THE "WALL-PAPER" DISEASE.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 90, 29 December 1900, Page 4

THE " WALL-PAPER" DISEASE.

Mr W. L, Alden has some witty words to say in Pearson's Magazine on " the very latest disease." " There is another new disease, and this iime it has no eonneotion . -with microbes^ of any sorfc. It is the 'wail-papoar disease* thQiigh that, is not -the scientific .same of it, The discoverer is an American physician, and from his account of it there is reason to fear that it is very prevalent, and very disastrous in its results. The first symptoms of the wall-paper disease are gentfa and apparently harmless. Tha patient becomes aware.of them af be lies in bed in the morning and , looks at the wall-paper. No mafcte what the figures on that wall-papef may be, provided . they are not merely .geometrical lines, the patient, persistently discovers that one ofc them represents « human face. Thiij rather amuses him, and he searchof j further m the hope of discovering! another face, In this effort he if* invariably successful, and, wthoa! knowing it, ha is also in the grasp of the new disease. Every morning before he gets oat of bed he trieitf find new faces in the waU-psptfi; and he never fails to find them. f &C discoverer of the disease mention* one patient who in the course « about five months found seventyeight human and twenty - foar animal faces in the wall-paper oj. his bedroom. You will say that tW habit of looking for faces intf* wall-paper does not constitute * real disease. But this is becs^ you have not read the learned physician's powerful pamphlet* the wall paper disease. He show* that this habit becomes so strong* to render the victim a helplese slitfr He lies in bed for hours in morning simply to look for m aces.. He lies down in the aB«k noon under the pretext of resti"Sj himself, but in reality to study W wail paper. After a time thsf^ which at first *were only amusing grow to seem terrible to himdiscovers demons and horrible ansi^ like animals on his wall. Gracing he finds himself unable to sleep cause of the fascination whi^hco*, pells him tofifap his gasburniDi'j order that lie may look at tbe &# which he feara. After the disea»j has xmx its course for about a y«| the goes to' the lana^j asylum, where he ends his &*m painfciDg imaginary facas on a p^ white wall/ * ,M