"The nervous system of the female sex in England seems to be of a much stronger mould than that of other nations," says Dr. Merei, a medical practitioner of English and Continental experience. "They bear a degree of irritation in their systems, without the issue of fits, which in other races is not so easily tolerated." So Professor Tyndall, watching female pedestrianism among the Alps, exults in his countrywomen:—"The contrast in regard to energy between the maidens of the British Isles and those of the Continent and of America is astonishing." When Catlin's Indians first walked the streets of London, they reported with wonder that they had seen many handsome squaws holding to the arms of men, "and they did not look sick either";—a remark which no complimentary savage was ever heard to make in any Cisatlantic metropolis.
There is undoubtedly an impression in this country that the English vigor is bought at some sacrifice,—that it implies a nervous organization less fine and artistic, features and limbs more rudely moulded, and something more coarse and peasant-like in the whole average texture. Making all due allowance for national vanity, it is yet easy to see that superiority may be had more cheaply by lowering the plane of attainment. The physique of a healthy day-laborer is a thing of inferior mould to the physique of a healthy artist. Muscular power needs also nervous power to bring out its finest quality. Lightness and grace are not incompatible with vigor, but are its crowning illustration. Apollo is above Hercules; Hebe and Diana are winged, not weighty. The physiologist must never forget that Nature is aiming at a keener and subtiler temperament in framing the American,—as beneath our drier atmosphere the whole scale of sounds and hues and odors is tuned to a higher key,—and that for us an equal state of health may yet produce a higher type of humanity. To make up the arrears of past neglect, therefore, is a matter of absolute necessity, if we wish this experiment of national temperament to have any chance; since rude health, however obtuse, will in the end overmatch disease, however finely strung.
But the fact must always be kept in mind that the whole problem of female health is most closely intertwined with that of social conditions. The Anglo-Saxon organization is being modified not only in America, but also in England, with the changing habits of the people. In the days of Henry VIII. it was "a wyve's occupation to winnow all manner of cornes, to make malte, to wash and ironyng, to make hay, shere corne, and in time of nede to help her husband fill the muchpayne, drive the plough, load hay, corne, and such other, and go or ride to the market to sell butter, cheese, egges, chekyns, capons, hens, pigs, geese, and all manner of cornes." But now there is everywhere complaint of the growing delicacy and fragility of the English female population, even in rural regions; and the king of sanitary reformers, Edwin Chadwick, has lately made this complaint the subject of a special report before the National Association. He assumes, as a matter settled by medical authority, that the proportion of mothers who can suckle their children is decidedly diminishing among the upper and middle classes, that deaths from childbirth are eight times as great among these classes as among the peasantry, and that spinal distortion, hysteria, and painful disorders are on the increase. Nine-tenths of the evil he attributes to the long hours of school study, and to the neglect of physical exercises for girls.
This shows that the symptoms of ill-health among women are not a matter of climate only, but indicate a change in social conditions, producing a change of personal habits. It is something which reaches all; for the standard of health in the farm-houses is with us no higher than in the cities. It is something which, unless removed, stands as a bar to any substantial progress in civilization. It is a mere mockery for the millionnaire to create galleries of Art, bringing from Italy a Venus on canvas or a stone Diana, if meanwhile a lovelier bloom than ever artist painted is fading from his own child's cheek, and a firmer vigor than that of marble is vanishing from her enfeebled arms. What use to found colleges for girls whom even the high-school breaks down, or to induct them into new industrial pursuits when they have not strength to stand behind a counter? How appeal to any woman to enlarge her thoughts beyond the mere drudgery of the household, when she "dies daily" beneath the exhaustion of even that?
And the perplexity lies beyond the disease, in the perils involved even in the remedy. No person can be long conversant with physical training, without learning to shrink from the responsibility of the health of girls. The panacea for boyish health is commonly simple, even for delicate cases. Removal from books, if necessary, and the substitution of farm-life,—with good food, pure air, dogs, horses, oxen, hens, rabbits,—and fresh or salt water within walking distance. Secure these conditions, and then let him alone; he will not hurt himself. Nor will, during mere childhood, his little sister experience anything but benefit, under the same circumstances. But at the epoch of womanhood, precisely when the constitution should be acquiring robust strength, her perils begin; she then needs not merely to be allured to exertion, but to be protected against over-exertion; experience shows that she cannot be turned loose, cannot be safely left with boyish freedom to take her fill of running, rowing, riding, swimming, skating,—because life-long injury may be the penalty of a single excess. This necessity for caution cannot be the normal condition, for such caution cannot be exerted for the female peasant or savage, but it seems the necessary condition for American young women. It is a fact not to be ignored, that some of the strongest and most athletic girls among us have lost their health and become invalids for years, simply by being allowed to live the robust, careless, indiscreet life on which boys thrive so wonderfully. It is fatal, if they do too little, and disastrous, if they do too much; and between these two opposing perils the process of steering is so difficult that the majority of parents end in letting go the helm and leaving the fragile vessel to steer itself.
Everything that follows in these pages must therefore be construed in the light of this admitted difficulty. The health of boys is a matter not hard to treat, on purely physiological grounds; but in dealing with that of girls caution is necessary. Yet, after all, the perplexities can only obscure the details of the prescription, while the main substance is unquestionable. Nowhere in the universe, save in improved habits, can we ever find health for our girls. Special delicacy in the conditions of the problem only implies more sedulous care in the solution. The great laws of exercise, of respiration, of digestion are essentially the same for all human beings; and greater sensitiveness in the patient should not relax, but only stimulate, our efforts after cure. And the unquestionable fact that there are among us, after the worst is said, large numbers of robust and healthy women, should keep up our courage until we can apply their standard to the whole sex.
In presence of an evil so great, it is inevitable that there should be some fantastic theories of cure. But extremes are quite pardonable, where it is so important to explore all the sources of danger. Special ills should have special assailants, at whatever risk of exaggeration. As water-cures and vegetarian boarding-houses are the necessary defence of humanity against dirt and over-eating, so is the most ungainly Bloomer that ever drifted on bare poles across the continent a providential protest against the fashion-plates. It is probable, that, on the whole, there is a gradual amelioration in female costume. These hooded water-proof cloaks, equalizing all womankind,—these thick soles and heavy heels, proclaiming themselves with such masculine emphasis on the pavement,—these priceless india-rubber boots, emancipating all juvenile femineity from the terrors of mud and snow,—all these indicate an approaching era of good sense; for they are the requisite machinery of air, exercise, and health, so far as they go.
The weight of skirts and the constraints of corsets are still properly made the theme of indignant declamation. Yet let us be just. It is impossible to make costume the prime culprit, when we recall what robust generations have been reared beneath the same formidable panoply. For instance, it seems as if no woman could habitually walk uninjured with a weight of twelve pounds of skirts suspended at her hips,—Dr. Coale is responsible for the statistics,—and as if salvation must therefore lie in shoulder-straps. Yet the practice cannot be sheer suicide, when the Dutch peasant-girl plods bloomingly through her daily duties beneath a dozen successive involucres of flannel. So in regard to tight lacing, no one can doubt its ill effects, since even a man's loose garments are known to diminish by one-fourth his capacity for respiration. Yet inspect in the shop-windows (where the facts of female costume are obtruded too pertinaciously for the public to remain in ignorance) the light and flexible corsets of these days, and then contemplate at Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth the stout buckram stays that once incased the stouter heart of Alice Bradford. Those, again, were to those of a still earlier epoch as leather to chain-armor. The Countess of Buchan was confined in an iron cage for life for assisting to crown Robert the Bruce, but her only loss by the incarceration was that her iron cage ceased to be portable.
Passing from costume, it must be noticed that there are many physical evils which the American woman shares with the other sex, but which bear with far greater severity on her finer organization. There is improper food, for instance. The fried or salted meat, the heavy bread, the perennial pork, the disastrous mince-pies of our farmers' houses are sometimes pardoned by Nature to the men of the family, in consideration of twelve or more hours of out-door labor. For the more sedentary and delicate daughter there is no such atonement, and she vibrates between dyspepsia and starvation. The only locality in America where I have ever found the farming population living habitually on wholesome diet is the Quaker region in Eastern Pennsylvania, and I have never seen anywhere else such a healthy race of women. Yet here, again, it is not safe to be hasty, or to lay the whole responsibility upon the kitchen, when we recall the astounding diet on which healthy Englishwomen subsisted two centuries ago. Consider, for instance, the housekeeping of the Duke of Northumberland. "My lord and lady have for breakfast, at seven o'clock, a quart of beer, as much wine, two pieces of salt fish, six red herring, four white ones, and a dish of sprats." Digestive resources which could, entertain this bill of fare might safely be trusted to travel in America.
The educational excesses of our schools, also, though shared by both sexes, tell much more formidably upon girls, in proportion as they are keener students, more submissive pupils, and are given to studying their lessons at recess-time, instead of shouting and racing in the open air. They are also easily coerced into devoting Wednesday and Saturday afternoons to the added atrocity of music-lessons, and in general, but for the recent blessed innovation of skating, would undoubtedly submit to having every atom of air and exercise eliminated from their lives. It is rare to find an American mother who habitually ranks physical vigor first, in rearing her daughters, and intellectual culture only second; indeed, they are commonly satisfied with a merely negative condition of health. The girl is considered to be well, if she is not too ill to go to school; and she therefore lives from hand to mouth, as respects her constitution, and lays up nothing for emergencies. From this negative condition proceeds her inability to endure accidents which to an active boy would be trivial. Who ever hears of a boy's incurring a lame knee for a year by slipping on the ice, or spinal disease for a lifetime by a fall from a sled? And if a girl has not enough of surplus vitality to overcome such trifles as these, how is she fitted to meet the coming fatigues of wife and mother?