Article October 7, 1911 Issue

It is no longer well-bred to talk about ill health

Girls' Own Paper and Woman's Magazine

It is no longer well-bred to talk about ill health. It is true that we are still hindered with relics of the days when one's health and ills were the most interesting topic of conversation. We still perfunctorily ask, "How do you do?" But we have only pity for the person who answers that question in detail if she is not well. The woman who habitually pours out upon the unwilling ears of her friends the disagreeable tale of her headaches, her backaches, her worries, or other ills; the woman whose greatest satisfaction seems to be to tell, in gruesome detail, every step of an operation either upon herself or some one else—these women are slowly but surely being isolated by the bar of social exclusion, and either ignored or avoided. We know for a certainty now that the psychic contagion which one person can spread by suggestions with reference to disease is as real as the contagion from measles, or mumps, or scarlet fever. Modern society has recognized this psychic contagion, and is demanding that our conversation shall be clean and wholesome on subjects of health. To talk otherwise has become a sign of ill breeding. This is an epochmaking change in the character of human conversation, and it has occurred within the memory of us.

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