To begin with, then, let it be said most emphatically, for all those whom it may concern, that leucorrhœa—this most regrettable and most neglected of the hidden scourges that harass the women of England—is a much more serious and much more distressing ailment than the ordinary general practitioner, or even specialist gynæcologist, is ready to admit. The fact that Albutt in his Twentieth Century Practice allots only one paragraph of about fifteen lines to the subject of leucorrhœa in girls, shows at once with what a frivolous shrug of the shoulders the orthodox medical school cavalierly disposes of this all-important question. Leucorrhœa is not only a catarrh in a most vital part, it is also the symptom of a loss of tone in a most vital part—a loss of tone and therefore of vitality. It is important to remember, in regard to this disease, that scarcely a case of the kind has ever been known in which colon bacilli were not present in the mucous discharge. The intimate connexion between leucorrhœa and the state of the colon is therefore indisputable, and shows with what reverent care the body of the young positive girl should be tended and watched. The body of the negative girl does not matter nearly as much.
When it is remembered that persistent and obstinate leucorrhœa is the cause not only of more than three-quarters of the irregularity and pain of girls’ periodic indispositions, not only of a depression and degeneration of sexual keenness that may make sexual union quite unenjoyable, not to say unpleasant, but also that it is a reducing, an exhausting, and a sterilizing ailment (sterility where it is not the result of actual malformation is almost always the result of leucorrhœa), it cannot be too urgently or too deeply impressed upon the parent and the guardian of the positive English girl, that reverence for her body, and not alone for her pure soul (which, as we have seen, can well be left to look after itself), is their most solemn and most sacred duty.
Unfortunately, and incredible as it may appear, I have, after the most careful inquiry, discovered that even where leucorrhœa has been diagnosed and proved beyond any doubt to be present, it has been impossible to prescribe the only effective remedies and the only salutary hygiene, owing to the fact that they are frequently of such a nature that no English parent would dream of tolerating their application for an instant! The price we pay for our Puritanism is occasionally very heavy indeed.
When in addition to chronic costiveness and leucorrhœa, anæmia ultimately sets in to stamp its powerful blight upon the face and body of our fair and positive English girl, the amount of positiveness that has been left within her, the extent of her original self that still remains, may easily be computed. I need hardly say that this is not much, and yet, though she is spoiled for every other purpose, she probably stands as a tennis, a hockey, and often a classical champion, as the glory of her whole family, class and nation.
And, mark you, she has been spoiled for every other purpose, not by necessity, not by fate or accident, but by a manner of life the mistakes of which could have been avoided, eliminated and corrected, if only those to whom she was related had felt that reverence for her body, which all beautiful things deserve and demand, and without which they surely perish.
Where the positive girl of the poorer classes is concerned the evil is just as great and just as widespread; but at least in her case, there is the excuse of necessity, of compulsion, of economic pressure. She does not, it is true, rush out to a game of hockey, tennis or net-ball immediately after her meals, neither, as a rule, does she have to take a long pleasure-walk; but she has certainly to rush off either to the local underground railway or to an omnibus in order to get to her work, or else she has to hurry along a considerable distance on foot to get there. She does not play at hockey or tennis when she is indisposed; but if she works at a factory she has to go there all the same; if she works in a shop she has to stand about there all the same; and if she is a laundress she has to stand at a board or a machine all the same.
In both classes, then, rich and poor, Puritanism in different ways—on the one hand by its doctrine of indifference to the body, and on the other by its creations, modern industry and commerce—has succeeded in suppressing all reverence for the positive girl’s beautiful body, and the spiritual as well as the physical cost to the nation of this stupid and iniquitous attitude is as appalling as it is incalculable.
(3) Even if she marry early—as all positive girls should—she may still be converted to negativeness; and in this last instance, not by discontent, a too long wait, or an unhealthy mode of life during youth, but actually by her young husband himself.
Although, strictly speaking, this question should come in the chapter on Marriage, its discussion here, in view of what has gone before, seems so opportune and necessary, that I have decided to include it here, and thus leave myself all the more room for other considerations in Chapter VII.