Page 141 - erewhon

through the fear of taking nasty medicine. It was possible
that her malady was incurable (for I had heard enough to
convince me that her dipsomania was only a pretence and
that she was temperate in all her habits); in that case she
might perhaps be justly subject to annoyances or even to
restraint; but who could say whether she was curable or not,
until she was able to make a clean breast of her symptoms
instead of concealing them? In their eagerness to stamp out
disease, these people overshot their mark; for people had
become so clever at dissembling—they painted their fac-
es with such consummate skill— they repaired the decay
of time and the effects of mischance with such profound
dissimulation—that it was really impossible to say whether
any one was well or ill till after an intimate acquaintance of
months or years. Even then the shrewdest were constant-
ly mistaken in their judgements, and marriages were often
contracted with most deplorable results, owing to the art
with which infirmity had been concealed.
It appeared to me that the first step towards the cure of
disease should be the announcement of the fact to a per-
son’s near relations and friends. If any one had a headache,
he ought to be permitted within reasonable limits to say so
at once, and to retire to his own bedroom and take a pill,
without every one’s looking grave and tears being shed and
all the rest of it. As it was, even upon hearing it whispered
that somebody else was subject to headaches, a whole com-
pany must look as though they had never had a headache
in their lives. It is true they were not very prevalent, for the
people were the healthiest and most comely imaginable,

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