Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 132, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1912 — Card Playing is Injurious [ARTICLE]

Card Playing is Injurious

Narcotizing Influence Is Exercised If Indulged - In Too Often. Dancing is all right; yes, indeed, dancing is fine. It founds out the limbs and produces a perfect figure and all, that sort of thing; but as for card playing, why, that is dissipation of the worst kind; mental dissipation, of course. So says the official voice of the medical profession, the New York Medical Journal, in its latest issue. The Journal appears to regard even turkey trotting with a lenient eye comparedto the awful glare that it bestows on card playing, remarks the New York Morning Telegraph, strange to say, card playing among the aged and middle aged is not regarded as a vice by the physicians, but as a valuable distraction. But in the young It’s terrible, terrible.

“Card playing,” avers the Medical Journal, “is a pure and slmpa mental dissipation that grows upon the victim, like all other dissipations, to the eventual exclusion of logical and close thinking. A valuable distraction for the elderly once a week, say, if indulged in oftener, especially by the young, it exercises its narcotizing influence with irresistible force. Skill counts for only 8 per cent even in the most scientific of card games, much less in the popular gambling forms. “We have,” declares the Medical Journal, “nothing but approval for dancing, an admirably graceful and strength giving exercise adapted to produce physical perfection ana devoid in its essence of the disgraceful characteristics imposed upon it recently by certain loaders, blind or worse. It is an art, perfection in which requires study and practice ana leads to a healthy fatigue which prevents ex- ~-* V • ceases”