OTHER CAUSES OF INWARD WEAKNESS.
Women of languid disposition and relaxed muscles are frequently urged to 'take exercise,' and to 'go to work.' Their condition sometimes excites censure rather than commiseration, because it is thought that they do not exert, and thus strengthen, themselves as much as they should. We are quite as much in favour of work and vigorous muscles as any one. But often it were the most foolish advice possible to give a woman, to tell her to seek active exercise. It is just what she should avoid, as it may ultimately give rise to that very trouble which, now only threatening, is the cause of her listlessness. Many instances are familiar to every physician of extensive experience, where a long walk, a hard day's work, a vigorous dance in the evening, or a horseback ride, has left behind it a uterine weakness which has caused years of misery. Especially after confinement or premature delivery it is prudent for a woman to avoid any such exertion for months and months. Moderate employment of her muscles in any light avocation, short walks and drives, fresh air, with judicious exercise,—these are well enough in every instance, but beyond them there is danger. We know too well that advice like this will sound like mockery to some who read these lines. They have to work, and work hard; they have no opportunity to spare themselves; the iron hand of necessity is upon them, and they must obey. We can but sympathize with them, and cheer them with the consolation that many a woman has borne all this and lived to a healthy and happy old age. Nature has surrounded the infinitely delicate machinery of woman's organization with a thousand safeguards, but for all that, the delicacy remains; and it is because so many women are forced to neglect their duties to their ownselves, that so many thousands walk the streets of our great cities, living martyrs.
But no. We must modify what we have just written. In justice to our own sex, and in all truthfulness, we cannot allow the blame to be removed altogether from women themselves. They alone are responsible for one of the most fruitful causes of their wretchedness. The theme is a threadbare one. We approach it without hardly any hope that we shall do good by repeated warnings utterly monotonous and tiresome. But still less can we feel comfortable in mind to pass it over in silence. We refer to the foolish and injurious pressure which is exerted on the lower part of the chest and the abdomen by tight corsets, belts, and bands to support the under-clothing; in other words,
TIGHT LACING.
Why it is, by what strange freak of fashion and blindness to artistic rules, women of the present day think that a deformed and ill-proportioned waist is a requisite of beauty, we do not know. Certainly they never derived such an idea from a contemplation of those monuments of perfect beauty bequeathed to posterity by the chisels of Attic artists, nor from those exquisite figures which lend to the canvas of Titian and Raphael such immortal fame. Look, for instance, at that work of the former artist, now rendered so familiar by the chromo-lithographic process, called 'Titian's Daughter.' It is the portrait of a blonde-haired maiden holding aloft a trencher heaped with fruits. She turns her face to the beholder, leaning slightly backward to keep her equilibrium. Her waist is encircled by a zone of pearls; and it is this waist we would have our readers observe with something more than an æsthetic eye. It is the waist of health as well as beauty. Narrower than either the shoulders or the hips, it is yet anything than that 'wasplike waist,' which is so fashionable a deformity. With such a waist, a woman is fitted to pass through her married state with health and pleasure. There is little fear that she will be the tenant of doctors' chairs, and the victim of drugs and instruments. Let women aim at beauty, let them regard it as a matter of very high importance, worth money and time and trouble, and we will applaud them to the echo. But let them not mistake deformity, vicious shape, unnatural and injurious attitudes, and hurtful distortions for beauty. That not only degrades their physical nature, but it lowers their tastes, and places them in æsthetics on a level with the Indian squaw who flattens her head and bores her nose, and with the Chinese woman who gilds her teeth, and compresses her foot into a shapeless mass. True beauty is ever synonymous with health; and the woman who, out of subservience to the demands of fashion, for years squeezes her waist and flattens her breast, will live to rue it when she becomes a mother. Away, then, with tight corsets and all similar contrivances.
Of a similar objectionable character are many of the devices which ignorant men connected with the medical profession urge upon the public for the sake of remedying curvature of the spine, restoring the figure, or supporting the abdomen. Not a few of such braces and supporters are seriously dangerous. A good brace, well-fitting, carefully adjusted, suited to the particular case, is often of excellent service; but the majority of them do not answer this description. Our advice is, that no girl, and still more no mother, should wear one of these without it is fitted upon her by an experienced hand. We have known more than one instance where the binder put on after childbirth has been wrongly placed, and pinned so firmly that it has resulted in producing falling of the womb. This, too, should be sedulously looked after.
All these are causes which are strictly under the control of the woman herself. They are therefore such as she should have in mind and be on her guard against. There are others, but they are less frequent, which are beyond her power; and it would be labor lost, therefore, for us to mention them.
Equally vain would it be for us to speak of the various means by which difficulties of this nature are removed. Probably no one branch of medical surgery has been more assiduously cultivated than this; and the number of supporters, pessaries, braces, and levers which have been recently brought before the medical profession for this purpose is simply appalling. There are women and men who make it their business to carry them through the country and sell them on commission. We distinctly warn our readers against this class. They are almost invariably ignorant and unscrupulous, rich in promises, and regardless of performances. She who patronizes them will be sure to lose her money, and will be lucky if she does not forfeit her health also.
The most we shall do is to give some advice how to treat such complaints on principles of hygiene. And indeed this means nearly one-half the battle. For without these simple cares, treatment of any kind is useless, and sure to fail; and with them, many complaints are remedied as well as avoided.