Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1902 — DON’T JUMP OFF CARS. [ARTICLE]

DON’T JUMP OFF CARS.

Nervnu* Disorder* Said to Result from Practice. Jumping off moving trains and street cars as practiced to-day is a fruitful source of nervous disorders and one not fully recognized for its importance by any school except osteopaths. Yet the facts are easily comprehended. Certain it is that nervousness in all its protean forms, from irritability, neurasthenia and general nervous collapse to paralysis, is so caused, and that the careless habit of so many people of bowling off moving cars stiff-leg-ged lays the foundation for these disorders every hour of the day. In lending the strenuous life of our cities men and women seem unable to wait to get to their journey's end. Before trains come to a half stop at crossings and platforms fidgety pedestrians with muscles tense drop from platforms, and, almost before their bodies have recovered from the forward momentum. are stalking a mad foot race against time in the opposite direction. This enterprise saves ten seconds, of course, for that particular errand, but possibly it hastens by many months one's journey to the grave. Positive injury is thereby done to the spine nnd nervous system which must gather in cumulative effect until one day the whole nervous organism may go tp pieces. Then more or loss Innocent things will be blamed for the collapse, The doctors may even analyze the victim of those Innumerable concussHb* piecemeal In the laboratories to flrd that lie Is being preyed upon by übiquitous microbes, yet the origin of' 1 tls troubles is a simple spinal dlsordur, caused by oft-repeated joltings, some of which proved by chance more vicious than the rest, throwing one or more of his vertebral segments out of perfect alignment. Once that lias come about the foundation has been laid—-as osteopathy shows—-for nearly all the ills In the calendar of medicine. It Is not to be understood that such

concussions produce dislocations of spinal vertebrae in the sense that they are thrown out of joint, as occurs in a “broken neck.” That is no more the case than that chinaware must shatter from every simple jar before If cracks. The lesser Injuries come before the greater, and happen with a thousandfold greater frequency. Mere slips of the vertebrae from their true positions—one upon the other—and ’he strains brought to bear in consequence upon the ligaments and muscles binding them together, are what first occur from these sudden Innumerable poundings of hard heels against adamant pavements. These seemingly trivial mishaps to the body are productive of the most far-reaching consequences. At every point tn the spine where such a concussion Spends its force a defective spot develops. It becomes a weak point anatomically, and a point of congestion, blockade and Impaired work physiologically.— Osteopathic Health.