New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1877-09-06
Vampire UOMEN.

1t is DIR. Oliver Wendell Holmes, man with
keener insight into women, perhaps, than any
other English speaking author, who gave this
name the other day to a large minority OF our
wives and daughters. "A hystoncal woman
he declares, sis vampire who sucks the blood
"of the healthy people about her" Nervous
ness in American women, in fact, has reached
such an extent that it is, next to drunkenness
in men, the national domestic evil, and a very
certain practical one, for it is Il subject OF
public interest. There is not a reader OF TIE
TRIBUNE who does not know at least one Of
these vampire women-the lean, bloodlesS, mis-
cradle girl or wife, 1abby and unable in flesh
and mind, whose disease takes, in the family, the
vague name of debility, or nervous exhaus-
ton. or spinal diSOrder-names which may
mean ANYTHING or nothing. Years ago she
was forced to give up her proper work
in the house, and is now a dead weight
on its living members. Sometimes this
victim is selfish and dominecnng, but as a
rule she is Il sanity martyr. The more Of a
martyr she is, the deadcr the weight; the more
beloved, the greater the drain upon the SYM
patlies of the people about her. The disease
increases with each generation 1t was almost
very few living old women have it but look
around the tables of any of the watering
placcs to-day, and how many plump, ruddy,
cheerful matrons are there among the lean,
sallow creatures of middle age, each of whom
is nursing her own case of neuralgia or anGmic
exhaustion, as if the world was only made
To hold it? As for the young girls, the ma
iority of them are born tired. 1t is not affcc-
tation which makes them thin of blood and
morbid in brain ut the age when the current
of life should run fullest and reddest. I'm al
most every family this Summer, we venture
to say one member is going through the regi-
men of iron, exercise, change of air, etc, etc.
which may quicken the pulse in the patients
veins for the time, but neither reddens her
blood nor rounds her cheek.
Now this domestic grievance, though it does
not find its way often into the newspapers, is
so sore and heavy burden on our social life
that we are not surprised to find that Ameri-
can physicians have set to work to discover
cure which shall underie the cause of the
evil, and not merely palter with its symptoms
Our best physicians too, have lately adopted
a habit OF giving their new theories and modes
of cure in pamphlets intended for the public
with wise simplicity of dictiOn, abjuring the
mystery and technical veIbiage in which doc
tors of the Old School concealed their knowl-
edge or the lack of it. The system of cure
for these useless or WORKOUT women appeals
directly to the common sense of any ordinary
reader. 1t was recently explained in detail in
treatise on fat and blood by DR.. Weir
Mitchell, who has used it with singular success
in the Hospital for Nervous Diseases, in Phila-
delphia. The moral atmosphere about the pa
tent is suddenly changed by her entire and
prompt removal from anxious indulgent
friends, and secusion, with no companion
ship but her physician and n skilful
nurse. Absolute rest is insured she is
ordered to bed for six weeks or two months,
not permitted to read, sew, or do anything
there but to manufacture adipose tissue and
red blood. For this purpose she is put upon
milk diet, which is supplemented in short