Personal hygiene and physical training for women

by Anna M. Galbraith

The custom that is so frequently adopted by city folk of going out of town over Sunday might very well be imitated by country folk by going into the town or city over Sunday. For not only is the too continuous application to one’s employment fraught with danger, but it has been conclusively shown that a monotonous routine of occupation, such as lived by the average farmer’s wife, is a severe tax on the sanity of the mind. Statistics show that the heaviest percentage of insanity falls on farmer’s wives, and the supposed cause of this is the monotony of their lives.

A horse cannot gallop as many hours as it can walk, and the daily task should be the sum-total of what man or beast can do compatibly with health. To combine a day of toil with a second of amusement in one twenty-four hours does not give the proper allowance for sleep, and cannot be done without injury to the individual.

Fun and laughter are the most efficacious remedies in the pharmacopeia, and tired humanity owes a debt of gratitude to the guild of humorists, be they writers, comedians, or musical composers.

The Physiologic Necessity for Laughter.—The attitude of the individual varies with age, temperament, and the perspective of life. Grave adults are apt to think of laughter and smiling as something occasional, a momentary lapse once in a while from the persistent attitude of seriousness. Healthy children, on the contrary, consider that a state of laughter is the normal condition of humanity, and that seriousness is a tiresome necessity, which must be tolerated from time to time. But very few people have any idea that there exists a well-defined physiologic necessity for laughter, and the greater the intellectual labor and the mental strain, the greater is this necessity.

The deep forcible chest movements increase the rapidity of the circulation, the force of the heart’s beat, and secures a more complete oxygenation of the blood.

It is not improbable that this accelerated circulation produces remote effects on the organism. One of the immediate effects of a good laugh is that it relieves the brain by the rapidity of the movements of the blood through the capillary circulation.

In addition to the immediate physiologic effects which result from laughter it is highly beneficial, by relieving the brain and nervous system from the intense strain and tension of the daily affairs and occupations of life, and gives relief to the severely congested capillaries, which otherwise involve considerable risk to the individual.

Physiologists hold that pleasurable feelings tend to further the whole group of organic functions, and that laughter produces a considerable increase of vital activity by the heightened nervous stimulation. There is a sense of increased energy, of a high tide of the fulness of the life current.

Vacations and Health.—The secret of success of the old Romans in conquering the world lay as much in their ability to maintain the health of their troops in their various campaigns as by the courage and organization of those troops; or, rather it may be said that courage is but the coefficient of a good physique and a general mental vigor.

A rest one day out of seven, with an occasional outing for the week-end, is good but not sufficient. If one would keep up to her highest standard of physical and mental efficiency, she must have at least one month of absolute change of environment and outdoor life in the year.