Life — September 22, 1898 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

LIFE “The mania has taken so dangerous a form bere that our best alienists are seriously considering the necessity of administering Hootman serum, put up in tablets and capsules, to the victims, to reduce the virulence of the mania, and produce the amiable, chastened, generous charac- teristics we observe in the inbabitants of Lowland Scotland. “Something must be done. The spectacle, now observed in every township in the land, of men and women cbusing little balls through the rural districts with sticks, beating the earth wildly and yelling ‘Fore!’ must be remedied or the Republic will be a failure.” “Do you think asylum treatment would work a cure?” queried the Sport, anxiously, ‘Asylum !” sniffed the physician, contemptu- ously. ‘Asylum nothing. If you fenced in the State of Texas you might have accommo- dation for the golfomaniacs; otherwise not. The only cure for golficitis is asphyxiation.” Joseph Smith, IRTUE is its own reward, but we are all disappointed if we receive nothing more. MR. F. HOPKINSON SMITH. ‘The distinguished author, ergineer, traveler, painter, lighthouse con- structor, actor and financter, whose story, “Caleb West,” ts now being eagerly devoured by some forty millions of American readers, Golficitis. OLITICS, pugilism and delirium tremens are the great constituents of modern American insanity, 6 length, breadth and thickness of it, as it were,” said an up-to-date physician, with impressive solemnity. The dead-game Sport looked at the doctor thoughtfully, and asked: ‘ Where does golf come in?” “Golf?” the physician said, with a sigh. ‘Golf, or, more correctly, golticitis, must be designated the fourth dementia. “Yes,” he went on, seriously, *‘golficitis is a permanent addition to American manias, and is attracting the attention of thinking alienists. This mania differs from others in that it is most acute in its chronic stages, and is incurable, Its symp- toms are a hing for legitimate business, an abnormal dis- position to copious profanity and nervous irritation, a passion for giddy and eccentric garments, a profound contempt for truth, a hatred of domestic restraint, accompanied by flushed face, and a depraved love of outofdoors. Golficitis is not hereditary outside of Scotland, where it has raged for cen- turies, and where it has subdued and sobered the natural gaiety and vivacity of the natives, Originally introduced to stem the wild abandon of the Scotch Sabbath, it might have grown into the virulent form it has taken here in America, but for the soothing and tranquilizing influence of the musical Hootman patois, recently so popular in the Maclaren papyri imported into this land. “THE PATTED CALP.”