There are many other unavoidable causes of ill-health in American women which need not be discussed here; let us rather turn our attention to the more practical consideration of the avoidable causes of ill-health in our women. While there are very many of these, it has seemed to the writer that the following are the principal ones:
1. Lack of general exercise. 2. Lack of specific exercise. 3. Lack of abdominal breathing. 4. Improper modes of dress. 5. Superstition.
As every one is aware, there are three causes for the circulation of the blood.
(a) The contraction of the heart;
(b) Contraction of the voluntary muscles;
(c) The contraction of the diaphragm.
American women attempt to dispense with the last two; they neither take exercise nor do they breathe with the diaphragm. The muscles act precisely like the bulb of a Davidson syringe; when they contract the blood is forced into the veins; when they relax a new supply flows in.
Dubois-Reymond determined by experiment that the minimum amount of exercise, necessary to maintain the circulation, is equivalent to a walk of five miles a day. American women do not average one-fifth of this amount.
The diaphragm acts like the piston of a great pump, rising and falling sixteen times a minute, and pumping the blood out of the abdominal and pelvic cavities. Where its stroke is only one-half or one-third the normal, the amount of blood raised must be correspondingly less. The investigations of Dr. Thos. J. Mays, of Philadelphia, and of Dr. J. H. Kellogg, of Battle Creek, Mich., have shown that women ought to breathe precisely as men do. The thoracic type of respiration in women is entirely artificial, and is not, as physiologists have claimed, a wise provision of nature, having in view the restriction of the movements of the diaphragm during pregnancy.
The second cause assigned for the ill-health of American women is lack of specific exercise. All exercise is not of equal value; exercise of the arms and legs, while of great value, is relatively far less important than exercise of the trunk muscles, for the reason that the circulation through the thoracic, abdominal, and pelvic cavities is dependent upon exercise of the muscles surrounding these cavities. When the trunk muscles are not freely and systematically exercised, the circulation through the lungs and through the abdominal and pelvic organs becomes feeble, and the functions of these organs are imperfectly fulfilled.