Clothing is a matter of importance, and, if we were at all sure of attention, there is much we would say of it. The thought seriously troubles us, that so long as women consent to deform themselves and sacrifice their health to false ideas of beauty, it is almost hopeless to urge their fitness for, and their right to a higher life than they now enjoy. No educated painter or sculptor is ignorant of what the model of female beauty is; no fashionable woman is content unless she departs from it as far as possible.
Now beauty implies health, and ugliness of form is attained not only at the expense of æsthetics, but of comfort. The custom of fastening growing girls in tight corsets, of flattening their breasts with pads, of distorting their feet in small high-heeled shoes, and of teaching them to stoop and mince in gait, is calculated to disgust every observer of good sense and taste, and, what is of more consequence, to render these girls, when they become women, more liable to every species of suffering connected with child-bearing.
The monthly change is the prelude to maternity. On its healthful recurrence depends present comfort and future health; and not these alone, but also happiness in marriage, easy child-beds, and the constitution of children to a degree the thoughtless girl and even the mature woman rarely understand. She, therefore, who neglects the due care of her own condition, violates a duty owed to others as well as herself. We would have mothers impress this on their daughters. Let no mistaken modesty prevent them.
Especially at their commencement should the monthly changes be carefully watched. The mother should prepare her daughter's mind betimes for such an expected incident in her life, thus preventing a useless fright, or the employment of injurious means to stop what the child may look upon as an accident.
Nor should the maternal care cease here. Such tender sympathy should exist on the one side, such trusting confidence on the other, that the mother should acquaint herself with every detail of each recurring period until the function is thoroughly established. She should inquire into the duration of each epoch, the abundance of the discharge, the presence of pain, and its effects on the general health. She should convince herself that all these do not vary from the standards of health we have previously laid down. Or should they do so, she should not delay to use the proper means to bring them to that standard.
Long observation proves that if, during the first two or three years which follow the attainment of puberty, the health of the girl is successfully guarded, and this, her most important physical distinction, meets with no derangement, her life-long health is well-nigh secured; but, on the contrary, if she commences her sexual life with pain and disorder, she is likely to be a life-long sufferer.
We are about to approach a topic of vital importance, therefore, in summing up as briefly as may be, the precautions necessary to attain this end. They can most conveniently be divided into those to be observed during the monthly changes, and those more general rules of health to be obeyed in the intervals of the periods.
PRECAUTIONS DURING THE MONTHLY CHANGES.
At the head of all cautions and warnings which we could give about the care of the health at these monthly periods, we put rest, rest, bodily and mental. Do less than usual, we say to all, whether the necessity for it is manifest or not. Over-exertion is a most fruitful cause of disease. Long walks, shopping, dancing, riding, hard work whether for pleasure or profit, should be avoided to the utmost.
The advantages of rest cannot be over-estimated. A striking example of it occurs to our mind. Most readers are aware how toilsome are the lives of the Indian women among our Western tribes, and also how singularly easy and almost painless is their child-bearing. The pangs of travail are almost unknown to them. The cause of this has puzzled even physicians. We can tell them. It is because it is an inviolable, a sacred rule among all those tribes, for the woman, when having her monthly sickness, to drop all work, absent herself from the lodge, and remain in perfect rest as long as the discharge continues.