treachery of the commonwealth to her sacred trust. The State has no right to sell her sons even unto righteousness; still less to deliver them into the bonds of iniquity for a price. It is incredible that the mother's revolt did not begin long ago, for even the brute will fight for its young. But now they have begun to understand their duty and their power, and ”so long as boys are ruined and mothers weep; so long as homes are wrecked and the sob of unsheltered children finds the ear of G.o.d; so long as the Gospel lets in the light for the lost, and Christ is King, there will be a contest on the temperance question until victory. So long as this Christian nation sanctions the destruction of its sons for revenue, and sets on a legalized throne 'that sum of all villainies,' the saloon; so long as 'the wicked are justified for reward' and cities are built with blood, there will be a prohibition issue, and one day the right will triumph.”
CHAPTER XVII.
NERVOUS PROSTRATION AND A VENERABLE COUSIN.
I once heard a woman say that she had lived half a lifetime before she realized that the commandments were written for her. In a vague sort of way she had appropriated, ”Thou shalt not steal,” ”Thou shalt not bear false witness;” but she did not intend to do these things--the commandments must be for those who did. Her dumb amazement may be imagined on hearing a venerable and saintly soul state that she was so grateful to G.o.d that in her long life she had had no temptation to be a Magdalen. It was unthinkable that she should have had.
But the stress of life grew to agony; disappointments and wrongs heaped upon my friend; and one day she stood bare-souled and alone before G.o.d, confronting the commandment: ”_Thou_ shalt not kill!” In her struggle back to the Divine she learned that all of the commandments were written for her. Ever since, her heart has been pierced with tenderest sympathy for every man or woman who has fallen before temptation, and the despair of the suicide seems her own.
Unvarying good health and steady nerves were my inheritance, and my husband's fine, calm judgment helped to increase my nervous vigor. I am afraid I had once a quiet disdain for nervous women, and was supercilious towards what I deemed a lack of moral fiber, believing that with it health conditions would not have become ”all at loose ends.” But a time came when I too was going from sofa to easy chair, and dropping back into bed limp and trembling; when the banging of a door or the rustling of a paper ”set me wild;” when I was being a means of grace to all my family through giving them an opportunity to ”let patience have its perfect work”--and all with no justifying cause, except that the iron of sorrow had entered my soul, the color had been taken from my life, and I had not yet found my readjustments. Nevertheless I denied my condition, and so one day the doctor tried to explain it to me. ”A person,” he began, ”is said to be nervous when presenting a special susceptibility to pain, or exhibiting an undue mobility of the nervous system, as when one starts, or shakes on the occasion of abrupt or intense sensorial impressions, thus showing an exalted emotional susceptibility. The heart itself under the influence of nervous stimulation may in a moment change its customary order and rate of action, and in extreme cases cease to beat. The whole mental processes, as well as the functions of organic life, may be seriously involved. Now in your case, madam----”
”Stop, doctor. I take in the fact,” said I, ”which is evident in your high-sounding phrases, that nervous prostration is a killing complaint and you are going to treat me for it.”
”Perhaps so,” said the doctor. ”It often happens that an exaltation or diminution of activity in some one portion of the nervous system causes perverted action in another part, as when any unusual strain has been thrown upon you.”
”For instance,” said I, ”when a friend came last Sunday and allowed me to carry up-stairs her grip-sack with books in it?”
”Politeness should never require you to do such a thing,” said the doctor, ”but the strain may not be any physical exertion or overwork; deficient sleep, any sudden shock of joy or fear, especially terror, might prove fatal.”
”I was much frightened last summer,” said I, ”by a stroke of lightning which destroyed an immense oak tree in front of the door. It was a worse panic than that which seizes one on seeing one's husband bringing three gentlemen to dinner, when there is only one good little porter-house steak in the house.”
”Allow me to say,” continued the doctor, ”nervousness characterizes women more than men. It sometimes comes on as a sequence of severe illness, some grave anxiety, some physical or moral shock, like the unexpected discovery of perfidy or disloyalty on the part of a friend. Then, too, nervous prostration is brought on by unremitting or monotonous duties, which keep the same paths of action from day to day.”
”I was told,” said I, ”of a lawyer who entering his office the other day read upon his slate the statement that he would be back in half an hour; in a fit of absence of mind he took a seat and waited for himself, and it was some time before he realized that he was in his own office, and that he was not one of his own clients.”
”That,” replied the doctor, ”was no worse than the case of the reverend gentleman who on going out one morning gathered up an ordinary business coat and carried it around the whole day, thinking it was his overcoat, and was more surprised than anybody else when informed of his mistake.
These examples are evidences and symptoms of nervous disorder. I never knew a man to hurt himself by mere bodily labor; but excessive mental toil is certainly capable of damaging the nervous tissues. Any calamity, misfortune, pecuniary loss, or accident is liable to bring on nervous prostration. What are the symptoms? Loss of sleeping power, incapacity and aversion to work, la.s.situde, headache, an anxious and cross expression of countenance, heart disturbance, cramp--all these may be indications of local nervous exhaustion.”
”Doctor, how do you propose to exterminate this formidable enemy?”
”For the treatment of nervous diseases,” said he, ”we have at our disposal invaluable remedies whose action is more or less special. There is strychnine, bromide of pota.s.sium, possessing the opposite properties of increasing and diminis.h.i.+ng the reflex excitability of the nervous system, in addition to other beneficial modes of action. Then we have chloral and morphine, acting directly and indirectly as hypnotics, thus allowing the curative action of rest to come into play. For pain, we have opium, Indian hemp, subcutaneous injections of morphia, and the galvanic current. We have any number of drugs for influencing, relaxing, mitigating pain, reinforcing the nutrition of wasted muscles. Then there are nervine tonics, preparations of zinc, a.r.s.enic, iron, quinine, phosphorus, cod-liver oil, to say nothing of cold or tepid douches, and the ma.s.sage treatment.”
”Good gracious!” I exclaimed, ”am I to swallow all these poisonous things?”
”There is no occasion for alarm, madam. I don't propose to prescribe all these things at once. The first thing I shall order is very important--it is a simple but nutritious diet. Eat plenty of ripe fruit; drink pure, distilled water; take plenty of gentle but regular exercise, and sleep as much as possible. You must be surrounded by agreeable society, have plenty of fresh air and excellent food, and with temperance, avoiding all excitement and mental exertion, I hope you will soon be well.”
”But, doctor, suppose baby Laura falls down-stairs or the house takes fire?”
”You are to be kept ignorant of all such things. The medicine you need is perfect rest, for after all it is the most powerful therapeutic agent when you understand its nature and the indications for its use. You rest your body in sleep, you rest your mind by looking on beautiful things, hearing good music, and thinking of nothing. Sleep is a preventive of disease, and the want of it, if carried too far, causes death. Sleep is balm to the careworn mind and over-wrought brain. In these days of emulation and worry, the waste of nerve force must be repaired by sleeping and cessation from all work. Now is the time to stop, lest you come to the door of the insane asylum. I repeat, absolute rest,” said the doctor, striking his cane on the floor, ”and no stimulants to excite rapid circulation. The brain recovers slowly and resents too early demands on it after any injury. The general health must be maintained at the highest possible standard, and you must not worry. You must be a philosopher.”
”Doctor,” said I, ”I can do better than that; I can be a Christian. I can say, 'Yes, Lord,' to whatever G.o.d sends. That is the philosophy of Hannah Whitall Smith, and I have tested its efficacy.”
”Yes, madam, I too,” said the doctor, ”would recommend anything of a soothing, tranquilizing character. I shall call to-morrow; good morning.”
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