It is simply impossible for human beings to live as most American women live, and have good health. After a girl puts on long dresses, she is taught that almost any sort of active bodily movement is unladylike. Her frail little body is enveloped in corsets, which effectually prevents the full development of the important trunk-muscles. At school she gets, perhaps, a little make-belief of calisthenics. During her life in society she waltzes with great ardor, it is true, and it is said that to go through all the evolutions of a German is equivalent to a walk of fifteen miles; but no one has ever seriously claimed that this form of exercise is conducive to health. After marrying, the American woman reduces physical exertion to the minimum. Any form of physical labor is regarded by her as menial. If the weather is bad, she will not put her foot out of the house for whole days at a time. If she does go out, often she will take a car to ride two squares.
American women take more drugs than other women. The drug-store is ubiquitous with us. They show increased susceptibility to stimulants and narcotics, sensitiveness of the digestion, increase of near-sightedness and weakness of the eyes, early and rapid decay of the teeth, sensitiveness to heat and cold, tendency to nervous exhaustion etc.
Gynecology and abdominal surgery are American contributions to medical science.
This state of affairs is not limited to any particular section of the United States, but extends from Maine to California, and from Dan even unto Beersheba. It is national in its scope. The fact is that ill-health is so common in our women that we have grown accustomed to it, and have, quite unconsciously, set up a low standard of feminine health. If a woman is habitually constipated, dyspeptic, so weak that she can hardly walk a mile, has one or two headaches every month, irregular and painful menstruation, backache, napeache, cold hands and feet, leucorrhea, capricious appetite, and a moderate degree of nervousness and insomnia, she is considered to possess average good health. If she is free from all these, it is a rare exception, a fortunate accident, not a condition of health to be attained by the exercise of reason and common sense.
What, then, are the causes for ill-health which are peculiar to American women? These may be divided into two classes, viz.: The unavoidable and the avoidable. Let us briefly survey the unavoidable causes.
By far the most potent of these is our climate, which differs from that of Europe in three respects; it is more variable; the extremes of heat and cold are greater; and the atmosphere is drier.
The reason for the extreme variability of our climate is found in the fact that our mountain chains run north and south, while those of Europe run east and west. In consequence of this, when up in Manitoba Territory King Aeolus reverses his spear and smites upon the side of the mountain, rude Boreas comes whistling down upon us with hardly a moment’s notice, except a hasty telegram from Washington with the familiar announcement that the thermometer will fall forty degrees in the next twenty-four hours. This is followed by nearly as rapid a rise in the temperature.
The extremes of our climate keep us house-bound for a large part of the year, and this is a very potent factor of ill-health. There are few portions of the country where it is agreeable to be out of doors for as many as a hundred days of the year.
The effect of a dry, variable, extreme climate is to stimulate powerfully the nervous system and keep it on the qui vive.
The liberty and enlarged scope of thought and action, which American women enjoy, must also be considered as causes of ill-health. How much more nervous energy an active, ambitious, American woman must expend than a German matron, with her placid, narrow life.