Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The Loup City northwestern. (Loup City, Neb.) 189?-1917 | View Entire Issue (June 25, 1908)
FRENCH GOVERNMENT TRY TO SHUT OP THE MOST FAMOUS cure in Europe a. //////mms»///// // IHHHHHH \the greatest CENTER 01 HEELING ON THE WESTERN CONTINENT , nFE/IINTE MAE OF BEEUPRM Cc OCTET TENT JED NT ~TT7TN' ~7N. HINDU INVALIDS MAKE DESPERATE mow %EFFORT§ TO JOURNEY to Th/S BH THIN Ok COPLflCZ ON THE GHNGES IN INDIE WWCI 'WHEN GRANDMAS-RHEUMflTfZ ISBED/NMPMM'SME strokes TtjlS Mr ONZE IB UET ON TME PLHCE WHERE IT HURTS. *.Oh't' P/n'ORjre FOUNTBIN OF YOl/r% ' Mot <3ulphujz3pf/ngs ~ Lynwood c3oz.ojR^7no GOVERNMENT SEN I TVJFUUM GROUNDS NT S $]FR Q QT GONE TUTU, EG"IE VY DE JEZEUEj EL TVKT NK of the unsettled questions of this year is whether the most famous health resort in Eu rope will he forcibly closed, as another episode In the lively war between the French govern ment and the church. Such action has been threatened. If the government does forbid or ganized pilgrimages to Lourdes, a little provincial town away up in the southwest corner of the country, at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains, its action will be re ceived w’ith a chorus of protest in all sorts of keys. De vout invalids and their friends will lament in genuine distress. Hotelkeepers and souvenir vendors, who have iioen mailing a good living out of the visits of a quarter of a million pilgrims every year, will groan for reasons of their own. And hardly a railway in France, in spite nf having always made special rates on round-trip tickets to the place of cure, will fail to use its own,influence for the continuance of so profitable a custom. N'o wonder! As many as 40.000 pilgrims have gone to iiOurdes la a single August day. The crowds are always biggest in midsummer, though, in fact, there is more or i ss travel to the shrine all the year round. J he treatment at Gourdes is more through the spirit than through the flesh—that is to say, prayers—not medicine nor surgery—aie the main dependence, though the water of a spring in the Virgin’s Grotto is eagerly quaffed by invalids and used for bathing suffering bodies. And the poor souls who jw there are often in wretched condition: many of them have to be carried or helped about by relatives or nurses. A good many of the at tendants are well-to-do women, who volunteer for a certain number of days or weeks, toiling without any payment. Doctors are always on hand, too, but only to examine cases and record results. The treatment is rot In their hands. They look with skeptical or puzzled wonder at the immense numbers who go away apparently well, after a few days* share in the very picturesque devotions of the place. Comparatively few Americans go to Lourdes, but there is within 21 hours’ journey of Now York another miracle working report, second only to the French shrine in point « f popularity. It is at the little Canadian village of tvaupre. on the left bank of thp St. Lawrence river, a f.'W miles below Quebec, or rather It would he more cor ■ * pt to say that the viH^ee is at the church of St. Anne do Deanpre. for the shrine is the only reason for the existence of the village, with its half-mile of convents inns and shops. All the year around people inake special journeys there, but the great season for the devotion of the sick is in mid summer. Excursion trains run from all parts of eastern Canada; invalids make journeyi from every state in the Union, and even go up from Mexico. In August it is no uncommon sight to see a train of 12 to 15 cars and two or three river steamers, crowded to their utmost capacity, carrying to the little riverside station a new swarm of pilgrims. Some of course, go just for the fun of the trip, but most of the party are in sober earnest. Follow the crowd from the station into the great church, a few reds away, and, no matter what your own faith may he, you cannot help being profoundly moved. The air is full of eager longings and implorings, even though not a voice be heard except that of the officiating priest or some singer in the choir loft. At your right is a grizzled workman, so stiff with rheumatism he can hardly bend his poor old legs to kneel. At your left a pros perous young married couple, wish honest, troubled faces, have brought their sick child, a blinking baby, too little to realize that it needs help at all. And around you are all other ages and conditions In life—all conditions ex cept the thoroughly well and happy. Then, when you make ready to go, you notice near 'he main entrance two huge stacks of what look at. first like broken furniture and torn upholstery. You look again. Each heap—high euough to reach the ceiling of an ordinary house—is composed of crutches, canes, splints, trusses and bandages, left behind by those who came suffering and went away cured! In another part cf the church are a bushel or so of spectacles and eye glasses, abandoned for the same reason. A unique bit of circumstantial evidence certifying to one cure is a huge double-pointed carpet-tack, framed, under glass, with a record of its having been swallowed by a little child, and. by St. Anne's assistance, voided without doing any harm. The United States Itself does not appear to be the, right field for just this sort of cure for the sick. Though certain places have a small local vogue of the same sort as Lourdes and St. Anne, none of them become •videly celebrated. Americans more often take things in a matter-of-fact way and flock to centers of healing where scientific men point the way. But the M. D.'s themselves keep changing their estimates of curative value, so the crowds pour first in one direction, then in another. Only a distinctly elderly person can have j known Saratoga Springs in its painty days as the greatest health resort of the east. Its supremacy of prestige long ago passed away. The Hot Springs of Arkansas are still j largely frequented, hut more and more people are turn- j ing to places of comparatively recent vogue, like the sulphur baths of Colorado, the sea beaehes <>f southern California, or the high, dry plateau camps of Arizona, where the sun m;fk< s the only outside application and clean, dry air constitutes the only dose to be swallowed. | If an invalid has money enough, he usually turns to \ Europe. J. Pierpont Morgan thinly; Aix-les-Bains is the place if all others for undoing the effects of strenuous j life on Wall street. Queen Victoria used to have a fond ness for the Riviera, and spent months regaining strength and serene poise in a sunny villa on a flowery mountain side at Mentone. Edward VII. some years ago •dis covered'’ the Rhineland resort at Homburg, so far as Eng lish visitors were concerned. The place had been fairly popular before that with the Germans themselves, but after the (then) prince of Wales found its spring water a panacea for liver trouble and indigestion, troops of moneyed Britons had indigestion, too, and the place be came almost as much English as German. Of late years Great Britain’s arbiter of fashion has largely transferred his affections to Marienbad. and. naturally enough, that Austrian mountain village is now a sort of Mecca for those who suffer from the same unromantic ill as the British sovereign, namely, overweight. It is now declared by enthusiasts that the fountain of youth, which a six teenth century Spaniard sought in Florida, is really bub bling up at Marienbad. Middle-aged persons with un desirable waist measures are confidently encouraged to believe that the Marienbad regimen, if “follered faithful." will restore long-lost slenderness and grace. Hut it is not an easy regimen. This miracle must be earned. You rise at six a. m. or earlier, dress apd go out, fasting, to the promenade, where other early risers are flocking to the springs. A king, a grand duke, a Parisian butterfly, a Chicago business man. no matter what jour worldly estate may be, you meekly drink a certain prescribed quantity of spring water and walk up and down long, tree-shaded promenades to the encouraging accompani ment of a really fine band concert. Sometimes jou sip your dose as you walk along. Even if it rains, your de votions to the goddess of health must be duly paid, though the walking may be done under cover in a long colonnade. The prescribed distance accomplished, you go to break fast—literally to break your fast, but (if you take the thing.conscientiously) by no means to feast. Diet is sup posed to be strictly ordered and limited, but as the flesh is often weak, though the spirit be ever so willing, some pilgrims to Marienbad sell their purpose, as Esau, his birthright, tor good things to eat. and go away as portly as ever, to complain that, in spite of spring-water drinks ’and baths, the cure isn’t what it is cracked up to be! Tbe ether famous health resorts on the continent are j usually more or less like Marienbad, though some are ou a much larger scale. Aix, Spa, Wiesbaden, Karlsbad, Baden Baden, each has its specially promised, or at least hoped-for, cure to attract the afflicted. Tbe win ter resoits In the Engadirie valley, away up on a lofty shoulder of the Alps, just above the Italian frontier, hold out the hope of a new lease of life for sufferers from lung diseases, ar.d the popularity of St. Moritz, Davos and other Swiss towns in that vicinity is increasing at a tremendous rate. People have a good time there, too. if they are at all equal to active sports, for skating, coasting, tobogganing, ski-running and every sort of snowy fun are so much in vogue one would almost think staid, grown-up men and women really had found the fountain of youth up there among the ice-sheeted moun tains. * “Newest England,” as a recent writer cleverly called New Zealand, is ahead of Europe and America in so many lines of political and social interests, one is pre pared to find it also w-ell toward the front in the matter of considerations for public health. A large district in the beautiful mountain region which they call the “Swit zcrland of the Pacific" is reserved for public benefit, am the government itself maintains an exceedingly attrac tive health resort near the famous geysers. Only, as New Zealand is about as far south of the equator as Italy is north of the equator, its seasons are precisely the reverse of ours, with Christmas set iu midsummoi. That turns ihe caiendar of a health resort, like Rotorna. upside down; but health conies, all the same, and the wearied makers of Newest England go back to town freshened and braced up for another year of business, polities and sport. Oiiental people take to Ihe occult as ducks to water. It is net surprising to find lower-class Chinese and Japan se resulting to marvel-working centers of one sort and another to drive away sickness. The degree of educa tion reached by the individual makes a great difference there, just as it does here. As the whole world knows, Japanese surgeons and trained nurses are second to none in the whole world in their practiced familiarity with ail the best modern methods of work. On the other hand, a large constituency of common people cling to curious superstitions of their own. In the garden of the Shinto Temple of Kitano Tenjin, at Kyoto, there is a certain favorite image of a bronze bull, which many be lieve will cure all sorts of aches and pains if a person rubs or strokes the part of its body corresponding to the one where they are ailing. The treatment has at least the merit of being simple and cheap, and there are plenty of old women in Kyoto ready to testify that it is efficacious, too. If you are inclined to think contemptuously of pagan granny in Japan, remember how many people you your self have known who rap on wood whenever they mention that they haven't had a bad cold all winter! We do not average so far ahead of the east, after all. The very oldest Of the world's .resorts for marvelous cures is in India, at Benares. Compared with the prestige of that spot on the left bank of the Ganges, even the most time-honored resort in Europe or America is a mere fad of to-day. The great German scholar. Max Muller, who devoted years to the study of oriental thought, once de clared: ‘ When Babylon was an upstart, contending with lordly Nineveh, and the early Jewish heroes and kings /were welding the Israelitisli tribes into a nation, while Athens was hardly more than a name, and Rome not yet i hought of, hither toiled streams of wf&tful pilgrims.” And to Benares they are still toiling, even in this year of grace. 1908. India is considerably bigger than the whole United States,; so that the distances to be traversed are often hundreds of miles, but at the very time when this article is being written sick folk from every part of the land are making slow, painful journeys on foot to reach that particular place on the Ganges where the gods have cured so many aiiing ones. Swarms of pilgrims constantly fill Ihe riverside temples and line the ghats where bathers undress and dress again. Rich and poor jostle each other on the bank. Clean and filthy s and side by side waist deep in the ill-smelling water, taking it up in their hands, snuffing it up their nostrils, in sud lime indifference to the fact that only ten feet away a corpse is soaking in the same holy water, preparatory for the funeral pyre, and that mangy dogs arc wading into the same fetid Mth, on indescribable errands of their own. British authorities say that, while great numbers of cures are claimed to be worked at Benares, the place is actually one of the worst distributing centers of germ diseases in the whole empire. The newest American resort for the healing of man kind's ills is, as most people have recently heard, a Protest ant Episcopal church in Boston, until lately regarded as a stronghold of conservatism. The work is intentionally limited to certain lines, especially to functional troubles like nervous prostration and hysteria. The treatment is a combination of spiritual inspiration and encouragement with up-to-date twentieth-century medical science, and therefore differs fundamentally from “Christian Science,” which puts a taboo on the educated nhvsician It is announced that the work begun in Bos ton 'is to be taken up and developed by certain churches in New York, where the still higher tension at which people live makes nervous disorders even more prevalent Maybe we'have here the establishment of new shrines of healing- even more far-reachiDg in their influence than those already famous. Time will telh g MEHRIAM. MADE CHIEF BY WIFE STORY OF RISE OF FRENCH RE PUBLIC’S PRESIDENT. Fallieres Was an Indolent Young Law yer Till Wife, Stung by Sneers of Relatives, Planned Future for Gifted Husband. London.—The recent visit to Eng land of President Armand Fallieres of France at a time when the public hadn't ceased wagging about the rise of H. H. Asquith to the prime minis try and the amount of credit due his tactful and friends-winning wife, Mar got Tennant that wras, have given the active friends of the other sex re newed room for boasting. President Fallieres isn't a self-made man. He lacks the initiative, the en ergy and the ambition for that some times sorely miscarried process. Presi dent Fallieres is the product, so you are fold,' of his ambitious and ener getic wife, Mme. le Presidente. Madame is all that the president of the French republic is not, and it is entirely through her desire to be re venged upon certain sneering relatives that her distinguished husband is not to-day the mayor of the sleepy old world town of Nerac, in Gascony. Had it not been for Mme. Falliere's force and diplomacy her gifted other half ; would now b > leading the sheltered ! and stinted life of an ordinary legal | piactitioner in his modest country j home instead of the luminous career , of head of his nation, entertained by | royalty across the channel, pai l $250. 000 a year, force! to live in the great j white Elysee palace an l be shot at by anarchistic muddle brains (in com 1 mon with most of the blessed of mod ern greatness). The true facts about Clement Ar i mand Fallieres (senutimes also called Eugene by these who know the full j utas of his sundry cognomens), have been greatly exaggerated. You may be told, if you care to read, that Fai . lieres was bora in a smith's shop, but in the most straitened of circum I stances; that he rose from the depths of poverty through his own efforts, and more cf the usual exaggerated j nonsense attributed to those who may rise from comparative obscurity to no ! (ability. ! As a matter of fact., Fallieres was the grandson of the b’acksmith in th'* myth, while his father was a thrifty (not to say wealthy) wine grower. The son had a reasonably complete education and was a law student in the little city of Nerac. He was by no means dull, but nature had instilled into his bones a certain lethargic es sence not a bit rare in a Gascon. Henry of Navarre knew the Gascons as poor swordsmen; a later genera tion may find them poor workers. Aside from this indisposition for special efforts the young lawyer was distinguished as a dreamer. “Cracked brained revolutionist” and “feather brains" were some of the really fine epithets to which relatives of Mme. Fallieres treated the future president of a great people when they learned of the prospective alliance. Fallieres didn’t mind much. In common with dreamers he understood his superiori ty and would have let it be. Not so madame. Once married to her brilliant but indolent barrister, Mme. Fallieres brought about a peace with her father and secured for her socially inferior husband the rich legal practice of the elder lawyer. She established a sort of provincial political salon at Nerac. had the happy faculty of making friends and the rare prescience of dis tinguishing those whose devotion might prove disastrous. With herself always in the background she labored with the vim peculiar to a hurt, ambi tious woman and she worked better than may be told in mere words. To-day the spiteful relatives bow to the husband who has no social superi ors in France—and possibly to the skill of his wife. Not Much! “So you are one of those who want to be let alone?” “Yes, sir. What we want is a little sunshine and not so much tinkering wiih other people’s business.” “What line are you in?” “I am the owner of a number of buildings that my agents are renting to people who keep screens in front of the windows. It may be that they are not strictly moral—some of 'em— but it's not my business to go around looking through chinks for the pur pose of trying to discover things I mightn’t happen to like.”—Chicago itecord-Herald. The Path to Peace. “Harmony is what 1 want,” said the political leader. “Don’t go too far,” counseled an ad viser. “Let's not get rash. We can’t kill all the fellows on tho other side, you know.” The Final Test. The angel was making up the list. “Put me down.” said the man, "as one who will admit that my dog bites and my baby cries.” And lo! Ben Adliem’s name led all the rest!