The Highland weekly news. [volume] (Hillsborough [Hillsboro], Highland County, Ohio) 1853-1886, 1871-12-21

Have We a Healthy Woman
Among Us?

them. Bad as they are, there are
worse evils. Solomon bemoaned
the glittering headtire and mincing
gait of the daughters Of Judah. Yet
the men whom they brought forth
were warriors of renown, judges in
the gate. White6eld found our
grandmothers an offense in his nos.
trils because of their hoops and
patches +; they contrived to live to a
hale, gray haired age, and to give
birth to a dozen, stalWart men,
fOur girls and matrons dance and
dress after the old fashion, though
to their own tune. This significant
fact about them, new and terrible,
to which we wish to call attention
while they are thus before the pub.
lie, is that of their physical degen-
eraey-of the almost absolute impos-
sibility that they will be able TO
bring forth a generation of sound
bodied, clear-brained men and wo-
men. We venture to doubt whether
IN all the bathrooms or summer
haunts crowded on this July night
there can be found one perfectly
healthy woman of American descent
from two generations. Let any man
who doubts this assertion run over
the invalid list of his own family
and friends, and acknowledge its
truth. There is no fact about wo.
men more urgent in its importance
and threatening of unmeasured fu-
ture evil than this; yet, curiously
enough, the grayest Of them shut
their eyes to it with wilful pettish-
ness which a silly schoolgirl only
might consider coquettish and
charming. The author of a pamph-
let on the "Wear and Tear of the
Nervous SYSTEM" to which we have
before referred, places the matter
clearly before his readers.
81 ask yOu," he says, "to note
carefully the expression and figures
of the young girls whom you may
chance to meet in your walks. You
will see many charming faces, the
like of which the world cannot
match-fgures somewhat spare of
flesh, and especially south Of Rhode
Island, a marvellous littleness OF
hand and foot. But look further,
and especially among New England
young girls; you will be struck
with a certain hardness of line in
form and feature which should not
be seen between 13 and 18 at least.
[ do not want to do more than is
needed of this ungracious talk suf.
fee it to say that multitudes of our
young are merely pretty to look at,
or not that-that their destiny is
the shawl and the sofa, neuralgia,
weak backs, and the varied forms
of hysteria-that domestic demon
which has produced untold discom-
fort in many a household, and 1
am almost ready to say, as much
unhappiness as the husbands dram.
The same pamphlet calls attention
to the fact that native women of |
even the laboring class are never
able to nurse their children as long
as Germans and Irish Of the same
grade, while few of q higher rank |
can nurse an infant for a year, how
ever desirous of doing SO without
serious detriment to their health |
and also to the significant decrease
in the size of native families, a prob !
lem which no reference to questions
Of immortality will altogether solve.
So alarming is this falling off that
the question whether the American !
climate was destined to support the
life of Americans has been gravely |
argued by scientific men. The writer
refers much of the lack of physical |
vigor in women to these peculiarities
of climate, and asserts that while
the development of a nervous tenn
permanent, with lessoned power Of
endurance, is one of the many race. |
changes which are also given US
facial, vocal, and other pecuIiarities
derived from none of our ancestral |
stocks, this change of temperament
is nurtured by causes quite within
our controI-chief among these, he
alleges, are over-work and confne-
ment at school of girls at the very
age when they most require frequent
rest and outdoor exercise, instanc-
ing the cruel forcing system in use
in the public schools of this city and |
Philadelphia. There is, perhaps,
tinge of cbivalric gallantry in the
breath which he gives to this apollo
gy for our sallow, weak backed
women. Whether it is the Yankee
mill-hand, or the belle of Fifth Av-
enue, or the Ohio Farmers daughter,
or her Carolinian sister, we are apt
to find the same thick skin at
twenty, fiat chest at forty, and wine
Of iron, or elixer, or the mantel-
shelf at all ages. Is an overworked
brain to be the scapegoat in all
cases? Or is it a fact that our
women are driven by hereditary
and climatic influences to take their
place in this Dance of Death from
the cradle, and that, instead of es-
Gaping from it, what with their
unresting anxious lives, four furnace
heated, air, green tea, liquor and
drugs, and, more than all, the abso-
Iuta iOnOrinU nv most oF ,bo,,,