Life, 1904-01-28 · page 6 of 22
Life — January 28, 1904 — page 6: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Top section:** Four cartoon panels satirize health fads. A man reads contradictory medical advice—milk diet causes dyspepsia, newspapers cause eye strain, light meals cause poor digestion, sleeping after eating injures health. The joke: health-seekers face impossible, conflicting rules making wellness unachievable. **Bottom section:** The article criticizes Methodist Church leadership for maintaining strict, outdated rules in their Book of Discipline prohibiting dancing, playing cards, and theater attendance. The author argues these rules are unnecessarily rigid and counterproductive, especially when other denominations embrace modern social conduct. Supporting cartoons show the absurdity: a man tries "deep breathing" (awkward), seeks physician advice (futile), reads contradictory health books, and ultimately frames the maxim "NO ONE KNOWS ANYTHING"—mocking pseudo-scientific certainty.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
* LIFE « ThE TROUBLES OF A HEALTH. SEEKER “\\ he picks an emi Muk rank milk diet will 4 dyspeptic NEXT hewspape! 2 words He reads again that “a ligat sleep after dinner keeps one in r condition and” prolongs an after-din “its posttt directly after Methodists, Revise Your Rules! REPARATORY to the Methodist General Conference, next spring, at Los Angeles, the Methodist ministers are disputing over the proposed changes in their Book of Discipline. The present rules of their organiza- tion prohibit church-members from dancing, play- and going to the theatre. The Methodists rticular interdic- spected ; that the ing who favor a change say that these p tions are obsolete and are no longer pleasures they prohibit are quite innocent, and enjoyed without scruple in these days by decent and pi both in and out of the Methodist fold. They t the rules annullee. But the Moss-back Methodists . Not all the starch out of the Methodist yarment, as people it will collaps Methodists nowadays include their due proportion of people of means and social standing, who live like their chbors, and are much more disposed, and with plate the details of their social conduct by their decent ne Next he tries deep breathing. Tl he hears from all sources, 1s ne sure cure for most Ills. ‘he local physictan, passing by, says: ‘No greater nonsense tan p breathing ; it’s unnatural, 1¢ austs the lung cells.” own judgment than by they see in seemly exe: rchaic rules. Like other people, » for old age, and in dancing, a ise for the young, and they go to the theatre hear of a good p Our Methodist brethren should abate their old rules, and cease to impute sinful- ness to acts Which are not sinful, Their catalogne of sins needs modernizing. They should elide from it the details of conduct mentioned, and substitute in their place some brisk, modern, sinful sins, that it is worth while to keep contemporary professors from committing. If the new Book of Discipline should forbid the purchase of stocks on a margin, it would at least hit at a practice which is vastly popular, and has huge possibilities of mischief in it, The sins that need most attention here and now are the si of greed and violence : stock-watering, ‘t promoting,’”’ bribing and all the get-somethin nothing devices on one side; lynch- ing, blackmailing and the various labor-union crimes on the other, is a resour MTOOIOTTOMMOCUVON CU TONTUOTTLCLOOTO | { NO ONE KNOWS, ANYTHING | After three years of hearing and reading hundreds of ideas, each contradicted by another — He frames the above wise con- clusion,