Part 3 — "DINNA FORGET": A NEW YEAR'S SERMON.

By "MEDICUS" (Dr. GORDON STABLES, M.D., C.M., R.N.).

This well-known magazine of ours, the dear old "G. O. P.," is read wherever in this wide world the English language is understood, and it is this very fact that puzzles and worries me a good deal when I am commencing to write a paper for my readers. You see it is like this: things I may say, and advice I may give, may not suit everyone, as the "G. O. P." finds its way into cottage as well as mansion-house. I have seen its welcome face while travelling in my caravan, in many a stately home in England and in many a feudal castle in bonnie Scotland; and I know too it is read by the farmer's fireside in this country and by the ingle-side in the far north, when the snow-wind goes howthering round the house and mourns in the chimney like the sound of sea and wind on a surf-beaten shore.

And I "dinna forget" either that I have many thousands of lassies in the city, who have but little time to open it till eventide or even till Sunday itself.

Nor do I forget that the things I tell girls at home here to do, may not altogether apply to those in Australia or Africa. Never mind, I try to do my best. Who can do more?

And now, first and foremost, I must wish you all a very healthy New Year. This is from my heart. Dinna forget that. For, if you have health, you are bound to have happiness, so long as shocks of grief and real sorrow keep aloof. Even then, if you are strong, you will be better able to withstand these, than if you were chicken-hearted and weakly.

There is one symptom of weakness, by the way, that is often over-looked. A girl may be as fresh and bonnie as a thistle or a rose, yet if she is too sensitive and too sentimental she cannot be really well. Over-sensitiveness may be caused in a good many ways, but it is very apt to lead on to hysteria, and this is a very serious ailment.

Not going to Repeat.

I am not going to repeat to you all the various rules of health I have already, in these columns, laid down scores of times, for the very best of dishes may be served up once too often.

Just one thing, however, I must mention, and you may consider me talking figuratively or not, as you please.

I have a pet swift—the biggest kind of swallow that visits this country—but, being a pet, he never leaves me more than twelve hours at a time, and in that brief space he may have flown one thousand miles, and perhaps visited the rooms of more than one hundred of my girl readers. He can speak various languages almost as well as Rougemont, and a little nearer to the truth, and I sit up to listen to him sometimes till long past twelve at night.

Dinna forget to look out for my birdie. He can see you when you little know of it. But one thing which he has recently told me is that a very large number of you have given up your bath, to which I fondly fancied I had inured you. This vexed me a deal; but you will promise to begin it again very soon, won't you? It is the greatest invigorator of the muscles and nervous system in the world. So "dinna forget."

Colds and Coughs.

Dinna forget that colds and coughs are rampant about this time of the year. I am writing these lines long before Christmas, and I have been prophesying for England an open winter. But dinna forget that a green Yule makes a fat kirkyard, and colds are more easily caught from the green cold earth and the damp cold winds than even from frost and snow. The more you are out-of-doors in snow-time—which ought to be glow-time—the better you will be, provided you are not too warmly and heavily clad and do not wear india-rubber clothing in any shape or form.

When a cold comes on, take a warm drink or posset of some kind at bed-time and eight to ten grains of Dover's powder. Get thus a good sweat and a good sleep. Then take an aperient (apenta water) next morning, but I advise you to remain in bed till eventide. This is one of the best ways of cutting short a cold that I know of.

But if coughing continues, you must see a doctor. Coughs may be far more dangerous than you think, and may lead to mischief. Dinna forget that death respects neither beauty nor sex. Indeed, it is often the sweetest flowers of earth that leave us first.

Neuralgia.

A great many young ladies from seven to seventy complain about this terrible trouble in some form or another. If it is what we call hemi-crania, engaging, if I may use the term, the whole half of the face and head, it may proceed from a bad tooth, or from what is the worst sort of a tooth anyone could be plagued with—a tooth with one small hole in the side. Have this seen to as soon as the first attack has gone. Probably a clever dentist may be able to fill it for you. Some girls go hurrying away to the dentist at once, have gas, and have it out. Such a pity, for as you get older what a blessing you will find your own teeth!

Thank Heaven, I have never worn a false tooth, but it strikes me the sensation can be far from agreeable. If one uses the toothbrush, with a good disinfectant powder, such as borax or charcoal, followed by a rinse of water tinged red with permanganate of potash (and this is usually sold as Condy's fluid), she will have teeth that will last as long as they're wanted.

But what I wish to tell you here is this: apart from actual decay of a tooth and consequent irritation of the nerve, a girl need never have facial neuralgia, nor sciatica, nor any other "algia" if she but lives in such a way as to make herself hardy as a heather stem. Dinna forget that.

Curatives.

Dinna forget that medicines are, as a rule, but palliative, and to call them curatives is, in nine cases out of ten, a very great misnomer. All doctors will tell you the same; but they are exceedingly useful and even most necessary at times. Only dinna forget that they do not repair, nor rebuild the framework of our bodies. Only good, well-chosen food can do that. But, as it does not do to eat when you are not hungry, because then the stomach and other organs are too delicate to digest, you must get up an appetite by exercise, recreation and fresh air.

I don't want you to go about as if you were an invalid. That will make you worse, and your friends will pretend to pity you, and this acting on your mind will soon make you an invalid in earnest. No, keep up bravely and do not complain. Fate will then say—

"Oh, there is no frightening that girl to death! She doesn't scare worth sixpence. Look at her now, on her bit of a bike, with her lips like a half-cut cherry, and the rose tint upon her cheek. Bah, I'll go and try to frighten someone else!"

Then your nerves are re-strung, muscles get hard, you grow a biceps, and every ache and pain flies away to the Back o' Bell-Fuff.

At this time of Year.

At this time of year many girls whose nerves are finely strung suffer from hypochondriasis, or lowness of spirits, more especially if the ground is soft and the sky grey and ugly.

The real hypochondriac is more or less verging on lunacy, because she has delusions. Nothing seems to go right with her, nothing ever will be right again. There is no beauty anywhere in life, which, taken on the whole, is a great big fraud. Why was she ever sent into this world at all, at all, against her will? She is sure she didn't wish to be born, and she wishes she were well out of it. She is sad, melancholy, abstracted, and does nothing with any will.

Well, what shall we do with a girl of this kind? What say you, mother? Medicine? Was that what you suggested? Well, medicine, even if she could swallow the whole pharmacopœia, would do her no more good than a pinch of snuff; in fact, not so much, for the snuff would make her sneeze, and that would help her for a time. She must have a change.

Dinna forget that. If she cannot get away, she must get a new fad of some kind. Only there is one thing, mother, which pray dinna forget. You must never let her think that you think she is ill. You've got to draw her away from her imaginary miseries, and all will soon be well.

"What would you prescribe for my daughter?" a lady once asked me. "She must eat."

"Then let her have a Shetland pony," I replied abstractedly.

"What!"

"A Shetland pony, and a young one. Oh, not to eat, to ride on, and make a general favourite of. For a time the pony will manage her; then with love and a tiny switch she will learn to manage the pony. After that the fun will begin, and her imaginary troubles will all fly away."

In a month or two the cure was complete, and I used to see the girl—she was young—careering across the common, her bonnie yellow hair and the pony's mane streaming out in the wind and her face as merry as a May morning.

Does Winter damage Beauty?

It need not, if beauty is only looked well after. But how shall it be? Not by powders and paint, dear young readers—dinna forget that. Leave rouge and the rest of it to Miss So-and-so and all the other "quite old things" whom you know. Be ye natural; unless, indeed, you have some real blemish. Dinna forgot you have youth on your side, and youth and beauty are almost synonymous terms. You like Miss So-and-so very well indeed, and my swift has just told me she heard you make the following remark the other day to a companion—

"Know Miss S.? Oh, yes; have known her for ages. Poor, dear, old thing, how well she makes up!"

Well, hug the happiness you possess in being young, to your heart of hearts; but a little tinge of sadness must mar it at times, when you remember that you too must get older and be fain to assume the attractions you shall then no longer possess.

But beauty in winter? Well, it must be kept up, and can only be kept up by rational means. If you expose yourself to high cold winds while biking or driving, you may spoil your complexion for weeks to come. I declare I should hardly like to enter the breakfast-room with such a cold as your own folly has brought you, accompanied by watery eyes that blink at the sunshine, and that wicked, wee red nose. Well, exposure is unnecessary, so we shall leave that alone.

Next comes ablution and clothing. If you care a French penny for the beauty you possess, you will be careful as to both. If you won't, can't or sha'n't take your bath, dinna forget to have very frequent changes of underclothing. But in some form or other thorough ablution is imperative.

Food comes next. Never touch stimulants. I know some young ladies do, but it is the biggest mistake in the world, quite an elephantine error. Dinna forget that. As regards solid food, the more solid it is the better; and you should now—unless stout—have plenty of sugar and fatty food. Potatoes and other starchy foods should be taken also. You want to keep up the strength? Sugar is power! Dinna you forget that.

Dinna forget this either: that pudding after dinner helps to spoil the complexion. Have fruit instead. A little vaseline—cold cream at night will preserve the skin. You need nothing else. Good-bye! Dinna forget!