Personal hygiene and physical training for women

by Anna M. Galbraith

When the brain is well supplied with a powerful circulation, and a rich blood-supply from a good digestion furnishes it with an abundance of pabulum, the cares of life are borne with equanimity and cheerfulness. One of the most unerring signs of failing health is the inability to withstand the pressure of these same daily cares. When the cares that formerly sat lightly on the shoulders become well-nigh an insupportable burden, a state has been reached where the mind reacts on the body.

Worry.—It is readily evident that worry is bred of exhaustion, and is one of the signs of overwork; but, if too often indulged in, it becomes a fixed habit, and the mind rapidly becomes settled in a state of gloom.

It is most important for overwrought business and professional women, but most especially for those women whose vocations in life combine three distinct occupations or callings—namely, wives who act in the capacity of housekeepers, ministers of finance to the household, and the bringing up of children—to realize the importance of not undertaking more than they can accomplish without fret and worry. The overconscientious woman may object that it is selfish to consider her own comfort when she has work to do for others, but to expend too freely of the nervous energy, even in a good cause, is like giving so much of our substance to charity that we ourselves are in turn obliged to lean on others for support. In properly conserving our own energies, we may ultimately be lightening the burden of others. There is a proper balance between the duty one owes to one’s self and to others.

Once bred, worry is an endless chain. Tell such a woman not to worry, and she worries for fear she may worry. She is afraid that she has decided wrongly, and regards decisions in regard to the most trivial affairs of life as though they were matters of vital importance.

The obsession “to arrive” is a fertile source of fret and worry. This habit of mind leads to frantic and incessant labor and blocks all pleasure at every point. The person who plays a game only to see who wins, loses half of the benefit of the recreation.

“The legs of the stork are long, the legs of the duck are short; you cannot make the legs of the stork short, neither can you make the legs of the duck long. Why worry?” (Chinese proverb.)

Insomnia.—This is another symptom of overwork. The mind, worried and harassed all day, retires at night to struggle in the darkness and solitude with worries, forebodings, doubts, and regrets, which now assume gigantic and fantastic shapes. In this case the insomnia is due to faulty habits of mind.

Another form of insomnia is caused by intellectual work being carried on at night until time for retiring; the mind is then so fully saturated with the subject that it is unable to throw it off on going to bed.

Whatever be the cause of the insomnia, it soon becomes a fixed habit, and, whether it is a case of laying awake a long time before sleep comes, or waking up at a regular hour toward morning,—and it is a curious fact that the habit of waking up recurs at almost precisely the same hour in the morning,—the longer this habit of insomnia is indulged in, the more difficult it is to break it up.

Nervousness.—This is a well-known sign of overwork, which shows itself in intense nervousness and irritability. Everything jars on the nerves. The woman gives way to her emotions, over which she loses control.