THE SMALL WORRIES OF LIFE.
AWRITER in the last number of a medical journal, the Hospital, while defending the practice of cigarette- smoking in moderation, took the bold step of advocating an extension of it to the other sex, and advising that women should find a refuge in it from the minor ills of life. Tobacco-smoking, he maintained, was one of the best and most harmless sedatives that we possess for harassed and agitated nerves ; and as women are more subject to nervous disorganisation than men, it was obvious that they would And an even greater use for such a sedative than members -of the sterner sex. It was the constant insistance of the small worries of life, rather than its greater griefs and troubles, that upset the equanimity of mankind, rendered them liable to the insidious attacks of nervous complaints, and sometimes made them the victims of premature old age. Much misery was caused by the adoption among womankind of sedatives that were by no means harmless ; and much suffering might be saved to them if they were not -debarred by public opinion from making use of a sedative which is allowed to the other sex, and which would be in- finitely more soothing and efficacious than those which they are frequently driven to use. From a logical point of view the argument seems not only fair, but a very strong one. Who Is it who suffers most from small worries ?—a woman. Whose nerves are most easily affected. P—a woman's nerves. What is the best and most harmless sedative for distressed nerves ? —tobacco. Therefore let a woman smoke tobacco. The justice of such a contention would be manifest did we not suspect that the premisses are not altogether to be relied on, Take only that particular one which relates to tobacco ; we do not think it will pass a very close scrutiny. Tobacco may be, and very likely is, a sedative ; but men do not smoke it on that account. As a matter of fact, they only find out that it is a sedative when they leave it off; and that is -tantamount to a confession that they have acquired by its use an artificial craving which can only be allayed by its con- tinuance. As an actual sedative of the nerves, we should be inclined to class it with betel-chewing, or with the Turkish habit of fumbling a string of beads. It helps to pass away the time and distract the thoughts.
Granting, too, that a woman's nerves are more apt to become .d,etraque—to borrow a French word—than a man's are, a fact which we have no wish to try to account for, we are not at all sure that it is because she is more subject to the smaller worries of life than a man is, or, indeed, that she is really more subject to them. It is true that the cares of the household, pro- ductive as they are of much grievance and trouble, fall -chiefly upon a woman's shoulders ; but, on the other hand, a man's ordinary business or profession is quite as full of small annoyances and worries, which are every whit as irritating as those that beset his wife. The difference, we -should say, between the two sexes lies rather in the manner in which they meet their troubles than in the apportionment of those troubles. We would not readily dispute the theory that it is the steady and persistent pressure of these small worries which work a change in the nervous system more -surely than any great and sudden trouble, just as the drop of -water hollows the stones,—non vi, sect swim cadendo ; but we are inclined to believe that the reason, in this case, why one -stone is hollowed sooner than the other, is to be found in the greater softness of the stone, and not in the greater frequency of the drop. Men and women meet the small troubles of life -very differently. In the first place, a woman often lacks that sense of proportion which is necessary to distinguish the -lesser from the greater ills : to her, all troubles are of the greatest magnitude, and to be mourned equally. The failure of a new dress, or of a dinner-party, are calamities over which she will sometimes worry herself into a fever. Most men would meet similar troubles with a shrug of the shoulders, and then speedily forget them. Then, again, a woman does
not forget easily, and is given to brooding ; nor is she so swift to run away from her troubles as a man is. Indeed, she cannot be easily induced to run away from them at all; the contem- plation of them has a fatal fascination for her. In any small misfortune which falls equally upon husband and wife, in nine cases out of ten where the man resolutely refuses to remember it and hastens to turn his thoughts into some other channel, the woman will seem to take almost a perverse pleasure in recalling it to her mind and reflecting upon its actual and possible con- sequences. Much of this difference in their demeanour is, of course, due to the difference of their life. A man can easily run out of doors and seek distraction, whereas a woman's lot is to remain at home and think. Indeed, we should say that very much was owing to the greater opportunity that a woman possesses of contemplating her worries and brooding over them. Yet it is hardly fair to assume that because a woman appears to be more affected by small worries, that therefore she has more to bear. There are plenty of small worries out- side those of the house, which last, we admit, fall mostly to the woman's share,—indeed, in the actual sharing of these little woes, we should say that the man generally comes off the worse, for when the cook is impertinent, or a chimney smokes, the master of the house is almost always called in to lend his aid and sympathy, whereas he can hardly count upon much help or sympathy from his wife when his own soul is vexed by the shortcomings of his clerk or the stupidity of his groom. The ills of which we have been speaking are those accidental ones which affect the mind and not the body. When it comes to questions of the minor ills that affect the body, the case is entirely reversed. Here a woman will show an infinitely greater and more admirable patience than a man does, and while he rages impotently against some small ache or pain, she will suffer in the most stoical and resigned silence. It is certainly curious how differently the small worries of mind and body affect the two sexes. In the case of the former, the merely mental worries, a man's natural im- patience of suffering comes really to his aid. He at once assures himself that the matter cannot be helped or remedied, and therefore that it is of no use troubling himself over it : he resigns himself to the inevitable, or rather, to what he chooses to consider as inevitable, and successfully hastens to forget it and think of something else. A woman's patience rather stands in her way. She cannot bring herself to think that the matter is inevitable, and even though she can see no possible remedy, she will still trouble and vex herself with the vain effort to right the wrong, or to prove to her own satisfac- tion that she has been ill and unjustly treated. Take the absurdly small case of an extortionate cabman. A man, who should be far better able to cope with him, impatiently throws him the extra sixpence, and refuses to bother himself about such a ridiculous sum. A woman's whole soul is up in arms at the idea of the injustice that is being done to her, and nothing will induce her to take another sixpence from her well-filled purse. This attitude of hers, of course, is partly due to the fact that she has a better understanding of the value of sixpenceg, but it is a good deal more due to her keener sense of justice, wherever she is con- cerned, and her patient determination to accept nothing less than justice. A man will sit quiet under a misconception which is unimportant, and affects neither his honour nor his reputation. Hardly ever can a woman bring herself to do that; she would rather worry herself to death than allow her friends to remain unenlightened. Under what is really inevitable, she is most patient,—and a man is very often most
impatient. Under what is not inevitable, she is most patiently impatient,—and a man is, by reason of his impatience, most patient.
Unhappily for her, most of the minor ills and small worries to which all flesh is heir, are those of the mind and not of the body. For one toothache that besets 1113, there are a hundred mental grievances and annoyances ; and through that mys- terious connection of mind and body, it is the mental worries, rather than the small bodily ailments, that wear out the bodily covering. We do not believe, ourselves, that mental ailments of this kind yield to the influence of sedatives. Small worries may be forgotten by providing some other mental occupa- tion, but they can only be deadened for the time by seda- tives which immediately affect the body. Mankind can no more get rid of those cares by smoking tobacco, than they can by drinking. Most men would rather that their wives
smoked the strongest cigars, than that they should deaden their nerves with morphine, or drown their sorrows in drink ; but these would also prefer, probably, that their wives should seek a refuge in knitting rather than in smoking cigarettes. As an occupation and distraction, knitting would be every bit as efficacious, and a good deal more useful. And where would this advocate of tobacco draw the line ? It would be cruel to deny to the servant what was allowed to the mistress, and surely both our cooks and our housemaids must be as sorely tried as the ladies of the households. The cook, whose nerves are proverbial during the hour of dishing up her dinner, could hardly be re- fused the comfort and consolation of a pipe throughout that trying time. There are countries in which women smoke, and in which the result of such a. departure may be studied. Both in Spain and in Russia the ladies are given to cigarette-smoking, but we have never heard that either the Spanish or the Russian ladies were less nervous and irritable than their sisters : we should rather have said that the exact contrary was the case. In other and wilder countries, there are places where a woman is hardly ever seen without a cigar in her mouth : but neither the Paraguayan nor the Malayan lady seems particularly worthy of imitation. The small worries of life will have to be met with something better than tobacco, if they are to be combated. It is a very modern idea that they should be treated medically at all. Our world at present seems to be overmuch given up to the search for sedatives and palliatives.
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