The following account was given by the daughter of the lady mentioned above, and the list is chiefly made up of daughters of the above healthy women living at this time in the same town:
Mrs. C. constitution broken by pelvic disorders. Mrs. P. very delicate. Mrs. L. delicate and feeble. Mrs. R. feeble and nervous. Mrs. S. bad scrofulous humors. Mrs. D. very feeble, head disordered. Mrs. R. delicate and sickly. Mrs. G. healthy. Mrs. D. healthy. Mrs. W. well.
These last three were the only healthy married women she knew in the place.
I have received statements from more than a hundred other places besides those recorded here. The larger portion of these were taken by others, or else by myself in such circumstances that I could not make the inquiries needed
to render them reliable, and some I have lost. The general impression made, even by these alone, would bring out very nearly the same result. The proportion of the sick and delicate to those who were strong and well was, in the majority of cases, a melancholy story. But among them were a few cases in which a very favorable statement was verified by close examination. In several such cases, however, most of the healthy women proved to be either English, Irish, or Scotch. In one case, a lady from a country-town, not far from Philadelphia, gave an account, showing eight out of ten perfectly healthy, and the other two were not very much out of health. On inquiry, I found that this was a Quaker settlement, and most of the healthy ones were Quakers.
In one town of Massachusetts, the lady giving the information said all the ten she gave were healthy, but two. Her associates were all women who were in easy circumstances, and did their own family work. These two places, however, are the only instances I have found, where, on close inquiry, the majority was on the side of good health.
There is no doubt that there are many places like these two, of which some resident would report that a majority of their acquaintance were healthy women; but out of about two hundred towns and cities, located in most of the Free States, only two have as yet presented so favorable a case in the line of my inquiries during the year in which they have been prosecuted.
Let these considerations now be taken into account. The generation represented in these statistics, by universal consent, is a feebler one than that which immediately preceded. Knowing the changes in habits of living, in habits of activity, and in respect to pure air, we properly infer that it must be so, while universal testimony corroborates the inference.
The present generation of parents, then, have given their children, so far as the mother has hereditary influence, feebler constitutions than the former generation received, so that most of our young girls have started in life with a more delicate organization than their mothers. Add to this the sad picture given in a former letter of all the abuses of