CHAPTER XV.[ToC]
ARTIFICIALITIES OF CIVILIZED LIFE.
Menstruation is a perfectly physiological process and should be without pain. Indeed, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi maintains that a woman ought to feel more life, vigor and ambition at that period than at any other time. As a fact, however, the majority of civilized women feel more or less lassitude and discomfort, and many suffer intensely. Whenever there is actual pain at any stage of the monthly period, it is because something is wrong, either in the dress, or the diet, or the personal and social habits of the individual. We certainly cannot believe that a kind and just God has made it necessary for women to suffer merely because they are women, and the observation of travelers among uncivilized peoples seems to indicate that where life is conducted according to nature's laws, the limitations of sex are less observable.
It is difficult for us to understand how very far our lives are from being natural. Professor Emmett, a world-renowned specialist in diseases peculiar to women, says: "At the very dawn of womanhood the young girl begins to live an artificial life utterly inconsistent with normal development. The girl of the period is made a woman before her time by associating too much with her elders, and in diet, dress, habits and tastes becomes at an early age but a reflection of her elder sisters. She may have acquired every accomplishment, and yet will have been kept in ignorance of the simplest features of her organization, and of the requirements for the preservation of her health. Her bloom is often as transient as that of the hothouse plant, where the flower has been forced by cultivation to an excess of development by stunting the growth of its branches and limiting the spread of its roots. A girl is scarcely in her teens before custom requires a change in her dress. Her shoulder-straps and buttons are given up for a number of strings about her waist and the additional weight of an increased length in skirt is added. She is unable to take the proper kind or necessary amount of exercise, even if she were not taught that it would be unladylike to make the attempt. Her waist is drawn into a shape little adapted to accommodate the organs placed there, and as the abdominal and spinal muscles are seldom brought into play they become atrophied. The viscera are thus compressed and displaced, and as the full play of the abdominal wall and the descent of the diaphragm are interfered with, the venous blood is hindered in its return to the heart."
Since Professor Emmett wrote this, public sentiment has changed, and it is no longer unladylike for girls to exercise; but with this increased freedom in custom should also come increased physical freedom through healthful clothing that allows perfect use of every muscle, more especially of the breathing muscles. I am sure you would rather pay out your money for that which shall add to your health and real happiness than to pay physicians to help you from suffering the just penalty of your own wrongdoing, and that is why I am anxious to give you this needed instruction. I do not care to have you study much about diseases, but I want you to understand very fully how, through care of yourself, to prevent disease.