Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1877-10-17
DELICATE WOMEN.
Practical Suggestions As to How Poor
Health May BE Restored.
Inter Ocean,

medical treatment they receive In their
luxuriant parlors they should be banged
about by Swedish movement cures, and
kneaded by steam rollers. The Chicago
Alliance goes still further in this matter,
and asserts that a powerful cause fthat
fact called frail women is a want of in
tellectual force. There are many men
and women, remarks the ANiance, who
are i'll from want Of brains. They suffer
a voluntary decline because they do
not possess the brain power that offers
the blood any inducement to circulate
Following out this argument, the same
writer remarks that pluck is a wonder
full agent in throwing off disease, and
that will power will surpass pill power
in nine cases out of ten.
While we agree partially with both Of
these writers, it seems to us that they
generalize in wild sort of way upon a
subject which unfortunately become al
most too ripe for successful and remed-
ial treatment. Admitting, because it
cannot be denied, that fine ladyism,
partly in the physical sense, and gen
eral uselessness is becoming too COM
mon q feature among the women Of
the United States, particularly in cities
let us look little into the cause of this
state of affairs The American city
child, as general rule, does not get
fair chance to start. It's mothers lead
ing desire is to keep it pretty. She
clothes it in himsy garb when it should
be warmly clad, and keeps it shut up
like a dollhouse plant when it should
be out of doors. Is is literally washed,
dressed, and coddled, if not to death, at
least to the certainty of a delicate and
tender future When the young girl is
fit for school, her intellect is unnaturally
stimulated through the forcing and
competitive system SO much abused in
our public and private schools. She
lives, most probably, in a house where
the simplest laws of ventilation are set
at defiance, and where the cooking
would most likely drive a French woman
to lunatic asylum. She becomes a
young lady when her English sister has
scarcely emerged from pinafores she
gets her little head, fresh from a high
pressure, double-act.on examining es-
Establishments, filled with beaux, parties,
t1lrtatlOns, marriage, and trashy novels.
Her intellectual faculties are first strain
ed to their utmost tension, and then her
emotional nature is abnormally devel-
oped and exhausted What wonder,
when she comes to marry, at from
eighteen to twenty-five, that this al
ready exhausted frame should break
down after the first or second of those
pleasing punishments which try SO fear
fully a wOman's strength? What won
der that half of our women to-day are
nervous, whining, dissatisfied invalids?
Will power, indeed What becomes of
your will power when the nervous
system has been permanently
shattered, and the system run
to seed from Overstrain of the
mental faculties? As well ask crippled
man to walk as to expect worn-out
brain to rouse itself and act AS for the
heroic treatment recommended, in nine
cases out of ten it would simply kill.
We do not speak of that class of women
who affect fine ladyism, so-called, who
are the mainstay of the fashionable
physician, whose divine mission it is to
loll, to cultivate nerves and sensibility-
banging and kneading would do these
people q vast amount of good-but of
the thousands of pale, worn-out, small
bOned, blOodless creatures, whose lives
are one prolonged suffering either from
positively marked disease or general
listlessness. Such cases need rest. The
physician must begin with the mind,
and then attend to the body. With re-
pose of mind, and feeling of peace
around the heart, would come that
strength of will hich is to make the
body strong. Happiness is a woman's
best tonic, work the offspring of that
happiness. Where the emotional ma
ture is at peace the body, even when
diseased, will make an effort of itself to
regain its natural vigor. It is, unfortu-
nately, the case that many women are
unable, through poverty, domest infe-
licity, and other causes to court that
sunshine of the soul which is the truest
physician. The spirit once thoroughly
broken there is no hope for the body.
Where such is the case sense of duty
alone can sustain the frail casket in it's
round of daily cares. Those who write
so authoritatively upon a subject which
it is evident they have thought of mere
ly as matter of passing interest, would
do well to study Michelet, to mark the
gentleness, the gentlemanliness with
which that delicate writer treats the sub
ject of woman's weakness and woman's
pain There is no lack of will power or
of intellect among the women of Amer
lea. If anything, they are credited
abroad with an overdose of strongmind-
edness But it cannot be denied that
physical weakness is the rule, and Ca
pacity for throwing off that weakness
the exception. If our social reformers
would cultivate physical strength and
mental energy among our women, they
must begin at the beginning. They
must initiate the Irish or Germans in
the training Of their children, the Eng
fish in the tuition Of their girls, and the
teachings of the most distinguished
writer's of the republic on the proper
course which the fully-matured woman
ought to pursue in order to secure for
herself the jnestimable boons of health,
happiness, and life of social and do
mestic usefulness.
Photographing Without Camera.
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