Personal hygiene and physical training for women

by Anna M. Galbraith

Whether the girl comes from the country, a country town or city, her social group is comparatively limited; her world is very little and the ego is very large. The discipline that any large body of students bring to bear on the conduct and behavior of the individual is one of the important advantages of a college training. The insignificance of the ego, who is only a unit in this large community, is quickly impressed on the gray matter of the brain, and the rough and unpleasant angles are soon smoothed off. This, in addition to the discipline afforded by the college officers, and the total lack of discipline is the weakest point in the average girl’s education. To be brought into intimate relation with the members of a large and educated community is in itself a liberal education. To learn to respect the rights and the opinions of others, to perceive that any given subject has a great number of points of view, is attaining toward a healthy mental balance that will make the woman broader minded, more sympathetic, more companionable, and more charitable in her views of life.

In addition to the regular college curriculum are the opportunities afforded, not only to special students, but to the entire body of students, for a liberal education in music and art, and so a broad foundation for general culture is laid that will greatly increase the opportunities for pleasure all through life.

So that, in addition to the actual knowledge acquired by a college education, there are also the advantages of the discipline of and development of mind and body; the knowledge of how and what is worth while to study; the power to study and solve life’s greatest problems for herself and those dependent on her; the firm muscles, the clear brain, the steady nerves, the power of judgment, the control of the will, and the formation of character—on all of which the ultimate happiness and success in life depend.

Dr. Beard gives to brain workers a value of life of fourteen years above the average. The brain-working classes are less apt to worry, less apprehensive of indefinite evils, and less disposed to magnify minute trials than those who live by the labor of their hands.

Spinoza says that every advance toward perfection gives us happiness, and it is safe to say that the buoyancy which characterizes contemporary thought, the hopeful outlook amidst the dangers which threaten us, the sense of the added cubit to the man’s stature, are due largely to the recognition of the power for good within his soul of which he was not formerly aware.

Balance of the Mental Faculties.—There must exist a certain balance between the various faculties of the brain in order to insure sanity. A high order of intelligence without much will, or keen emotions without a corresponding power of inhibition, and overmastering will and slight moral sense, vivid imagination without common sense, intense social instinct without much conscience, fervid religious instinct without much sense of duty or altruism, must invariably produce one-sided and unbalanced individuals, and the results would be bad for society; and too many of these one-sided or unbalanced people would impair if not endanger the safety of the State.

Excessive ambition, misdirected energy, longing for the unattainable, regret for the unalterable, anticipation of future unhappiness, lack of a sense of perspective, fretting over non-essentials, indecision, reopening of troublesome questions already settled, avarice, selfishness, excessive emotions, uncontrolled passions, and the actual cultivation of the melancholic state are some of the causes of mental anguish and subsequent physical suffering.

Well-balanced mental faculties give a philosophic view of life; guard the mental and hold the emotional in check; grasp the true relationships in life, and view it in the proper perspective.

The Effect of the Higher Education of Women.—Nothing is so convincing as actual experience and statistics;[5] and nothing is so broadening to the mind as the study of history.

Never before in the history of the human race has any such large body of young women been given the educational advantages for the development of body and mind which they enjoy to-day. From antiquity there have been exceptional women, who were highly educated and cultured, as in Alexandria, Athens, and in the old European universities, but up to the present day any tendency toward the education of the masses of women has been looked at askance, and in this respect the position of the people of the United States was long peculiarly provincial.