Advice to a wife and mother in two parts

by Pye Henry Chavasse

Riches seldom bring health, content, many children, and happiness; they more frequently cause disease, discontent, childlessness, and misery.[^[12]] Riches and indolence are often as closely united as the Siamese twins, disease and death frequently following in their train. “Give me neither poverty nor riches” was a glorious saying of the wisest of men. Rich and luxurious living, then, is very antagonistic to fecundity. This might be one reason why poor curates’ wives and poor Irish women generally have such large families. It has been proved by experience that a diet, principally consisting of milk, buttermilk, and vegetables, is more conducive to fecundity than a diet almost exclusively of meat. In illustration of my argument, the poor Irish, who have usually such enormous families, live almost exclusively on buttermilk and potatoes; they scarcely eat meat from year’s end to year’s end. Riches, if it prevent a lady from having children, is an evil and a curse, rather than a good and a blessing; for, after all, the greatest treasures in this world are “household treasures”—healthy children! If a wife be ever so rich, and she be childless, she is, as a rule, discontented and miserable. Many a married lady would gladly give up half her worldly possessions to be a mother; and well she might—children are far more valuable. I have heard a wife exclaim with Rachel, “Give me a child, or I die.”

57. If a young wife be likely to have a family, let her continue to live heartily and well; but if she have been married a year or two without any prospect of an increase, let her commence to live abstemiously on fresh milk, buttermilk, bread, potatoes, and farinaceous diet, with very little meat, and no stimulants whatever; let her live, indeed, very much either as a poor curate’s wife, or as a poor Irish woman is compelled to live.

58. It is not the poor woman that is cursed with barrenness—she has often more mouths than she can well fill; but the one that frequently labors under that ban is the pampered, the luxurious, the indolent, the fashionable wife; and most assuredly, until she change her system of living to one more consonant with common sense, she will continue to do so. It is grievous to contemplate that oftentimes a lady, with every other temporal good, is deficient of two earthly blessings—health and children; and still more lamentable, when we know that they frequently arise from her own seeking, that they are withheld from her in consequence of her being a votary of fashion. Many of the ladies of the present day, too, if they do bear children, are, from delicacy of constitution, quite unable to suckle them. Should such things be? But why, it might be asked, speak so strongly and make so much fuss about it? Because the disease is become desperate, and delays are dangerous—because children among the higher ranks are become few and far between; and who so proper as a medical man to raise his voice to proclaim the facts, the causes, and the treatment? I respectfully inquire of my fair reader, Is fashion a wife’s mission? If it be not, what is her mission? I myself have an idea—a very ancient and an almost obsolete one—that the mission of a wife is a glorious mission, far removed from fashion and from folly. A fashionable wife, after a fashionable season, is frequently hysterical and excitable, and therefore exhausted; she is more dead than alive, and is obliged to fly to the country and dose herself with quinine to recruit her wasted energies. Is such a wife as this likely to become a joyful mother of children? I trow not. Her time is taken up between pleasure and excitement to make herself ill, and nursing to make herself well, in order that she may, at the earliest possible moment, again return to her fashionable pursuits, which have with her become, like drinking in excess, a necessity. Indeed, a fashionable life is a species of intoxication. Moreover, wine-drinking in excess and a fashionable life are usually joined together. Sad infatuation, destructive alike to human life and human happiness—a road that often leads to misery, disappointment, and death! These are strong expressions, but they are not stronger than the subject imperatively demands—a subject which is becoming of vital importance to the well-being of society, and, in the higher ranks, even to its very existence, and which must, ere long, engross the attention of all who love their country. Fashion is a sapper and miner, and is ever hard at work sapping and undermining the constitutions of its votaries. Something must be done, and that quickly, to defeat its machinations, otherwise evils will, past remedy, be consummated.

59. I consider thorough ablution of the body every morning one of the most important means of health to a young wife; “while the poor, in the matter of washing, are apt to think that they can put off till Saturday what ought to be performed every day, and that they can wind up the week by a good wash with impunity.”[^[13]] There is nothing more tonic and invigorating and refreshing than cold ablution. Moreover, it makes one feel clean and sweet and wholesome; and you may depend upon it, that it not only improves our physical constitution, but likewise our moral character, and makes our minds more pure and holy. A dirty man has generally a dirty mind!

60. The ewers and basins in our own country are, for the purposes of thorough ablution, ridiculously small, while on the Continent they are still smaller. They are of pigmy dimensions—the basins being of the size of an ordinary slop-basin, and the ewer holding enough water to wash a finger. How can persons with such appliances be either decently clean, or sweet, or thoroughly healthy? It is utterly impossible. Many people on the Continent have a dread of water—they labor under a species of hydrophobia: hence one reason why the ewers and basins are of such dwarfish proportions.

61. A young wife ought to strip to the waist, and then proceed to wash her face after the manner so well described by Erasmus Wilson in his work on Healthy Skin. He says: “Fill your basin about two-thirds full with fresh water; dip your face in the water, and then your hands. Soap the hands well, and pass the soaped hands with gentle friction over the whole face. Having performed this part of the operation thoroughly, dip the face in the water a second time, and rinse it completely; you may add very much to the luxury of the latter part of the process by having a second basin ready with fresh water to perform a final rinsing.... In washing the face you have three objects to fulfill: to remove the dirt, to give freshness, and to give tone and vigor to the skin.” Now for the remaining process of ablution. Having well rubbed her neck with her soaped hands, she ought thoroughly to bathe her neck, her chest, and arms, by means of a large sponge dipped in cold water—the colder the better. She cannot cleanse her own shoulders, back, and loins with a sponge—she cannot get to them. To obviate this difficulty, she ought to soak a piece of flannel, a yard and a half long and half a yard wide, folded lengthways, in cold water, and throwing it over her shoulders, as she would a skipping-rope, she should for a few times work it from right to left and from left to right, “and up and down, and then athwart,” her loins and back and shoulders. This plan will effectually cleanse parts that she could not otherwise reach, and will be most refreshing and delightful. She should then put both her hands, her forearms, and her arms into the basin of water as far as they will reach, and keep them in for a few seconds, or while she can count fifty. The wet parts should be expeditiously dried. Then, having thrown off her remaining clothes, and merely having her slippers on, she ought to sit for a few seconds, or while in the winter she can count fifty, or while in the summer she can count a hundred, either in a sitz-bath,[^[14]] or in a very large wash-hand basin—called a nursery-basin[^[15]] (sold for the purpose of giving an infant his morning bath)—containing water to the depth of three or four inches. While sitting either in the bath or in the basin, she ought in the winter time to have either a small blanket or a woolen shawl thrown over her shoulders. If she has any difficulty in getting in and out of the basin, she should place a chair on each side of the basin; she can then, by pressing upon the chairs with her elbows, arms, and hands, readily do so.

62. If a lady be too delicate to take a sitz-bath, or if a sitz-bath should not agree with her, then she ought every morning to use the bidet, and, while sitting over it, she should well sponge the parts with the water, allowing the water for a few seconds to stream over them. Every lady should bear in mind that either the sitz-bath or the bidet, every morning of her life (except under certain circumstances), is absolutely essential to her comfort and her well-being.

63. At first, until she become accustomed to the cold (which she will do in a few days), she ought to use the water tepid, but the sooner she can use cold water, and that plentifully, the better—as it will greatly contribute to her health and strength. But, as I said before, the process ought to be quickly performed, as it is the shock in bracing and in strengthening the system that does so much good.

64. When a lady is very delicate, it may, during the winter, be necessary to put a dash of warm water into the bath, in order to take off the extreme chill; but, as she becomes stronger, she will be able to dispense with the warm water, as the colder the water is, provided she can bear it, the more good it will do her.

65. If her loins or her back are at all weak, the addition either of a large handful of table salt, or of a small handful of bay salt, or of a lump of rock-salt,[^[16]] dissolved in the water in the sitz-bath, will be of great service to her.