Confidential Chats with Girls

by William Lee Howard

To get self-control you must go at it in the same systematic manner as you do physical exercise. In this latter matter schools and clubs have gymnasiums for you; there are athletic games played under instructors of physical culture who teach you how to exercise along lines which will give you good bodily health; but the apparatus you need first of all, that for building and strengthening the nervous system and the nervous energy which goes into your sex development, are merely mentioned in some homes and schools and in some others never mentioned. You need a perfectly-balanced nervous organization and one under your complete control before you can benefit from any physical exercise.

“But,” you say, “is not physical exercise a means of building up the nervous organization?”

No, only indirectly. This body of ours, the mere bones, muscles and organs, is only the frame of our human machine, just as the steel body and wheels are that of an automobile. No matter how strong that frame is, no matter what fine material has gone into the workmanship, it is absolutely worthless unless the motor which is to drive it is powerful enough to send it along with ease, and moreover be one which can readily and safely always run under control.

The motor that runs our bodies is the nervous system, and if you have a body so highly developed as to fatigue the nervous motor, then a nervous breakdown is certain to occur. If you have a nervous mechanism too strong for the body it will run away with you and then we have another kind of “nervous breakdown”—hysteria, melancholy, insomnia, drug habit or worse.

The nervous affections of girls and women are generally due to one of these causes I have outlined—unevenness in bodily development or nervous development. They should balance each other, work together and both become tired and demand rest at the same time.

The secretions of the skin, kidneys, liver and other internal organs are controlled through the nervous system. So are the functions of the womb, ovaries and even the heart. Why does your heart beat so rapidly after a fright or great excitement? Because your nervous motor is running beyond your control. Why does a girl’s monthly occurrence sometimes stop after a great fright or skip a period or two during some deep grief or emotional experience? Because the nervous organization of the whole body was put to excessive work and then had to stop for a rest. Having become temporarily exhausted the fine little nerve endings in the organs cannot do their allotted work, hence no secretions can push their way out of the closed cells. For these nerve fibers open and close the cells which secrete the materials that should be cast off at regular intervals.

Not being able to do so the girl becomes “tired,” has headaches, feels “all out of sorts.” Then she thinks something is wrong with her, her good mother gives her “tonics” or “blood medicine” and she is told to exercise.

What she needs instead of exercise or medicines is rest; as much rest and food as she can contentedly stand. The only exercise such a condition calls for is deep breathing and this more to furnish fresh blood which the full lungs give, than for the exercise itself. If we could conveniently get fresh air into the lungs by some method other than breathing it, it would be better still, for even the effort of deep breathing calls for some use of the nervous force, and the least possible disturbance of this force, the quicker will the girl or woman recover her full nervous strength.

If you have exercised beyond the power of the nervous system to send full impulses to the skin so that it will pour out its poisons, some of this poison remains in the body and sets up a condition known as auto-intoxication, which only means self-poisoning. All kinds of nervous affections arise from this state.

The same conditions are brought about by the poisons of the liver, if the delicate nerves of this big sewer of the body are too tired to open up all the little ducts and channels and let out the poisons which the liver has taken up from the blood in your body. And so we might go on into more physiology, showing you that much of the nervousness among girls comes from over-exercise, instead of under-exercise. Probably more of the trouble arises from exercising at wrong times; at times when the nervous organization has all it can do to regulate sex growth and development of the girl. At this time to pull out a lot of nervous power to make muscles work and grow big, must result in some nervous organ being deprived of its needed nerve cell assistance.