it is because parents and teachers are doing every thing they can do to produce such mischiefs.
Sleeping in unventilated chambers; living in schoolrooms and parlors heated to excess and charged with poisonous gases; exposed to sudden variations of temperature from mismanagement; eating unhealthful food at irregular hours and to a dangerous excess; supplied with unhealthful confectionery to eat at any hour; indulged in exciting amusements with late hours for sleep; the brain stimulated by a multitude of school duties and studies unrelieved by muscular exercises; the dress contrived to impede vital functions, compressing the most yielding parts so as to force the upper organs on to the lower, generating the most cruel displacements and mental and bodily diseases; over-heating the parts most injured by such treatment, and exposing the parts most important to keep warm; compressing feet and ankles so as to impede circulation, with high heels throwing all the muscles out of natural play so as to increase all the dangerous tendencies to internal displacement; these are only one portion of the many contrivances adopted or
allowed by parents and teachers to destroy the health of women and young girls.
The public press is now circulating such charges against the most cultivated Protestant women of our country as, if true, will verify the assertion that in one important respect, "Protestantism is a failure." For maternity in its normal aspect, involves what scripture represents as the extremity of physical suffering. If to this is added the protracted tortures of mind and body consequent on such outrages on nature as are narrated above, it is not the graduates of boarding schools, and High Schools and Colleges who are to be the mothers and educators of this nation, but those rather who are protected from these sins and sufferings by humble means, daily toil, and a vigilant and politic priesthood.
All through my early days, no such charges against womanhood were even imagined, for I saw a cheerful, healthful mother each second or third year of her whole married life with another healthful infant, and all received by my father as a precious "heritage from the Lord" and through his long life
his "chief joy and crown of rejoicing." And this, which is now so rare an example, was a common experience, in that more simple and healthful generation.
My opportunities for noticing the decline of health in women of this generation, and forming opinions on medical subjects, have been extensive, as for over forty years I have been taxing the science and sagacity of medical men in all parts of the nation, residing in many health establishments, reading medical works, and consulting all classes of medical practitioners. In this course I have secured perfect health and also learned many lessons that I hope will enable me to aid others in gaining the same blessing.
And the most important of these lessons is, that most diseases are consequences of violating the laws of health, (which are as really the laws of God as any in the Bible), and that the surest and safest remedies are found in conforming to these laws. This will be illustrated by a short account of my experiences while so long a wandering invalid.
During this period, as results have proved, I had no organic or functional disease, except extreme prostration of the overworked brain and nerves, increased by a punctured nerve, adding to the debility of the connected sciatic nerve. Thus came inability to walk without supporters, and little ability for any kind of either mental or physical exercise.