LADIES, look at this proposal to promote what some of you may call the
millineryennium:--
"A Guild of Ladies is proposed to be formed to promote modesty
of dress to do away with extravagance, and substitute the
neatness and sobriety suitable to Christian women."
A guild formed to promote the sobriety of women ought to have SIR
WILFRID LAWSON for a patron, and should be supported by every
Teetotaller now living in the land. But the sobriety here mentioned is
that of dress, not drink; and total abstinence from finery and flummery
of fashion is doubtless the chief aim of the promoters of the guild.
Well, if they succeed in reducing even chignons to reasonable
dimensions, they will deserve the thanks of every one afflicted with
good taste; and if they further are successful in reducing the enormous
bills which ladies owe their milliners, they will earn the heartfelt
gratitude of many a poor husband, who can ill afford to pay them. All is
not gold that glitters, but we may guess there is true metal, and not
merely specious glitter, in these Guilded Ladies.
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=French and British Budgets.=
M. THIERS has been censured by some of our contemporaries for his fiscal
policy of seeking to impose heavy duties on raw materials. At any rate,
however, France will not be saddled (like an ass) with an Income-tax; so
the taxation to which that country will be subjected, will be
comparatively light, even if it should have the effect of making
butchers' meat as frightfully dear there as it is in England.
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=A TEMPERANCE HOSPITAL.=
[Illustration: G]O to! The anti-alcoholic manifesto lately put forth by
the two hundred and fifty first-class Doctors is already producing the
effect which a demonstration, fortified with names some having handles
to them, seldom fails to produce on a portion of the generally
intelligent British Public. It has caused "a movement." The _Daily News_
announces that:--
"A movement has been started to establish a hospital in London
'for the treatment of diseases apart from the ordinary
administration of alcoholic liquors.'"
The object of the movement does not appear from the words in which it
is stated quite so clearly as the thinking persons who may attach
importance to it must desire. Do not, in fact, most Doctors, as it is,
treat diseases "apart from the ordinary administration of alcoholic
liquors?" Are not all patients but those labouring under diseases of
debility, as a rule, enjoined by their medical attendant to abstain,
totally or comparatively, from wine, beer, and spirits? In hospitals,
where this abstinence can always be enforced, the treatment of diseases
apart from the ordinary administration of alcoholic liquors is
especially usual. Do the enlightened promoters of a movement for the
establishment of a hospital, whereat diseases shall be so treated still
more especially, mean to say that, in that new institution alcohol, in
diseases in which it has hitherto been wont to be ordinarily
administered as a tonic or stimulant requisite for their cure, shall not
be given--and if so, why? Because alcohol is a poison? Then why stop at
alcohol? Why not also proscribe, instead of prescribing, opium, henbane,
hemlock, deadly nightshade, arsenic, and prussic acid; and indeed--for
what active medicine is not a poison in an over-dose?--nearly every
article in the _Materia Medica_?
Truly the great Two-Hundred-and-Fifty Against Alcohol, themselves even,
leave some room for question as to their meaning when they proclaim that
"it is believed that the inconsiderate prescription of large quantities
of alcoholic liquids by Medical Men for their patients has given rise,
in many instances, to the formation of intemperate habits." Believed by,
and of whom? By the Two-Hundred-and-Fifty Doctors of their Profession at
large, or by Society in general of it, including them? One would like to
know who the believers are, in order to be enabled to appraise the
belief, and it would also please one to be informed whether or no the
belief includes a confession, which the Two-Hundred-and-Fifty make for
themselves. Did you, gentle reader, in the course of your experience,
ever happen to meet with a victim of the Bottle who dated his
intemperance from taking port wine or brandy, prescribed for him when
convalescent, for example, from typhus fever?
One can indeed understand and appreciate the advice that "alcohol, in
whatever form, should be prescribed and administered with as much care
as any powerful drug," and peradventure this will create another
movement, a movement of a speculative nature, for the manufacture of
graduated physic glasses, of various sizes, to replace the sherry,
champagne, hock, and claret glasses now in use at table: a minim-glass
to be the new glass for liqueurs and brandy. This practical improvement
in Social Science may be shortly introduced by some of our leading
medical men at their own tables. And when they exhibit alcohol, in
whatever form, perhaps, in future, they will always take care to combine
it with something very nauseous; gin, for instance, with the most
horrible of bitters. This will effectually prevent the administration of
alcohol from originating the formation of intemperate habits.
Doubtless, on the whole, the Two-Hundred-and-Fifty have spoken wisely;
but the echo of their speech in some quarters has sounded like cackle,
and the "movement," which their utterance has set on foot among
gregarious persons, very much resembles the march of an analogous kind
of birds, under leadership, across a common.
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