Such is every good and intelligent man’s thoughts, his inner feelings, but only through a woman’s understanding of her greater powers in this respect can we hope to bring future generations to a higher plane.
It is in order to aid you in avoiding the many illnesses which have fastened upon women during the last thirty years or so, that I speak so plainly in these Chats. I am obliged to say things and use words that at first may seem a little indelicate, but if you have grasped the fact that I am humbly trying to tell you the truth about God’s laws and sincerely believe that I am doing right in so telling you, there will be no misunderstanding about my motives.
So I shall take you at once into my confidence and let you be the judge.
[CHAPTER II]
A GENERAL CHAT
The average American girl approaches puberty without any definite knowledge of what a menstrual flow means. If you are one of these neglected girls and have had a fright when you first menstruated, had all kinds of stories put into your head, you must try to forget the fright and realize that all the stories are really nothing but stories. If you have passed over one or two periods after the first one made its appearance, it does not mean that you are going to become crazy, that something is wrong with you, but that the fright, the tales you have heard and the sensitive condition at your age have all affected your nervous system, and you will come out all right after you possess a full knowledge of these things as we go on from Chat to Chat.
The average American girl commences to menstruate at about fourteen years of age. Now if you have menstruated two years earlier or two years later it means nothing but a condition of your race, how you have lived, in the country or the excitements of the city, and other social conditions. From the time a girl first menstruates she can count on about thirty years of activity for the ovaries and womb. That is, if a girl menstruates for the first time at fourteen years of age, she ought not to have any cessation of the periods until she is forty-five years of age. So you can see that the later she is in starting, the later she will be in stopping. Of course the same thing happens when the girl commences to menstruate earlier, she will stop earlier.
The ovaries are two little sack-like organs lying on each side, in the pelvis, or the groin. From each ovary runs a little tube to the womb, which is situated beneath them right in the middle of the body. Now every month the ovaries send down the tubes a little egg which lands in the upper part of the womb, and when the womb is full of blood, which occurs every month in the healthy girl, this egg is carried away in the blood.
I do not intend to talk to you about the process of procreation or the physiology of conception; all these matters you may read about in the many good books which have been written upon those subjects. What I want to tell you are facts and things not to be found in books and which will, if you guide yourself by them, make you a strong and healthy woman throughout all your life.