Advice to a wife and mother in two parts

by Pye Henry Chavasse

Barren wives! delicate wives! unhealthy wives! are the order of the day—are become institutions of the country—are so common as not to be considered strange, but to be, as a matter of course, as part and parcel of our everyday life! Should such things be? I emphatically say No! But then a thorough change, a complete reformation, must take place in the life and habits of a wife. It is no use blinking the question; the truth, the whole truth, must come out, and the sooner it is told the better. Oh! it is sad that the glorious mission of a wife should, as it often does, end so ingloriously! Broken health, neglected duties, a childless home, blighted hopes, misery, and discontent. What an awful catalogue of the consequences of luxury, of stimulants, of fashion, of ignorance, and of indolence—the five principal wife and babe destroyers! Sure I am that the foregoing melancholy results may, in the generality of cases, by timely and judicious treatment, be prevented.

This is an age of stimulants—’tis the curse of the day; wine, in excess, instead of being an element of strength, is one of weakness; instead of encouraging fecundity, is one of its greatest preventives. A lady who drinks daily five or six glasses of wine, is invariably weak, low, hysterical, and “nervous,”—complaining that she can neither eat, nor sleep, nor take exercise; she is totally unfit for the duties and responsibilities of either wife or mother. I shall endeavor in the following pages to prove the truth of these bold assertions.

Many young married ladies now drink as much wine in a day as their grandmothers did in a week; and which I verily believe is one cause of so few children, and of so much barrenness among them. It is no use: the subject is too important to allow false delicacy to stand in the way of this announcement; the truth must be told; the ulcer which is eating into the vitals of society must be probed; the danger, the folly, the wickedness of the system must be laid bare; the battle must be fought; and as no medical man has come forward to begin the conflict, I myself boldly throw down the gauntlet, and will, to the best of my strength and ability, do battle in the cause.

It is the abuse and not the use of wine that I am contending against. I am not advocating teetotal principles—certainly not. The one system is as absurd and as wrong as the other; extremes, either way, are most injurious to the constitution both of man and woman. The advice of St. Paul is glorious advice: “Use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities;” and again, when he says, “be temperate in all things.” These are my sentiments, and which I have, in the following pages, so earnestly contended for.

A lady who “eats without refreshment, and slumbers without repose,” is deeply to be pitied, even though she be as rich as Crœsus, or as beautiful as Venus! Nothing can compensate for the want of either sleep or appetite; life without proper appetite and without refreshing sleep will soon become a wearisome burden too heavy to bear. It is high time, when there are so many of the Young Wives of England, alas! too many, who daily “eat without refreshment,” and who nightly “slumber without repose,” that the subject was thoroughly looked into, and that proper means were suggested to abate the calamity. One of the principal objects of this book is to throw light upon the subject, and to counsel measures to remedy the evil.

The large number of barren wives in England has, in these pages, had my careful and earnest consideration. I have endeavored, to the best of my ability, to point out, as far as the wives themselves are concerned, many of the causes, and have advised remedies to abate the same. It is quite time, when the health among the wives of the higher classes is so much below par, and when children among them are so few, that the causes should be thoroughly inquired into, and that the treatment should be extensively made known. The subject is of immense, indeed I might even say, of national importance, and demands deep and earnest thought and careful investigation, as the strength and sinews of a nation depend mainly upon the number and healthfulness of her children.

Barren land can generally, with care and skill, be made fertile; an unfruitful vine can frequently, by an experienced gardener, be converted into a fruit-bearing one; a childless wife can often, by judicious treatment, be made a child-bearing one. Few things in this world are impossible: “where there is a will there is generally a way;” but if there be a will, it must be a determined and a persevering will; if there be a way, the way, however rough and rugged, must be trodden,—the rough and rugged path will, as she advances onward, become smooth and pleasant.

It is not the poor woman, who works hard and who lives hard, that is usually barren—certainly not: she has generally an abundance of children; but it is the rich lady—the one who is indolent, who lives luxuriously, and fares sumptuously every day—who leads a fashionable, and therefore an unnatural life—who turns night into day, who at night breathes suffocatingly hot rooms, who lives in a whirl of excitement, who retires not to rest until the small hours of the morning,—such a one is the one that is frequently barren; and well she might be,—it would be most strange if she were not so. One of the objects of this book will be to point out these causes, and to suggest remedies for the same, and thus to stem the torrent, and in some measure to do away with the curse of barrenness which in England, at the present time, so fearfully prevails.

I have undertaken a responsible task, but have thrown my whole energy and ability into it; I therefore have no excuse to make that I have not thought earnestly and well upon the subject, or that I have written unadvisedly; my thoughts and studies have for years been directed to these matters. I earnestly hope, then, that I have not written in vain, but that the seeds now sown will, in due time, bring forth much fruit.

Although my two books—Advice to a Wife and Advice to a Mother—are published as separate works, they might, in point of fact, be considered as one volume—one only being the continuation of the other. Advice to a Wife, treating on a mother’s own health, being, as it were, a preparation for Advice to a Mother on the management of her children’s health; it is quite necessary that the mother herself should be healthy to have healthy children; and if she have healthy offspring, it is equally important that she should be made thoroughly acquainted how to keep them in health. The object of Advice to a Wife and Advice to a Mother is for that end; indeed, the acquisition and the preservation of sound health, of mother and of child, have, in both my books, been my earnest endeavor, my constant theme, the beginning and the ending, the sum and the substance of my discourse, on which all else beside hinges.