Plain Facts for Old and Young

by John Harvey Kellogg

[How Beauty is Marred.]—As already remarked, mental, moral, and physical health are the requisites for true beauty, and to secure these, obedience to all the laws of health is required. The most beautiful face is soon marred when disease begins its ravages in the body. The most beautiful character is as speedily spoiled by the touch of moral disease, or sin. The face is a mirror of the mind, the character; and a mind full of evil, impure thoughts is certain to show itself in the face in spite of rosy cheeks and dimples, ruby lips and bewitching smiles. The character is written on the face as plainly as the face may be pictured by an artist on canvas.

To be more explicit, the girl who disregards the laws of health, who eats bad food, eats at all hours or at unseasonable hours, sits up late at night, attends fashionable parties and indulges in the usual means of dissipation there afforded, dancing, wine, rich suppers, etc., who carefully follows the fashions in her dress, lacing her waist to attain the fashionable degree of slenderness, wearing thin, narrow-toed gaiters with French heels, and insufficiently clothing the limbs in cold weather, and who in like manner neglects to comply with the requirements of health in other important particulars, may be certain that sooner or later, certainly at no distant day, she will become as unattractive and homely as she can wish not to be. Girls and young ladies who eat largely of fat meat, rich cakes and pies, confectionery, iced creams, and other dietetic abominations, cannot avoid becoming sallow and hollow-eyed. The cheeks may be ever so plump and rosy, they will certainly lose their freshness and become hollow and thin. Chalk and rouge will not hide the defect, for everybody will discover the fraud, and will of course know the reason why it is practiced.

[A Beauty-Destroying Vice.]—But by far the worst enemy of beauty and health of body, mind, and soul, we have not yet mentioned. It is a sin concerning which we would gladly keep silence; but we cannot see so many of our most beautiful and promising girls and young ladies annually being ruined, often for this world and the next alike, without uttering the word of warning needed.

As before remarked, the function of maternity, which is the object of the sexual system in woman, when rightly exercised is the most sacred and elevated office which a woman can perform for the world. The woman who is a true mother has an opportunity of doing for the race more than all other human agencies combined. The mother's influence is the controlling influence in the world. The mother molds the character of her children. She can make of their plastic minds almost what she will if she is herself prepared for the work. On the other hand, misuse or abuse of the sexual organism is visited in girls and women, as in boys and men, with the most fearful penalties. Nothing will sooner deprive a girl or young lady of the maidenly grace and freshness with which nature blesses woman in her early years than secret vice. We have the greatest difficulty in making ourself believe that it is possible for beings designed by nature to be pure and innocent, in all respects free from impurity of any sort, to become so depraved by sin as to be willing to devote themselves to so vile and filthy a practice. Yet the frequency with which cases have come under our observation which clearly indicate the alarming prevalence of the practice, even among girls and young women who would naturally be least suspected, compels us to recognize the fact. The testimony of many eminent physicians whose opportunities for observation have been very extensive shows that the evil is enormously greater than people generally are aware. Instructors of the youth, of large experience, assert the same. Nor is the evil greater in America than in some other countries. One writer declares that the vice is almost universal among the girls of Russia, which may be due to the low condition in which the women of that country are kept.

[Terrible Effects of Secret Vice.]—The awful effects of this sin against God and nature, this soul-and-body-destroying vice, become speedily visible in those who are guilty of it. The experienced eye needs no confession on the part of the victim to read the whole story of sinful indulgence and consequent disease. The vice stamps its insignia upon the countenance; it shows itself in the walk, in the changed disposition and the loss of healthy vigor. It is not only impossible for a victim of this sinful practice to hide from the all-seeing eye of God the vileness perpetrated in secret, but it is also useless to attempt to hide from human eyes the awful truth.

Headache, side-ache, back-ache, pains in the chest, and wandering pains in various parts of the body,—these are but a few of the painful ailments from which girls who are guilty of this sin suffer. Many of the tender spines which cause great solicitude on the part of parents and physicians, who fear that disease of the spine is threatening the life of a loved daughter, not infrequently originate in this way. Much of the hysteria which renders wretched the lives of thousands of young ladies and the fond friends who are obliged to care for and attend them, arises from sexual transgression of the kind of which we are speaking. The blanched cheeks, hollow, expressionless eyes, and rough, pimply skins of many school-girls are due to this cause alone. We do not mean by this to intimate that every girl who has pimples upon her face is guilty of secret vice; but this sin is undoubtedly a very frequent cause of the unpleasant eruption which so often appears upon the foreheads of both sexes. It would be very unjust, however, to charge a person with the sin unless some further evidence than that of an eruption on the face was afforded.

The inability to study, to apply themselves in any way except when stimulated by something of a very exciting character, which many girls exhibit, is in a large proportion of cases due to the practice of which we are writing. Often enough the effects which are attributed to overstudy are properly due to this debasing habit. We have little faith in the great outcry made in certain quarters about the damaging effects of study upon the health of young ladies. A far less worthy cause is in many cases the true one, to which is attributable the decline in health at a critical period when all the vital forces of the system are necessarily called into action to introduce the activity of a new function.

Hundreds of girls break down in health just as they are entering womanhood. At from twelve to eighteen years of age the change naturally occurs which transforms the girl into a woman by the development of functions previously latent. This critical period is one through which every girl in health ought to pass with scarcely any noticeable disturbance; and if during the previous years of life the laws of health were observed, there would seldom be any unusual degree of suffering at this time. Those who have before this period been addicted to the vile habit of which we are writing, will almost invariably show at this time evidences of the injury which has been wrought. The unnatural excitement of the organs before the period of puberty, lays the foundation for life-long disease. When that critical epoch arrives, the organs are found in a state of congestion often bordering on inflammation. The increased congestion which naturally occurs at this time in many cases is sufficient to excite most serious disease. Here is the beginning of a great many of the special diseases which are the bane and shame of the sex. Displacements of various sorts, congestions, neuralgia of the ovaries, leucorrhoea, or whites, and a great variety of kindred maladies, are certain to make their appearance at this period or soon after in those who have previously been guilty of self-abuse. If the evil influences already at work are augmented by tight lacing, improper dressing of the extremities, hanging heavy skirts upon the hips, and fashionable dissipation generally, the worst results are sure to follow, and the individual is certain to be a subject for the doctors for a good portion of her life.