ADVICE TO A WIFE ON THE MANAGEMENT OF HER OWN HEALTH, AND ON THE TREATMENT OF SOME OF THE COMPLAINTS INCIDENTAL TO PREGNANCY, LABOR, AND SUCKLING; WITH AN INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER ESPECIALLY ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG WIFE.
Reading edition
BY
PYE HENRY CHAVASSE,
FELLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF ENGLAND; FELLOW OF THE OBSTETRICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON; FORMERLY PRESIDENT OF QUEEN’S COLLEGE MEDICO-CHIRURGICAL SOCIETY, BIRMINGHAM; AUTHOR OF “ADVICE TO A MOTHER ON THE MANAGEMENT OF HER CHILDREN.”
“Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine upon the walls of thine house.”
SEVENTEENTH EDITION.
PHILADELPHIA:
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
1881.
iiiTO
MY BIRMINGHAM PATIENTS,
MANY OF WHOM I HAVE ATTENDED FOR A PERIOD OF UPWARDS OF THIRTY YEARS; SOME OF WHOM, HAVING USHERED INTO THE WORLD, I AFTERWARD ATTENDED IN THEIR OWN CONFINEMENTS; AND FROM ALL OF WHOM I HAVE RECEIVED SO MUCH CONFIDENCE, COURTESY, AND KINDNESS,
This little Volume is Dedicated,
BY THEIR SINCERE FRIEND,
PYE HENRY CHAVASSE
Priory House, Old Square,
Birmingham.
v
PREFACE.
The sale of copies of this book is now to be reckoned by its tens of thousands! The last, the Seventh Edition, comprising five thousand copies, has been rapidly exhausted; a new Edition, the Eighth, is now urgently called for; and as the sale of the work is so enormous, and so extending, my worthy Publishers have deemed it advisable to publish of this edition at once seven thousand copies,—thus making of the two last editions alone twelve thousand copies; the two last editions being, in fact, equal to twelve ordinary editions! Moreover, this book has made me troops of friends, thus proving how much such a work was needed, and how thoroughly my humble efforts have been appreciated.
I have, in the Introductory Chapter especially addressed to a Young Wife, had some plain and unpalatable truths to tell; but it is absolutely necessary for a surgeon to probe a serious and deep-seated wound to the bottom before he can perform a cure; he is sometimes compelled to give pain before he can cure pain; he is frequently obliged to administer bitter medicine before sweet health can be restored. I have not shrunk from my duty; I have not uttered an “uncertain sound:” but have, without fear or favor, boldly spoken out, and have proclaimed what I have deemed to be the truth; the vital importance of my subject must excuse my plain-speaking and earnestness. When a person is on the edge of a precipice, and is ready at any moment to topple over, the viwords of warning must not be in the tones of a whisper, bland and gentle, but in the voice of thunder, bold and decisive. I have had to discourse on matters of the greatest moment to the well-being of wives; and have, therefore, in order not to be misapprehended, had to call things by their right names—the subject being of far too much importance to write in a namby-pamby style, or to use any other language than that of the plainest English.
The Introductory Chapter is, I trust, greatly improved; many of the quotations are either curtailed, or are altogether suppressed, in order to make room, without materially increasing the size of the book, for much new and important matter. The remaining pages have all been carefully revised and corrected, and made more clear, and additional advice, where needed, has been supplied. I therefore hope that this edition will be still more worthy of its great and extending success, and be the humble instrument of sowing broadcast through our land advice most necessary for wives to know; and at the same time be the means of dispelling prejudices which, in the lying-in room, are even, in this our day, most rife and injurious.
Barren wives! delicate wives! unhealthy wives! are the order of the day—are become institutions of the country—are so common as not to be considered strange, but to be, as a matter of course, as part and parcel of our everyday life! Should such things be? I emphatically say No! But then a thorough change, a complete reformation, must take place in the life and habits of a wife. It is no use blinking the question; the truth, the whole truth, must come out, and the sooner it is told the better. Oh! it is sad that the glorious mission of a wife should, as it often does, end so ingloriously! Broken health, neglected duties, a childless home, blighted hopes, misery, and discontent. What an awful catalogue of the consequences of luxury, of stimulants, of fashion, of ignorance, and of indolence—the five principal wife and babe viidestroyers! Sure I am that the foregoing melancholy results may, in the generality of cases, by timely and judicious treatment, be prevented.
This is an age of stimulants—’tis the curse of the day; wine, in excess, instead of being an element of strength, is one of weakness; instead of encouraging fecundity, is one of its greatest preventives. A lady who drinks daily five or six glasses of wine, is invariably weak, low, hysterical, and “nervous,”—complaining that she can neither eat, nor sleep, nor take exercise; she is totally unfit for the duties and responsibilities of either wife or mother. I shall endeavor in the following pages to prove the truth of these bold assertions.
Many young married ladies now drink as much wine in a day as their grandmothers did in a week; and which I verily believe is one cause of so few children, and of so much barrenness among them. It is no use: the subject is too important to allow false delicacy to stand in the way of this announcement; the truth must be told; the ulcer which is eating into the vitals of society must be probed; the danger, the folly, the wickedness of the system must be laid bare; the battle must be fought; and as no medical man has come forward to begin the conflict, I myself boldly throw down the gauntlet, and will, to the best of my strength and ability, do battle in the cause.
It is the abuse and not the use of wine that I am contending against. I am not advocating teetotal principles—certainly not. The one system is as absurd and as wrong as the other; extremes, either way, are most injurious to the constitution both of man and woman. The advice of St. Paul is glorious advice: “Use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities;” and again, when he says, “be temperate in all things.” These are my sentiments, and which I have, in the following pages, so earnestly contended for.
A lady who “eats without refreshment, and slumbers without repose,” is deeply to be pitied, even though she be as rich viiias Crœsus, or as beautiful as Venus! Nothing can compensate for the want of either sleep or appetite; life without proper appetite and without refreshing sleep will soon become a wearisome burden too heavy to bear. It is high time, when there are so many of the Young Wives of England, alas! too many, who daily “eat without refreshment,” and who nightly “slumber without repose,” that the subject was thoroughly looked into, and that proper means were suggested to abate the calamity. One of the principal objects of this book is to throw light upon the subject, and to counsel measures to remedy the evil.
The large number of barren wives in England has, in these pages, had my careful and earnest consideration. I have endeavored, to the best of my ability, to point out, as far as the wives themselves are concerned, many of the causes, and have advised remedies to abate the same. It is quite time, when the health among the wives of the higher classes is so much below par, and when children among them are so few, that the causes should be thoroughly inquired into, and that the treatment should be extensively made known. The subject is of immense, indeed I might even say, of national importance, and demands deep and earnest thought and careful investigation, as the strength and sinews of a nation depend mainly upon the number and healthfulness of her children.
Barren land can generally, with care and skill, be made fertile; an unfruitful vine can frequently, by an experienced gardener, be converted into a fruit-bearing one; a childless wife can often, by judicious treatment, be made a child-bearing one. Few things in this world are impossible: “where there is a will there is generally a way;” but if there be a will, it must be a determined and a persevering will; if there be a way, the way, however rough and rugged, must be trodden,—the rough and rugged path will, as she advances onward, become smooth and pleasant.
It is not the poor woman, who works hard and who lives ixhard, that is usually barren—certainly not: she has generally an abundance of children; but it is the rich lady—the one who is indolent, who lives luxuriously, and fares sumptuously every day—who leads a fashionable, and therefore an unnatural life—who turns night into day, who at night breathes suffocatingly hot rooms, who lives in a whirl of excitement, who retires not to rest until the small hours of the morning,—such a one is the one that is frequently barren; and well she might be,—it would be most strange if she were not so. One of the objects of this book will be to point out these causes, and to suggest remedies for the same, and thus to stem the torrent, and in some measure to do away with the curse of barrenness which in England, at the present time, so fearfully prevails.
I have undertaken a responsible task, but have thrown my whole energy and ability into it; I therefore have no excuse to make that I have not thought earnestly and well upon the subject, or that I have written unadvisedly; my thoughts and studies have for years been directed to these matters. I earnestly hope, then, that I have not written in vain, but that the seeds now sown will, in due time, bring forth much fruit.
Although my two books—Advice to a Wife and Advice to a Mother—are published as separate works, they might, in point of fact, be considered as one volume—one only being the continuation of the other. Advice to a Wife, treating on a mother’s own health, being, as it were, a preparation for Advice to a Mother on the management of her children’s health; it is quite necessary that the mother herself should be healthy to have healthy children; and if she have healthy offspring, it is equally important that she should be made thoroughly acquainted how to keep them in health. The object of Advice to a Wife and Advice to a Mother is for that end; indeed, the acquisition and the preservation of sound health, of mother and of child, have, in both my books, been my earnest endeavor, my constant theme, the beginning and xthe ending, the sum and the substance of my discourse, on which all else beside hinges.
I again resign this book into the hands of my fair readers, hoping that it may be of profit and of service to them during the whole period of their wifehood; and especially during the most interesting part of their lives—in their hour of anguish and of trial; and that it may be the humble means of making a barren woman “to be a joyful mother of children.”
PYE HENRY CHAVASSE
Priory House, Old Square,
Birmingham.
xi
CONTENTS.
PAGES
Dedication iii
Preface to Eighth Edition v–x
Introductory Chapter 13–102
PART I.
On Menstruation 103–116
PART II.
On Pregnancy 117–198
PART III.
On Labor 199–254
PART IV.
On Suckling 255–300
Index 301–309
13
Advice to a Wife.
A good wife is Heaven’s last, best gift to man—his angel and minister of graces innumerable—his gem of many virtues—his casket of jewels. Her voice is sweet music, her smiles his brightest day, her kiss the guardian of his innocence, her arms the pale of his safety, the balm of his health, the balsam of his life; her industry his surest wealth, her economy his safest steward, her lips his faithful counselors, her bosom the softest pillow of his cares, and her prayers the ablest advocate of Heaven’s blessings on his head.—Jeremy Taylor.
Of earthly goods, the best is a good Wife;
A bad, the bitterest curse of human life.—Simonides.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
1. It may be well—before I enter on the subjects of menstruation, of pregnancy, of labor, and suckling—to offer a few preliminary observations, especially addressed to a Young Wife.
2. My subject is health—the care, the restoration, and the preservation of health—one of the most glorious subjects that can be brought before a human being, and one that should engross much of our time and of our attention, and one that cannot be secured unless 14it be properly attended to. The human frame is, as every one knows, constantly liable to be out of order; it would be strange, indeed, if a beautiful and complex instrument like the human body were not occasionally out of tune:
“Strange that a harp with a thousand strings
Should keep in tune so long.”
3. The advice I am about to offer to my fair reader is of the greatest importance, and demands her deepest attention. How many wives are there with broken health, with feeble constitutions, and with childless homes! Their number is legion! It is painful to contemplate that, in our country, there are far more unhealthy than healthy wives! There must surely be numerous causes for such a state of things! A woman, born with every perfection, to be full of bodily infirmities! It was ordained by the Almighty that wives should be fruitful and multiply! Surely there must be something wrong in the present system if they do not do so!
4. It will, in the following pages, be my object to point out many of the causes of so much ill health among wives; ill health that sometimes leads to barrenness; and to suggest remedies both for the prevention and for the cure of such causes.
5. It is an astounding and lamentable fact, that one out of eight—that twelve and a half per cent. of all the wives of England are barren, are childless! A large 15majority of this twelve and a half per cent. might be made fruitful, if a more judicious plan of procedure than is at present pursued were adopted.
6. My anxious endeavors, in the following pages, will be to point out remedies for the evil, and to lay down rules—rules which, I hope, my fair reader will strenuously follow.
7. My theme, then, is Health—the Health of Wives—and the object I shall constantly have in view will be the best means both of preserving it and of restoring it when lost. By making a wife strong, she will not only, in the majority of cases, be made fruitful, but capable of bringing healthy children into the world. This latter inducement is of great importance; for puny children are not only an anxiety to their parents, but a misery to themselves, and a trouble to all around! Besides, it is the children of England that are to be her future men and women—her glory and her greatness! How desirable it is, then, that her children should be hardy and strong!
8. A wife may be likened to a fruit tree, a child to its fruit. We all know that it is as impossible to have fine fruit from an unhealthy tree as to have a fine child from an unhealthy mother. In the one case, the tree either does not bear fruit at all—is barren—or it bears undersized, tasteless fruit,—fruit which often either immaturely drops from the tree, or, if plucked from the tree, is useless; in the other case, the wife either does 16not bear children—she is barren—or she has frequent miscarriages—“untimely fruit”—or she bears puny, sickly children, who often either drop into an early grave, or, if they live, probably drag out a miserable existence. You may as well expect “to gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles,” as healthy children from unhealthy parents!
9. Unhealthy parents, then, as a matter of course have unhealthy children; this is as truly the case as the night follows the day, and should deter both man and woman so circumstanced from marrying. There are numerous other complaints besides scrofula and insanity inherited and propagated by parents. It is a fearful responsibility, both to men and women, if they be not healthy, to marry. The result must, as a matter of course, be misery!
10. If a wife is to be healthy and strong, she must use the means—she must sow before she can reap; health will not come by merely wishing for it! The means are not always at first agreeable; but, like many other things, habit makes them so. Early rising, for instance, is not agreeable to the lazy, and to one fond of her bed; but it is essentially necessary to sound health. Exercise is not agreeable to the indolent; but no woman can be really strong without it. Thorough ablution of the whole body is distasteful and troublesome to one not accustomed to much washing—to one laboring under a kind of hydrophobia; but there is no perfect health without the daily cleansing of the whole skin.
1711. But all these processes entail trouble. True: is anything in this world to be done without trouble? and is not the acquisition of precious health worth trouble? Yes, it is worth more than all our other acquisitions put together! Life without health is a burden; life with health is a joy and gladness! Up, then, and arouse yourself, and be doing! No time is to be lost if you wish to be well, to be a mother, and to be a mother of healthy children. The misfortune of it is, many ladies are more than half asleep, and are not aroused to danger till danger stares them in the face; they are not cognizant of ill health slowly creeping upon them, until, in too many cases, the time is gone by for relief, and ill health has become confirmed—has become a part and parcel of themselves; they do not lock the stable until the steed be stolen; they do not use the means until the means are of no avail:
“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to Heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.”[1]
12. Idleness is the mother of many diseases; she breeds them, feeds them, and fosters them, and is, moreover, a great enemy to fecundity. Idleness makes people miserable. I have heard a young girl—surrounded with every luxury—bemoan her lot, and complain that she was most unhappy in consequence of not having anything to do, and who wished that she 18had been a servant, so that she might have been obliged to work for her living. Idleness is certainly the hardest work in the world.
13. It frequently happens that a lady, surrounded with every luxury and every comfort, drags out a miserable existence; she cannot say that she ever, even for a single day, really feels well and strong. This is not to live—
“For life is not to live, but to be well.”[2]
14. If a person be in perfect health, the very act of living is itself thorough enjoyment, the greatest this world can ever bestow. How needful it therefore is that all necessary instruction should be imparted to every Young Wife, and that proper means should, in every way, be used to insure health!
15. The judicious spending of the first year of married life is of the greatest importance in the making and in the strengthening of a wife’s constitution, and in preparing her for having a family. How sad it is, then, that it is the first twelve months that is, as a rule, especially chosen to mar and ruin her own health, and to make her childless! The present fashionable system of spending the first few months of married life in a round of visiting, of late hours, and in close and heated rooms, calls loudly for a change. How many valuable lives have been sacrificed to such a custom! How many 19miscarriages, premature births, and still-born children, have resulted therefrom! How many homes have been made childless—desolate—by it! Time it is that common sense should take the place of such folly! The present system is abominable, is rotten at the core, and is fraught with the greatest danger to human life and human happiness. How often a lady is, during the first year of her wifehood, gadding out night after night,—one evening to a dinner party, the next night to private theatricals, the third to an evening party, the fourth to the theater, the fifth to a ball, the sixth to a concert, until in some cases every night except Sunday night is consumed in this way,—coming home frequently in the small hours of the morning, through damp or fog, or rain or snow, feverish, flushed, and excited—too tired until the morning to sleep, when she should be up, out, and about. When the morning dawns she falls into a heavy, unrefreshing slumber, and wakes not until noon, tired, and unfit for the duties of the day! Night after night—gas, crowded rooms, carbonic acid gas, late hours, wine, and excitement are her portion. As long as such a plan is adopted the preacher preacheth but in vain. Night after night, week after week, month after month, this game is carried on, until at length either an illness or broken health supervenes. Surely these are not the best means to insure health and a family and healthy progeny! The fact is, a wife nowadays is too artificial; she lives on excitement; it is like drinking no wine but champagne, and, like champagne taken in excess, it soon plays sad havoc with her constitution. 20The pure and exquisite enjoyments of nature are with her too commonplace, tame, low, and vulgar. How little does such a wife know of the domestic happiness so graphically and sweetly described by that poet of the affections, Cowper:
“Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturb’d retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted evening, know.”
16. A fashionable lady might say, “I cannot give up fashionable amusements; I must enjoy myself as others do; I might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion.” To such a one I reply, “I myself am not a fashionist—it is not in my line; and as in the following pages I have to tell some plain unvarnished truths, my advice to you is, close this book at once and read no more of it, as such a work as this cannot be of the slightest use to you, however it might be to one who values health ‘as a jewel of great price’—as one of her most precious earthly possessions.” Really the subject is assuming such a serious aspect that it behooves a medical man to speak out plainly and unreservedly, and to call things by their right names. Fashion is oftentimes but another name for suicide and for baby-slaughter—for “massacre of the innocents!” God help the poor unfortunate little child whose mother is a votary of fashion, who spends her time in a round and whirl of fashionable life, and leaves her child to the tender mercies of servants, who “gang their ain gait,” and leave their little charge to do the same. Such a mother is 21more unnatural than a wild beast; for a wild beast, as a rule, is gentle, tender, and attentive to its offspring, scarcely ever for a moment allowing its young to be out of its sight. Truly, fashionable life deadens the feelings and affections. I am quite aware that what I have just now written will, by many fashionable ladies, be pooh-poohed, and be passed by as “the idle wind.” They love their pleasures far above either their own or their children’s health, and will not allow anything, however precious, to interfere with them; but still I have confidence that many of my judicious readers will see the truth and justness of my remarks, and will profit by them.
17. A round of visiting, a succession of rich living, and a want of rest during the first year of a wife’s life, often plays sad havoc with her health, and takes away years from her existence. Moreover, such proceedings often mar the chances of her ever becoming a mother, and then she will have real cause to grieve over her fatuity.
18. A French poet once sung that a house without a child is like a garden without a flower, or like a cage without a bird. The love of offspring is one of the strongest instincts implanted in woman; there is nothing that will compensate for the want of children. A wife yearns for them; they are as necessary to her happiness as the food she eats and as the air she breathes. If this be true—which, I think, cannot be gainsayed—how important is our subject,—one of the most important that can in this world engage one’s attention, requiring deep consideration and earnest study.
2219. The first year of a married woman’s life generally determines whether, for the remainder of her existence, she shall be healthy and strong, or shall be delicate and weak; whether she shall be the mother of fine, healthy children, or—if, indeed, she be a mother at all—of sickly, undersized offspring—
“Born but to weep, and destined to sustain
A youth of wretchedness, an age of pain.”[3]
If she be not a parent, her mission in life will be only half performed, and she will be robbed of the greatest happiness this world can afford. The delight of a mother, on first calling a child her own, is exquisite, and is beautifully expressed in the following lines—
“He was my ain, and dear to me
As the heather-bell to the honey-bee,
Or the braird to the mountain hare.”[4]
20. I should recommend a young wife to remember the momentous mission she has to fulfill; to ponder on the importance of bringing healthy children into the world; to bear in mind the high duties that she owes herself, her husband, her children, and society; to consider well the value of health—“The first wealth is health;”[5] and never to forget that “life has its duties ever.”[6]
2321. A young married lady ought at once to commence to take regular and systematic out-door exercise, which might be done without in the least interfering with her household duties. There are few things more conducive to health than walking exercise; and one advantage of our climate is, that there are but few days in the year in which, at some period of the day, it might not be taken. Walking—I mean a walk, not a stroll—is a glorious exercise; it expands the chest and throws back the shoulders; it strengthens the muscles; it promotes digestion, making a person digest almost any kind of food; it tends to open the bowels, and is better than any aperient pill ever invented; it clears the complexion, giving roses to the cheeks and brilliancy to the eye, and, in point of fact, is one of the greatest beautifiers in the world. It exhilarates the spirits like a glass of champagne, but, unlike champagne, it never leaves a headache behind. If ladies would walk more than they do, there would be fewer lackadaisical, useless, complaining wives than there at present are; and, instead of having a race of puny children, we should have a race of giants. Walking exercise is worthy of all commendation, and is indispensable to content, health, strength, and comeliness. Of course, if a lady be pregnant, walking must then be cautiously pursued; but still, walking in moderation is even then absolutely necessary, and tends to keep off many of the wretchedly depressing symptoms, often, especially in a first pregnancy, accompanying that state. I am quite sure that there is nothing more conducive 24to health than the wearing out of lots of shoe-leather and that leather is cheaper than physic.
22. Walking is even more necessary in the winter than in the summer. If the day be cold, and the roads be dirty, provided it be dry above, I should advise my fair reader to put on thick boots and a warm shawl, and to brave the weather. Even if there be a little rain and much wind, if she be well wrapped up, neither the rain nor the wind will harm her. A little sprinkling of rain, provided the rules of health be followed, will not give her cold. Much wind will not blow her away. She must, if she wishes to be strong, fight against it; the conflict will bring the color to her cheek and beauty to her eye.
23. Let her exert herself; let her mind conquer any indolence of the body; let her throw off her lethargy—it only requires a little determination; let her be up and doing; for life, both to man and woman, is a battle, and must be fought valiantly.
24. Bear in mind, then, that if a lady is to be healthy, she must take exercise, and that not by fits and starts, but regularly and systematically. A stroll is of little use; she must walk! And let there be no mistake about it, for Nature will have her dues: the muscles require to be tired, and not to be trifled with; the lungs ask for the revivifying air of heaven, and not for the stifling air of a close room; the circulation demands the quickening influence of a brisk walk, and not to be made stagnant by idleness.
2525. This world was never made for idleness; everything around and about us tells of action and of progress. Idle people are miserable people; idle people are diseased people; there is no mistake about it. There is no substitute in this world for exercise and for occupation; neither physic nor food will keep people in health; they must be up and doing, and buckle on their armor, and fight, as every one has to fight, the battle of life! Mr. Milne, the master of the North Warwickshire hounds, lately, at a hunt dinner, pithily remarked “that fox-hunting was the best physic for improving a bad constitution.” I am quite sure, with regard to the fair sex, that an abundance of walking exercise and of household occupation is decidedly the best physic for improving a lady’s constitution, more especially if she have, as unfortunately too many of them have, a bad one; indeed, an abundance of walking exercise and of household occupation will frequently convert a bad into a good constitution.
26. Moreover, there is not a greater beautifier in the world than fresh air and exercise; a lady who lives half her time in the open air, in God’s sunshine, and who takes plenty of walking exercise, has generally a clear and beautiful complexion—
“She looks as clear
As morning roses newly washed with dew.”[7]
27. Do not let me be misunderstood: I am not advocating that a delicate lady, unaccustomed to exercise, 26should at once take violent and long-continued exercise; certainly not. Let a delicate lady learn to take exercise, as a young child would learn to walk—by degrees; let her creep, and then go; let her gradually increase her exercise, and let her do nothing either rashly or unadvisedly. If a child attempted to run before he could walk, he would stumble and fall. A delicate lady requires just as much care in the training to take exercise as a child does in the learning to walk; but exercise must be learned and must be practiced, if a lady, or any one else, is to be healthy and strong. Unfortunately, in this our day the importance of exercise as a means of health is but little understood and but rarely practiced; notwithstanding, a lady may rest assured that until a “change comes o’er the spirit of her dreams,” ill health will be her daily and constant companion.
28. A lady should walk early in the morning, and not late in the evening. The dews of evening are dangerous, and are apt to give severe colds, fevers, and other diseases. Dew is more likely to cause cold than rain—
“The dews of the evening most carefully shun—
Those tears of the sky for the loss of the sun.”[8]
29. A breath of wind is not allowed to blow on many a fair face. The consequence is, that her cheek becomes sallow, wan, “as wan as clay,” and bloodless, or if it has a color it is the hectic flush, which tells of speedy decay!
30. Sitting over the fire will spoil her complexion, 27causing it to be muddy, speckled, and sallow. The finest complexion in a lady I ever saw belonged to one who would never go, even in the coldest weather, near the fire: although she was nearly thirty years of age, her cheeks were like roses, and she had the most beautiful red and white I ever beheld; it reminded me of Shakspeare’s matchless description of a complexion:—
“’Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white
Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on.”
31. Sitting over the fire will make her chilly, nervous, dyspeptic, and dispirited. It will cause her to be more chilly, and thus will make her more susceptible of catching cold; and it will frequently produce chilblains. If she be cold, the sitting over the fire will only warm her for the time, and will make her feel more starved when she leaves it. Crouching over the fire, as many do, is ruination to health and strength and comeliness! Sitting over the fire will make her nervous: the heat from the fire is weakening beyond measure to the nerves. It will disorder and enfeeble her stomach—for nothing debilitates the stomach like great heat—and thus make her dyspeptic; and if she be dyspeptic, she will, she must be dispirited. The one follows the other as surely as the night follows the day.
32. If sitting over the fire be hurtful, sitting with the back to the fire is still more so. The back to the fire often causes both sickness and faintness, injures the spine, and weakens the spinal marrow, and thus debilitates the whole frame.
2833. A walk on a clear, frosty morning is as exhilarating to the spirits as the drinking of champagne—with this difference, that on the day following the head is improved by the one, but not always by the other. Simple nature’s pleasures are the most desirable—they leave no sting behind them!
34. There is nothing like a long walk to warm the body and to make the blood course merrily through the blood-vessels. I consider it to be a great misfortune that my fair countrywomen do not use their legs more and their carriages less. “As to exercise, few women care to take it for mere health’s sake. The rich are too apt to think that riding in a close varnish-smelling carriage ought to be a very good substitute for muscular struggles in the open air.”[9]
35. Unfortunately this is an age of luxury. Everything is artificial, and disease and weakness, and even barrenness, follow as a matter of course. In proof of my assertion that this is an age of luxury, look at the present sumptuous style of living: carriages rolling about in every direction; dining-tables groaning under the weight of rich dinners, and expensive wines flowing like water; grand dresses sweeping the streets, almost doing away with the necessity for scavengers. I say, advisedly, streets; for green fields are, unfortunately, scarcely ever visited by ladies. We are almost, in extravagance, rivaling ancient Rome just 29before luxury sapped her strength and laid her in ruins!
36. If a lady has to travel half a mile she must have her carriage. Strange infatuation! Is she not aware that she has hundreds of muscles that want exercising? that she has lungs that require expanding? that she has nerves that demand bracing? that she has blood that needs circulating? And how does she think that the muscles can be exercised, that the lungs can be expanded, that the nerves can be braced, and that the blood can be properly circulated, unless these are all made to perform their proper functions by an abundance of walking exercise? It is utterly impossible!
37. Does she desire to be strong? Then let her take exercise! Does she hope to retain her bloom and her youthful appearance, and still to look charming in the eyes of her husband? Then let her take exercise! Does she wish to banish nervousness and low spirits? Then let her take exercise! There is nothing standing still in Nature: if it were, creation would languish and die. There is a perpetual motion! And so must we be constantly employed (when not asleep), if we are to be healthy and strong! Nature will not be trifled with; these are her laws[10]—immutable and unchangeable, and we cannot infringe them with impunity:
30“Labor is life! ’Tis the still water faileth;
Idleness ever despaireth, bewaileth;
Keep the watch wound, for the dark night assaileth;
Flowers droop and die in the stillness of noon.
Labor is glory! The flying cloud lightens;
Only the waving wing changes and brightens;
Idle hearts only the dark future frightens;
Play the sweet keys, would’st thou keep them in tune!”
38. If a newly-married woman be delicate, as, unfortunately, too many are, she may be made to bear exercise well, provided she begins by taking a short walk at first—be it ever so short—and by gradually increasing it until she be able to take a tolerably long one. She might find it irksome at the beginning, and might be inclined to give it up in despair; but if she value her health and happiness, let me urge her to persevere, and she may depend upon it that she will be amply rewarded for her trouble.
39. A delicate lady frequently complains of cold feet; she has neither sufficient food nor sufficient exercise to keep them warm. Walking and plenty of nourishment are the best remedies she can use to warm them. If they be cold before retiring to rest—a frequent cause of keeping her awake—let her walk briskly for half an hour, before undressing for the night, about either the hall, or the landing, or a large room.
40. Some ladies declare that they are always cold, their feet especially, which are as cold as ice! The fact is, they not only do not take exercise enough, but they do not take nourishment enough—breakfast especially—to 31keep them warm. Many ladies really and truly half starve themselves; they consider it to be vulgar to eat much, and to satisfy their appetite! they deem it low to take a long walk: every poor woman can do that! it is much more easy and pleasant to loll back in an easy carriage, and to be rolled along! Truly; but if carriage exercise be more agreeable, is it as healthful? Certainly not: there is very little exercise in riding in a carriage; but every organ, muscle, nerve, and blood-vessel of the body is put into beneficial action by walking. Walking is essential to health; there is no substitute for it; there certainly is no perfect health without it.
41. The reason why my fair countrywomen take so much opening medicine is the want of exercise. How truly it has been said that “physic, for the most part, in nothing else but the substitute of exercise and temperance.”
42. I consider it to be a grievous misfortune for any one—man, woman, or child—who cannot, without the frequent taking of physic, keep their bowels regular. When such is the case there is something wrong, very wrong, about her system and about her proceedings, and the sooner the matter is inquired into and rectified the better. The necessity of a constant swallowing of opening medicine is a proof of chronic ill health, and will in time injure her constitution beyond remedy. I cannot speak too strongly on this subject; I have, in my professional experience, seen so much mischief and 32misery caused by the frequent swallowing of opening pills, that I should not do my duty if I did not raise my voice against the abominable custom. Why, many ladies make a practice, during the whole of their lives, of taking two or three times a week opening pills! The bowels, they say, will not act without them; but I maintain that if they would resolutely refrain from swallowing them, and adopt the rules of health laid down in these pages, they would be able altogether to dispense with them, to their great benefit and delectation. But then the rules of health require trouble and perseverance—(and what that is worth having does not?)—while the swallowing of a couple of pills might be done quickly, and with very little trouble; but although the frequent taking of pills gives at the time but little trouble, they cause much trouble afterwards! Look, then, at the results of each system, and decide accordingly! It has been said that “gluttony kills more than the sword;” my conviction is, that the constant taking of opening medicine kills more than gluttony and the sword combined! The abuse of aperients is one of the crying evils of the day, and who so proper as a medical man to raise his voice to suppress, or at all events to lessen, the evil?
43. If a lady be costive, and is in consequence inclined to take a dose of physic, let me advise her to take instead a long walk, which will in the majority of cases do her vastly more good; and if requiring repetition, the one is far more agreeable, and the effects are much more likely to be lasting than the other. 33Exercise, I am quite sure, is, as a rule, in the long run much more effectual and beneficial than opening physic.
44. A newly-married wife ought to be cautious in the taking of horse exercise. As long as she be not pregnant, horse exercise is very beneficial to health, and is a great enjoyment; but the moment symptoms of pregnancy develop themselves, she must instantly give it up, or it will probably cause her to miscarry.
45. Let her breathe the pure air of heaven, rather than the close contaminated air either of an assembly or of a concert-room. The air of an assembly or of a concert-room is contaminated with carbonic acid gas. The gas-lights and the respiration of numbers of persons give off carbonic acid gas, which gas is highly poisonous.
46. The truth of this assertion is patent to every one who will observe the effects that a large assembly, more especially in the evening, when the gas or candles are flaring away, has on the system; the headache, the oppression, the confusion of ideas, the loss of appetite, the tired feeling, followed by a restless night—all tell a tale, and loudly proclaim that either an assembly or a concert-room is not a fit place for a young wife desirous of having a family.
47. Let a young married lady attend well to the ventilation of her house. She may depend upon it 34that ventilation, thorough ventilation, will prove one of the best friends she has in the world. Let her give directions to her servant to have early every morning every window in the house opened, as the morning air is fresher and sweeter than it is later in the day. “For ventilation, open your windows both at top and bottom. The fresh air rushes in one way, while the foul makes its exit the other. This is letting in your friend and expelling your enemy.”[11] This opening of the window, top and bottom, of course applies only to the rooms that are unoccupied:—in an occupied room in hot weather one sash only—the lower, as a rule, is best—ought to be opened. If the upper be lowered when the room is occupied, the cold air is apt to strike on the top of the head, and to give cold.
48. Let her give orders that every chimney in the house be unstopped, and let her see for herself that her orders have been obeyed; for servants, if they have the chance, will stop up chimneys, as they are fully aware that dust and dirt will come down chimneys, and that it will give them a little extra work to do. But the mistress has to see to the health of herself and of her household, which is of far more consequence than either a little dirt or extra work for her servants.
49. She may rest assured that it is utterly impossible for herself and for her family to have perfect health if the chimneys are allowed to be stopped. I assert 35this fearlessly, for I have paid great attention to the subject. If the chimney be stopped, the apartment must necessarily become contaminated with carbonic acid gas, the refuse of respiration, which is, as I have before stated, a deadly poison.
50. Chimneys, in many country houses, are permanently and hermetically stopped: if we have the ill-fortune to sleep in such rooms, we feel half-suffocated. Sleep, did I say? No! tumble and toss are the right words to express the real meaning; for in such chambers very little sleep do we get,—unless, indeed, we open the windows to let in the air, which, in such an extremity, is the only thing, if we wish to get a wink of sleep, we can do! Stopped-up bedroom chimneys is one and an important reason why some persons do not derive the benefit they otherwise would do of change of air to the country.
51. I unhesitatingly declare that ninety-nine bedrooms out of every hundred are badly ventilated; that in the morning, after they have been slept in, they are full both of impure and of poisoned air. I say, advisedly, impure and poisoned air, for the air becomes foul and deadly if not perpetually changed—if not constantly mixed, both by day and by night, with fresh, pure, external air. Many persons, by breathing the same air over and over again, are literally “poisoned by their own breaths!” This is not an exaggerated statement—alas, it is too true! Let every young wife remember that she requires just as much pure air in the night as in 36the day; and if she does not have it, her sleep will neither refresh her nor strengthen her, but that she will rise in the morning more weary than on the previous night when she retired to rest.
52. The way to make a house healthy, and to keep off disease, is by thorough ventilation—by allowing a current of air, both by day and by night, to constantly enter and to sweep through the house, and every room of the house. This may be done either by open skylight or by open landing windows, which should always be left open; and by allowing every chamber window to be wide open during the day, and every chamber door to be a little open both by night and by day, having a door-chain on each door during the night to prevent intrusion.
53. Let her, if she can, live in the country. In a town, coal fires—manufactories, many of them unhealthy—confined space—the exhalations from the lungs and from the skin of the inhabitants, numbers of them diseased,—all tend to load the air with impurities. Moreover, if in the town she desire a walk, it is often itself a walk, and a long one too, before she can get into the country—before she can obtain glimpses of green fields and breathe the fresh air; hence walks in the town do but comparatively little good. In the country her lungs are not cheated: they get what they want—a good article, pure air—and the eye and heart are both gladdened with the beauties of nature. I consider the following remark of Dr. Grosvenor, in his 37excellent Essay on Health, very pertinent. He observes: “Hence it is that one seldom sees in cities, courts, and rich houses, where people eat and drink, and indulge in the pleasure of appetite, that perfect health and athletic soundness and vigor which is commonly seen in the country, in the poor houses and cottages, where nature is their cook and necessity is their caterer, where they have no other doctor but the sun and fresh air, and no other physic but exercise and temperance.”
54. Cold air is frequently looked upon as an enemy, instead of being contemplated as, what it really is to a healthy person, a friend. The effect of cold upon the stomach is well exemplified in a walk in frosty weather, producing an appetite. “Cold air,” says Dr. Cullen, “applied with exercise, is a most powerful tonic with respect to the stomach; and this explains why, for that purpose, no exercise within doors, or in close carriages, is so useful as that in the open air.”
55. Hot and close rooms, soft cushions, and luxurious couches must be eschewed. I have somewhere read, that if a fine, healthy whelp of the bull-dog species were fed upon chicken, rice, and delicacies, and made to lie upon soft cushions, and if, for some months, he were shut up in a close room, when he grew up he would become unhealthy, weak, and spiritless. So it is with a young married woman; the more she indulges, the more unhealthy, weak, and inanimate she becomes—unfit to perform the duties of a wife and the offices of a mother, if, indeed, she be a mother at all!
3856. Rich and luxurious ladies are less likely to be blessed with a family than poor and hard-worked women. Here is, to a vengeance, compensation! Compensation usually deals very justly both to man and womankind. For instance, riches and childlessness, poverty and children, laziness and disease, hard work and health, a hard-earned crust and contentment, a gilded chamber and discontent—
“These are ofttimes wedded as a man and wife,
And linked together, hand in hand, through life.”
Riches seldom bring health, content, many children, and happiness; they more frequently cause disease, discontent, childlessness, and misery.[12] Riches and indolence are often as closely united as the Siamese twins, disease and death frequently following in their train. “Give me neither poverty nor riches” was a glorious saying of the wisest of men. Rich and luxurious living, then, is very antagonistic to fecundity. This might be one reason why poor curates’ wives and poor Irish women generally have such large families. It has been proved by experience that a diet, principally consisting of milk, buttermilk, and vegetables, is more conducive to fecundity than a diet almost exclusively of meat. In illustration of my argument, the poor Irish, who have usually such enormous families, live almost exclusively on buttermilk and potatoes; they scarcely eat meat from year’s end to year’s end. 39Riches, if it prevent a lady from having children, is an evil and a curse, rather than a good and a blessing; for, after all, the greatest treasures in this world are “household treasures”—healthy children! If a wife be ever so rich, and she be childless, she is, as a rule, discontented and miserable. Many a married lady would gladly give up half her worldly possessions to be a mother; and well she might—children are far more valuable. I have heard a wife exclaim with Rachel, “Give me a child, or I die.”
57. If a young wife be likely to have a family, let her continue to live heartily and well; but if she have been married a year or two without any prospect of an increase, let her commence to live abstemiously on fresh milk, buttermilk, bread, potatoes, and farinaceous diet, with very little meat, and no stimulants whatever; let her live, indeed, very much either as a poor curate’s wife, or as a poor Irish woman is compelled to live.
58. It is not the poor woman that is cursed with barrenness—she has often more mouths than she can well fill; but the one that frequently labors under that ban is the pampered, the luxurious, the indolent, the fashionable wife; and most assuredly, until she change her system of living to one more consonant with common sense, she will continue to do so. It is grievous to contemplate that oftentimes a lady, with every other temporal good, is deficient of two earthly blessings—health and children; and still more lamentable, when we know that they frequently arise from her own seeking, 40that they are withheld from her in consequence of her being a votary of fashion. Many of the ladies of the present day, too, if they do bear children, are, from delicacy of constitution, quite unable to suckle them. Should such things be? But why, it might be asked, speak so strongly and make so much fuss about it? Because the disease is become desperate, and delays are dangerous—because children among the higher ranks are become few and far between; and who so proper as a medical man to raise his voice to proclaim the facts, the causes, and the treatment? I respectfully inquire of my fair reader, Is fashion a wife’s mission? If it be not, what is her mission? I myself have an idea—a very ancient and an almost obsolete one—that the mission of a wife is a glorious mission, far removed from fashion and from folly. A fashionable wife, after a fashionable season, is frequently hysterical and excitable, and therefore exhausted; she is more dead than alive, and is obliged to fly to the country and dose herself with quinine to recruit her wasted energies. Is such a wife as this likely to become a joyful mother of children? I trow not. Her time is taken up between pleasure and excitement to make herself ill, and nursing to make herself well, in order that she may, at the earliest possible moment, again return to her fashionable pursuits, which have with her become, like drinking in excess, a necessity. Indeed, a fashionable life is a species of intoxication. Moreover, wine-drinking in excess and a fashionable life are usually joined together. Sad infatuation, destructive alike to human life and human 41happiness—a road that often leads to misery, disappointment, and death! These are strong expressions, but they are not stronger than the subject imperatively demands—a subject which is becoming of vital importance to the well-being of society, and, in the higher ranks, even to its very existence, and which must, ere long, engross the attention of all who love their country. Fashion is a sapper and miner, and is ever hard at work sapping and undermining the constitutions of its votaries. Something must be done, and that quickly, to defeat its machinations, otherwise evils will, past remedy, be consummated.
59. I consider thorough ablution of the body every morning one of the most important means of health to a young wife; “while the poor, in the matter of washing, are apt to think that they can put off till Saturday what ought to be performed every day, and that they can wind up the week by a good wash with impunity.”[13] There is nothing more tonic and invigorating and refreshing than cold ablution. Moreover, it makes one feel clean and sweet and wholesome; and you may depend upon it, that it not only improves our physical constitution, but likewise our moral character, and makes our minds more pure and holy. A dirty man has generally a dirty mind!
60. The ewers and basins in our own country are, for the purposes of thorough ablution, ridiculously small, 42while on the Continent they are still smaller. They are of pigmy dimensions—the basins being of the size of an ordinary slop-basin, and the ewer holding enough water to wash a finger. How can persons with such appliances be either decently clean, or sweet, or thoroughly healthy? It is utterly impossible. Many people on the Continent have a dread of water—they labor under a species of hydrophobia: hence one reason why the ewers and basins are of such dwarfish proportions.
61. A young wife ought to strip to the waist, and then proceed to wash her face after the manner so well described by Erasmus Wilson in his work on Healthy Skin. He says: “Fill your basin about two-thirds full with fresh water; dip your face in the water, and then your hands. Soap the hands well, and pass the soaped hands with gentle friction over the whole face. Having performed this part of the operation thoroughly, dip the face in the water a second time, and rinse it completely; you may add very much to the luxury of the latter part of the process by having a second basin ready with fresh water to perform a final rinsing.... In washing the face you have three objects to fulfill: to remove the dirt, to give freshness, and to give tone and vigor to the skin.” Now for the remaining process of ablution. Having well rubbed her neck with her soaped hands, she ought thoroughly to bathe her neck, her chest, and arms, by means of a large sponge dipped in cold water—the colder the better. She cannot cleanse her own shoulders, back, and loins with a sponge—she cannot get to them. To obviate this difficulty, 43she ought to soak a piece of flannel, a yard and a half long and half a yard wide, folded lengthways, in cold water, and throwing it over her shoulders, as she would a skipping-rope, she should for a few times work it from right to left and from left to right, “and up and down, and then athwart,” her loins and back and shoulders. This plan will effectually cleanse parts that she could not otherwise reach, and will be most refreshing and delightful. She should then put both her hands, her forearms, and her arms into the basin of water as far as they will reach, and keep them in for a few seconds, or while she can count fifty. The wet parts should be expeditiously dried. Then, having thrown off her remaining clothes, and merely having her slippers on, she ought to sit for a few seconds, or while in the winter she can count fifty, or while in the summer she can count a hundred, either in a sitz-bath,[14] or in a very large wash-hand basin—called a nursery-basin[15] (sold for the purpose of giving an infant his morning bath)—containing water to the depth of three or four inches. While sitting either in the bath or in the basin, she ought in the winter time to have either a small blanket or a woolen shawl 44thrown over her shoulders. If she has any difficulty in getting in and out of the basin, she should place a chair on each side of the basin; she can then, by pressing upon the chairs with her elbows, arms, and hands, readily do so.
62. If a lady be too delicate to take a sitz-bath, or if a sitz-bath should not agree with her, then she ought every morning to use the bidet, and, while sitting over it, she should well sponge the parts with the water, allowing the water for a few seconds to stream over them. Every lady should bear in mind that either the sitz-bath or the bidet, every morning of her life (except under certain circumstances), is absolutely essential to her comfort and her well-being.
63. At first, until she become accustomed to the cold (which she will do in a few days), she ought to use the water tepid, but the sooner she can use cold water, and that plentifully, the better—as it will greatly contribute to her health and strength. But, as I said before, the process ought to be quickly performed, as it is the shock in bracing and in strengthening the system that does so much good.
64. When a lady is very delicate, it may, during the winter, be necessary to put a dash of warm water into the bath, in order to take off the extreme chill; but, as she becomes stronger, she will be able to dispense with the warm water, as the colder the water is, provided she can bear it, the more good it will do her.
4565. If her loins or her back are at all weak, the addition either of a large handful of table salt, or of a small handful of bay salt, or of a lump of rock-salt,[16] dissolved in the water in the sitz-bath, will be of great service to her.
66. The feet and the legs ought every morning to be bathed—not by standing in the water, but, on the completion of the washing of the other parts of the body, by putting one foot at a time for a few seconds (not minutes) in the basin containing the water (the basin for that purpose being placed on the floor), and well and quickly washing the foot, either with a flannel or with a sponge, and well cleansing with the finger and thumb between each toe, and allowing the water from the sponge or flannel to stream into the basin from the knee downwards. All this, of course, must be done expeditiously; and care ought to be taken, after such ablution, to well dry with a towel between each toe. The washing of the feet as above directed will be a great refreshment, and will be most beneficial to health, and will be a means of warding off colds, of preventing chilblains, and of preserving the feet in a sweet and healthy state. The feet ought to be kept as clean, if not cleaner, than the hands. Parts that are not seen should be kept cleaner than parts that are seen. Filth is apt to gather in covered up places.
4667. The moment she has finished her bath she ought quickly to dry herself. I should recommend her to use as a towel the Turkish rubber: it will cause a delightful glow of the whole body.
68. The whole of the body, except the hair of the head, is, by the above method, every morning thoroughly washed. The hair of the head ought occasionally, even with soap and water, to be cleansed, to keep it clean and sweet and wholesome; for nothing is more dirty if it be not well attended to than human hair, and nothing is more repulsive than a dirty head.
69. Brushing of the hair, although beneficial both to the hair and health, will not alone thoroughly cleanse the hair and scalp.
70. Some ladies attempt to clean their hair by simply washing it either with rosemary or with rosewater, or with other washes; but there is no more effectual way of doing it than occasionally by a flannel and soap and water.
71. Bathing in the sea during the season, provided no grease has been previously used, is very good for the hair; it both strengthens the roots and beautifies the color.
72. I should advise my fair reader not to plaster her hair either with grease or with pomade, or with other unknown compounds: many of them are apt to make the head dirty, scurfy, and sore.
4773. It might be said that it is utterly impossible for a lady to keep her hair tidy, unless she uses some application to it. If such be the case, either a little best olive oil or scented castor oil, or cocoanut oil, may, by means of an old tooth-brush, be applied to smooth the hair.
74. If the hair should fall off, either a little cocoanut oil or a little scented castor oil, well rubbed every night and morning into the roots, is an excellent dressing. These are simple remedies, and can never do any harm, which is more than can be said of many quack nostrums, which latter often injure the hair irreparably.
75. The best carpet, either for a bath-room or for a dressing-room, is kamptulicon, as the water spilt upon it after the use of a bath or ablution can, by means of a flannel, be readily absorbed; the window ought then to be thrown wide open, and the room will quickly be dried.
76. It would be well for her, when practicable, to have, after she has finished dressing, a quarter of an hour’s walk, either in the garden or in the grounds, in order to insure a reaction, and thus to induce a healthy glow of the circulation, and to give her an appetite for her breakfast. A quarter of an hour’s walk before breakfast is more beneficial to health than an hour’s walk after breakfast.
77. If a lady have not been accustomed to a thorough 48ablution, as just directed, of her whole body, let her, if possible, before commencing, take a trip to the coast, and have a few dips in the sea; after which she might at once go through the processes above advised with safety, comfort, and advantage; but whether she be able to bathe in the sea or not, she must, if she is to be strong and healthy, gradually accustom herself to a daily ablution of the whole of her body. The skin is a breathing apparatus, and unless it be kept clean it cannot properly perform its functions. It might be said, it will take time and trouble daily to cleanse the whole of the skin: it will; but no more than ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, to go through the whole of the above processes of bathing and of drying the skin. The acquisition of health takes both time and trouble; but nothing worth having in this world is done without it! There is no royal road to health; but although the path at first might be a little rugged and disagreeable, it soon becomes from practice smooth and pleasant!
78. Oh, if my fair reader did but know the value of thorough cold water ablutions, she would not lose a day before giving the plan I have above recommended a trial. It would banish all, or nearly all, her little ailments and nervousness; it would make her dispense with many of her wrappings; it would, in the winter time, keep her from coddling and crudling over the fire; it would cause her to resist cold and disease; it would, if she were inclined to constipation, tend to regulate her bowels; it would strengthen her back and loins; it 49would make her blooming, healthy, and strong; and it would pave the way, and fit her, in due time, to become a mother, and the mother of fine, hearty children! My reader must not fancy that I have overdrawn the picture; I have painted it from the life. “I only tell what I do know, and declare what I do believe.” Let me urge but a trial, and then my fair inquirer will have cause to be thankful that she had been induced to carry out my views, and I shall rejoice that I have been the means of her doing so. Hear what a physician and a poet, a man of sound sense and of sterling intellect, says of the value of ablution. He speaks of warm ablution, which certainly is, at the beginning of using thorough ablution, the best; but the sooner cold can be substituted for warm the better it will be for the health and strength and spirits of the bather:
“The warm ablution, just enough to clear
The sluices of the skin, enough to keep
The body sacred from indecent soil.
Still to be pure, even did it not conduce
(As much as it does) to health, were greatly worth
Your daily pains; it is this adorns the rich;
The want of it is poverty’s worst foe.
With this external virtue age maintains
A decent grace! without it, youth and charms
Are loathsome.”[17]
79. With regard to diet.—Although I have a great objection (which I either have or will particularize) of a young wife taking rich food and many stimulants, yet 50I am a great advocate for an abundance of good wholesome nourishment.
80. The meager breakfasts of many young wives (eating scarcely anything) is one cause of so much sickness among them, and of so many puny children in the world.
81. Let every young wife, and, indeed, every one else, make a substantial breakfast. It is the foundation meal of the day; it is the first meal after a long—the longest fast. The meager, miserable breakfasts many young wives make is perfectly absurd; no wonder that they are weak, “nervous,” and delicate. A breakfast ought, as a rule, to consist either of eggs or of cold chicken, or of cold game, or of bacon, or of ham, or of cold meat, or of mutton-chops, or of fish, and of plenty of good bread, and not of either hot buttered toast, or of hot rolls swimming in butter; both of which latter articles are like giving the stomach sponge to digest, and making the partaker of such food for the rest of the day feel weak, spiritless, and miserable. If she select coffee for breakfast, let the half consist of good fresh milk; if she prefer cocoa, let it be made of new milk instead of water; if she choose tea, let it be black tea, with plenty of cream in it. Milk and cream are splendid articles of diet. Let her then make a hearty breakfast, and let there be no mistake about it. There is no meal in the day so wretchedly managed, so poor and miserable, and so devoid of nourishment, as an English breakfast. Let every young wife, therefore, 51look well to the breakfast, that it be good and varied and substantial, or ill health will almost certainly ensue.[18]
82. A meager unsubstantial breakfast causes a sinking sensation of the stomach and bowels, and for the remainder of the day a miserable depression of spirits. Robert Browning truly and quaintly remarks that
“A sinking at the lower abdomen
Begins the day with indifferent omen.”
83. It frequently happens that a young wife has no appetite for her breakfast. She may depend upon it, in such a case, there is something wrong about her, and that the sooner it is rectified the better it will be for her health, for her happiness, and for her future prospects. Let her, then, without loss of time seek medical advice, that means may be used to bring back her appetite. The stomach in all probability is at fault; if it be, the want of appetite, the consequent sensation of sinking of the stomach, and the depression of the spirits are all explained; but which, with judicious treatment, may soon be set to rights.
84. If the loss of appetite for breakfast arise from pregnancy—and sometimes it is one of the earliest 52symptoms—time will rectify it, and the appetite, without the necessity of a particle of medicine, will shortly, with its former zest, return.
85. A young married woman’s diet ought to be substantial, plain, and nourishing. She must frequently vary the kind of food, of meat especially, as also the manner of cooking it. Nature delights in variety of food, of air, and of exercise. If she were fed, for some considerable period, on one kind of meat, she could scarcely digest any other; and in time either a disordered or a diseased stomach would be likely to ensue. I have sometimes heard, with pain and annoyance, a patient advised to live on mutton-chops, and to have no other meat than mutton! Now this is folly in the extreme. Such an unfortunate patient’s stomach, in the course of time, would not be able to digest any other meat, and after awhile would have a difficulty in digesting even mutton-chops, and wretched and ruined health would to a certainty ensue.
86. Three substantial and nourishing meals a day will be sufficient. It is a mistaken notion to imagine that “little and often” is best. The stomach requires rest as much as, or more than, any other part of the body; and how, if food be constantly put into it, can it have rest? There is no part of the body more imposed and put upon than the human stomach:
“To spur beyond
Its wiser will the jaded appetite,—
Is this for pleasure? Learn a juster taste,
And know that temperance is true luxury.”
5387. It is a mistaken notion, and injurious to health, for a young wife, or for any one else, to eat, just before retiring to rest, a hearty meat supper:
“Oppress, not nature sinking down to rest
With feasts too late, too solid, or too full.”
88. How often we hear a delicate lady declare that she can only eat one meal a day, and that is a hearty meat supper the last thing at night; and who, moreover, affirms that she can neither sleep at night, nor can she have the slightest appetite for any other meal but her supper, and that she should really starve if she could not have food when she could eat it! The fact is, the oppressed stomach oppresses the brain, and drives away sleep, and appetite, and health. The habit is utterly wrong, and oftentimes demands professional means to correct it.
89. How is it that sometimes a lady who has an excellent appetite is, notwithstanding, almost as thin as a rake? It is not what she eats, but what she digests, that makes her fat. Some people would fatten on bread and water, while others would, on the fat of the land, be as thin as Pharaoh’s lean kine. Our happiness and our longevity much depend on the weakness or on the soundness of our stomachs: it is the stomach, as a rule, that both gauges our happiness and that determines the span of the life of both men and women. How necessary it is, then, that due regard should be paid to such an important organ, and that everything should be done to conduce to the stomach’s welfare,—not by overloading 54the stomach with rich food; not by a scanty and meager diet; but by adopting a middle course, betwixt and between high living and low living—the juste milieu. We should all of us remember that glorious saying—those immortal words of St. Paul—“Be temperate in all things.”
90. Where a lady is very thin, good fresh milk (if it agree) should form an important item of her diet. Milk is both fattening and nourishing, more so than any other article of food known; but it should never be taken at the same meal (except it be in the form of pudding) with either beer or wine: they are incompatibles, and may cause disarrangement of the stomach and bowels. Milk would often agree with an adult, where it now disagrees, if the admixture of milk with either beer or wine were never allowed.
91. Let me advise my fair reader to take plenty of time over her meals, and to chew her food well; as nothing is more conducive to digestion than thoroughly masticated food. No interruptions should be allowed to interfere with the meals; the mind, at such times, should be kept calm, cheerful, and unruffled, for “unquiet meals make ill digestions.”
92. Many persons bolt their food! When they do, they are drawing bills on their constitutions which must inevitably be paid! The teeth act as a mill to grind and prepare the food for the stomach; if they do not do their proper work, the stomach has double 55labor to perform, and being unable to do it efficiently, the stomach and the whole body in consequence suffer.
93. The teeth being so essential to health, the greatest care should be taken of them: they should be esteemed among one’s most precious possessions.[19]
94. With regard to beverage, there is, as a rule, nothing better for dinner than either toast and water, or, if it be preferred, plain spring water—
“Naught like the simple element dilutes;”[20]
and after dinner, one or two glasses of sherry. A lady sometimes, until she has had a glass of wine, cannot eat her dinner; when such be the case, by all means let a glass of wine be taken,—that is to say, let her have it either just before or during dinner, instead of after dinner; or let her have one glass of sherry before or during dinner, and one glass after dinner.
95. A young wife sometimes has a languid circulation, a weak digestion, and constipated bowels; then, a glass of sherry during dinner and another glass after dinner is beneficial; and however much she might dislike wine, she should be induced to take it, as the wine will improve her circulation, will strengthen her digestion, 56and will tend to open her bowels. But let me urge her never, unless ordered by a medical man, to exceed the two glasses of wine daily.
96. If wine does not agree, and if she require a stimulant, a tumblerful either of home-brewed ale or of Burton bitter ale ought, instead of water, to be taken at dinner. But remember, if she drink either beer or porter, she must take a great deal of out-door exercise; otherwise it will probably make her bilious. If she be inclined to be bilious, wine is superior to either beer or porter.
91. Brandy ought never to be taken by a young wife but as a medicine, and then but rarely, and only in cases of extreme exhaustion. It would be a melancholy and gloomy prospect for her to drink brandy daily; she would, in all probability, in a short time become a confirmed drunkard. There is nothing, when once regularly taken, more fascinating and more desperately dangerous than brandy-drinking. It has caused the destruction of tens of thousands both of men and of women!
98. A wife ought not, if she feel low, to fly on every occasion to wine to raise her spirits, but should try the effects of a walk in the country, and
“Draw physic from the fields in draughts of vital air.”[21]
5799. An excitable wife is a weakly wife: “excitement is the effect of weakness, not of strength.” Wine in large quantities will not strengthen, but, on the contrary, will decidedly weaken; the more the wine, the greater the debility and the greater the excitement—one follows the other as the night the day. A person who drinks much wine is always in a state of excitement, and is invariably weak, low, and nervous, and frequently barren. Alcoholic stimulants in excess are “a delusion and a snare,” and are one of the most frequent causes of excitement, and therefore both of weakness and of barrenness. Alcohol, pure and undiluted, and in excess, is a poison, and is ranked among the deadly poisons; if a person were to drink at one draught half a pint of undiluted alcohol it would be the last draught he or she would ever, in this world, drink,—it would be as surely fatal as a large dose of either arsenic or strychnine! Brandy, whisky, gin, and wine are composed of alcohol as the principal ingredient; indeed, each and all of them entirely owe their strength to the quantity of alcohol contained therein. Brandy, whisky, gin, and wine, without the alcohol, would, each one of them, be as chip in porridge—perfectly inert. Brandy and wine, the former especially, contain large proportions of alcohol, and both the one and the other, in excess, either prevents a woman from conceiving, and thus makes her barren, or if she do conceive, it poisons the unborn babe within her; and it either makes him puny and delicate, or it downright kills him in the womb, and thus causes a miscarriage. If he survive the poison, and he be born 58alive, he is usually, when born, delicate and undersized; if such a one be suckled by such a mother, he is subjected, if the mother can nurse him, which in such cases she rarely can, to a second course of poisoning; the mother’s milk is poisoned with the alcohol, and the poor unfortunate little wretch, having to run the gantlet in the womb and out of the womb, pines and dwindles away, until at length he finds a resting-place in the grave! If you wish to make a dog small, give him, when he is a puppy, gin; the alcohol of the gin will readily do it: this is a well-known fact, and is, by dog-fanciers, constantly practiced. If you desire, in like manner, to make a Tom Thumb of a baby, give him the milk of a mother or of a wet-nurse who imbibes, in the form of wine or of brandy or of gin, alcohol in quantities, and the deed is done! Gin-drinking nursing mothers, it is well known, have usually puny children; indeed, the mother drinking the gin is only another way of giving gin to the babe—an indirect instead of a direct route, both leading to the same terminus. Brandy was formerly sold only by the apothecary; brandy is a medicine—a powerful medicine—and ought only to be prescribed as a medicine; that is to say, but seldom, in small and in measured quantities at a time, and only when absolutely necessary: now it is resorted to on every occasion as a panacea for every ill! If taken regularly, and in quantities, as unfortunately it frequently now is, it becomes a desperate poison—a pathway leading to the grave! It is utterly impossible for any person to hold in the mouth, for five minutes at a time, a mouthful of 59neat brandy without experiencing intense suffering: if it has this fearful effect on the mouth, what effect must this burning fluid, when taken in quantities, have upon the stomach? Injury, most decided injury to the stomach, and, through the stomach, disease and weakness to the remainder of the body! Brandy is a wonderful and powerful agent: brandy has the effect, if taken in excess and for a length of time, of making the liver as hard as a board. Brandy in large quantities, and in the course of time, has the power of making the body marvelously big—as big again; but not with firm muscle and strong sinew, not with good blood and wholesome juices—nothing of the kind; but of filling it full, even to bursting, with water! Brandy has the power of taking away a giant’s strength, and of making him as helpless as a little child! Habitual brandy-drinking poisons the very streams of life! It would take more time and space than I have to spare to tell of the wonderful powers of brandy; but unfortunately, as a rule, its powers are more those of an angel of darkness than those of an angel of light! If the above statements be true (and they cannot be contravened), they show the folly, the utter imbecility, and the danger, both to mother and to babe, of dosing a wife, be she strong or be she delicate, and more especially if she be delicate, with large quantities either of wine or of brandy. Brandy, gin, and whisky act on the human economy very much alike; for, after all, it is the quantity of alcohol contained in each of them that gives them their real strength and danger. I have selected brandy as the type of all of them, as brandy is 60now the fashionable remedy for all complaints, and, unfortunately, in too many instances the habit of drinking it imperceptibly but rapidly increases, until at length, in many cases, that which was formerly a teaspoonful becomes a tablespoonful, and eventually a wineglassful, with what result I have earnestly endeavored faithfully to portray. Avoid, then, the first step in regular brandy-drinking: it is the first step that ofttimes leads to danger, and eventually to destruction!
100. I am quite convinced that one cause of barrenness among ladies of the present day is excessive wine-drinking. This is an age of stimulants, and the practice is daily increasing. A delicate lady is recommended to take three or four glasses of wine daily. It seems for the moment to do her good, and whenever she feels low she flies to it again. The consequence is, that she almost lives upon wine, and takes but little else besides! Who are the fruitful women? Poor women who cannot afford to drink stimulants; for instance, poor Irish women and poor curates’ wives, who have only, principally, water and milk and buttermilk to drink.
101. There is decidedly, among the higher ranks, more barrenness than formerly, and one cause of it, in my opinion, is the much larger quantity of wine now consumed than in the olden times. Many ladies now drink as many glasses of wine in one day as their grandmothers drank in a week; moreover, the wineglasses of the present day are twice the size of old-fashioned 61wineglasses; so that half a dozen glasses of wine will almost empty a bottle; and many ladies now actually drink, in the day, half a dozen glasses of wine!
102. In the wine-growing and wine-drinking country of France, barrenness prevails to a fearful extent; it has become there a serious consideration and a State question. Wine is largely consumed in France by ladies as well as by gentlemen. The usual and everyday quantity of wine allowed at dinner at the restaurants of Paris, for each lady, is half a wine quart bottle-full—a similar quantity to that allowed for each gentleman. Where a gentleman and a lady are dining together, and have a bottle of wine between them, it is probable that the former might consume more than his own share of the wine; but whether he does or not, the quantity the lady herself drinks is sadly too much either for her health or for her fruitfulness. I am, moreover, quite convinced that the quantity of wine—sour wine—consumed by French wives is not only very antagonistic to their fertility, but likewise to their complexions.
103. Wine was formerly a luxury, it is now made a necessary of life. Fruitful women, in olden times, were more common than they are now. Riches, and consequently wine, did not then so much abound, but children did much more abound. The richer the person, the fewer the children.
104. Wine is now oftentimes sucked in with a mother’s 62milk! Do not let me be misunderstood; wine and brandy, in certain cases of extreme exhaustion, are, even for very young children, most valuable remedies; but I will maintain that both wine and brandy require the greatest judgment and skill in administering, and do irreparable mischief unless they are most carefully and judiciously prescribed. Wine ought to be very rarely given to the young; indeed, it should be administered to them with as much care and as seldom as any other dangerous or potent medicine.
105. Statistics prove that wine-bibbing in England is greatly on the increase, and so is barrenness. You might say there is no connection between the two. I maintain that there is a connection, and that, the alcohol contained in the wine (if wine be taken to excess, which unfortunately it now frequently is) is most antagonistic to fruitfulness.
106. It is surprising, nowadays, the quantity of wine some few young single ladies, at parties, can imbibe without being intoxicated; but whether, if such ladies marry, they will make fruitful vines is quite another matter; but of this I am quite sure, that such girls will, as a rule, make delicate, hysterical, and unhealthy wives. The young are peculiarly sensitive to the evil effects of overstimulation. Excessive wine-drinking with them is a canker eating into their very lives. Time it is that these facts were proclaimed through the length and breadth of our land, before mischief be done past remedy.
63107. Champagne is a fashionable and favorite beverage at parties, especially at dances. It is a marvel to note how girls will, in quantities, imbibe the dangerous liquid. How cheerful they are after it; how bright their colors; how sparkling their eyes; how voluble their tongues; how brilliant their ideas! But, alas! the effects are very evanescent—dark clouds soon o’ershadow the horizon, and all is changed! How pale, after it, they become; how sallow their complexions; how dim their eyes; how silent their tongues; how depressed their spirits—depression following in an inverse ratio to overstimulation; and if depression, as a matter of course, weakness and disease! Champagne is one of the most fascinating but most desperately dangerous and deceptive drinks a young girl can imbibe, and should be shunned as the plague! Young men who witness their proceedings admire them vastly as partners for the evening, but neither covet nor secure them as partners for life. Can they be blamed? Certainly not! They well know that girls who, at a dance, imbibe freely of the champagne-cup, and who at a dinner party drink, as some few are in the habit of drinking, four or five, or even six, glasses of wine,—that such wives as these, if ever they do become mothers (which is very doubtful), will be mothers of a degenerate race. It is folly blinking the question; it is absolutely necessary that it be looked boldly in the face, and that the evil be remedied before it be too late.
108. There is an immense deal of drinking in England, 64which, I am quite convinced, is one reason of so few children in families, and of so many women being altogether barren. It is high time that these subjects were looked into, and that the torrent be stemmed, ere it o’erflow its banks, and carry with it a still greater amount of barrenness, of misery, and of destruction.
109. It might be said that the light wines contain but little alcohol, and therefore can cause, even if taken to excess, but slight injurious effects on the constitution. I reply, that even light wines, taken in quantities, conduce to barrenness, and that, as a rule, if a lady once unfortunately takes to drinking too much wine, she is not satisfied with the light wines, but at length flies to stronger wines—to wines usually fortified with brandy, such as either to sherry or to port wine, or even, at last, to brandy itself! I know that I am treading on tender ground, but my duty as a medical man, and as a faithful chronicler of these matters, obliges me to speak out plainly, without fear or without favor, and to point out the deplorable consequences of such practices. I am quite aware that many ladies have great temptations and great inducements to resort to wine to cheer them in their hours of depression and of loneliness; but unless the danger be clearly pointed out and defined, it is utterly impossible to suggest a remedy, and to snatch such patients from certain destruction.
110. I am quite convinced of one thing, namely, that the drinking of much wine—be it light as claret, or be 65it heavy as port—sadly injures the complexion, and makes it muddy, speckled, broken-out, and toad-like.
111. It is high time that medical men should speak out on the subject, and that with no “uncertain sound,” before mischief be done past remedy, and before our island become as barren of children as France unfortunately now is.
112. If a lady be laboring under debility, she is generally dosed with quantities of wine—the greater the debility the more wine she is made to take, until at length the poor unfortunate creature almost lives upon wine. Her appetite for food is by such means utterly destroyed, and she is for a time kept alive by stimulants; her stomach will at length take nothing else, and she becomes a confirmed invalid, soon dropping into an untimely grave! This is a most grievous, and, unfortunately, in this country, not an uncommon occurrence. Much wine will never make a delicate lady strong—it will increase her weakness, not her strength. Wine in excess does not strengthen, but, on the contrary, produces extreme debility. Let this be borne in mind, and much misery might then be averted.
113. Remember I am not objecting to a lady taking wine in moderation—certainly not; a couple of glasses, for instance, in the day, of either sherry or claret, might do her great good; but I do strongly object to her drinking, as many ladies do, five or six glasses of wine 66during that time. I will maintain that such a quantity is most detrimental both to her health and to her fecundity.
114. The effect of the use of wine is beneficial; but the effect of the abuse of it is deplorable in the extreme. Wine is an edge-tool, and will, if not carefully handled, assuredly wound most unmercifully. I have not the slightest doubt that the quantity of wine consumed by many ladies is one cause, in this our day, of so much delicacy of constitution. It is a crying evil, and demands speedy redress; and as no more worthy medical champion has appeared in the field to fight the battle of moderate wine-drinking, I myself have boldly come forward to commence the affray, fervently trusting that some earnest men may join me in the conflict. I consider that the advocates for a plentiful supply of alcoholic stimulants are wrong, and that the upholders of total abstinence principles are equally wrong; and that the only path of health and of safety lies between them both—in moderation. A teetotaller and an advocate for a plentiful supply of alcoholic drinks are both very difficult to please; indeed, the one and the other are most intemperate. I am aware that what I have written will be caviled at, and will give great offense to both extreme parties; but I am quite prepared and willing to abide the consequences, and sincerely hope that what I have said will be the means of ventilating the subject, which is sadly needed. It is the violence and obstinacy of the contending parties, each of whom is partly right and partly wrong, that 67have long ago prevented a settlement of the question at issue, and have consequently been the means of causing much heart-burning, misery, and suffering. The Times once pithily remarked that it would be well if the two combatants were “to mix their liquors.”
115. A young wife ought to rise betimes in the morning, and after she be once awake should never doze. Dozing is both weakening to the body and enervating to the mind. It is a species of dram-drinking; let my fair reader, therefore, shun it with all her might. Let her imitate the example of the Duke of Wellington, who, whenever he turned in bed, made a point of turning out of it; indeed, so determined was that illustrious man not to allow himself to doze after he was once awake, that he had his bed made so small that he could not conveniently turn in it without first of all turning out of it. Let her, as soon as she is married, commence early rising; let her establish the habit, and it will for life cling to her:
“Awake! the morning shines, and the fresh field
Calls us; we lose the prime, to mark how spring