Health Talks, by Dr. Wm. Brady
(Copyright. 1916. National Newspaper Service.)
Will the Spring Fever
About this time of year, sulphur and molasses, so-called blood purifiers and liver regulators attain renewed popularity. The ubiquitous dandelion whets many a jailed appetite. Just what is spring fever, anyway?
Well, there are two elements which combine to make a genuine case. In the first place, the early days of spring when everything is shooting up and new life abounds everywhere, coax you out of your cave into the great open country. You take a stroll, pick a few spring flowers, drink in the balmy nectar and unconsciously compare your own rather rusty, seedy, stale condition with the condition of all life around you. This makes you feel ineffectual, out of tune. You interpret your feeling as impure blood, and you hanker after something to purify your blood.
In the second place, it may be that your blood really is full of poisons. I don't know. Nobody knows. But it is not unreasonable to imagine that poisons may accumulate in the body through the long winter of indoor life in air as dry as that of the tropics and all but free of the life-giving, poison-destroying influence of sunlight.
It is certainly reassuring and comfortable to imagine that a course of physic, or some fancied "blood purifier" will neutralize and remove the effects of six months of bad air, if you have a facile imagination like that. But for my part, though I can...  Imagine as much as the next fellow, this ancient superstition fails to satisfy. 