The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1880-11-03
Woman AS a Sanitary RefOrmer.

At a recent English Sanitary Con
! gress DIR. Richardson gave a lecture on
woman las a sanitary reformer" He
observed that long before sanitation was
heard of, the good, cleanly housewife
was practical sanitary reformer Tie
Office of prevention of disease was
especially fitted for woman. The train
ing required was simple, and every
woman willing to go through it might
become mistress by il of the destinies
of the world. She should master
physiology, SO as to understand the
general construction OF the human body,
and know the great systems of the
| body-the digestive, the eirculatory,
the respiratory, the nervous, the sense
nv, the absorbent and glandular, the
muscular, the osseus or bOny, and the
membranous. If she would act on this
knowledge there would hardly be one
deformed child left in the land in one
or two generations. An educated wo-
man who had seen the exquisite build
and symmetry of the skeleton would
turn pale with disgust whenever she
detected one of her foolish sisters
strangling her body in tight corset and
murderous belt, to make it hideous as
well as useless, or who was intent on
destroying the perfect arch of the foot
in a contracted foot-vise, elevated on
peg-top The educated woman would
master the structure of the house,
demand to have plan of every drain
pipe on the establishment, and insist
on having every drain kept as system
actically clean as the china in the house
maids cupboard. She would see to the
biennial publication of the dwelling as
though a Passover were not a universal
practice. DIR. Richardson concluded
One effort of Samaritan would call
forth all her powers. She would
stand to resist with her full persuasive
strength that process which l have
elsewhere called the intermarriage of
disease. She would tell her sisters
what that terrible process means. She |
will tell that disease heredity united in
marriage means the continuance of the |
heredity as certainly as that two and |
two make four; that madness, cOnsump- |
ton, cancer, scrofula, yes, and certain
of the contagious diseases, too, may be |
from the altar; and that |
the first responsibilities of parents to-
ward their offspring ought to be, not
how to provide for wealth and position
over which they have no control, but
that preliminary healthy parentage,
which is the foundation of health, and
without which position and wealth are
shadowy legacies indeed. Delicate
ground, you may say. l admit the
fact. But in a world in which those
who study the living and the dead most
carefully rarely see a man or woman
free from disease, even this
ground must be entered on by the en-
Iightened scholar. | touch on it here
for the best of all reasons, that the sub
ect it includes, affecting deeply the hui
man heart in it's sympathies and affec-
lions, is one on which the influence of
women, the arbitress of the natures
hat are to be, is all important for good
,r evil. To know the first principles
IF animal physics and life; to learn the
house and its perfect management, to
earn the simpler problems relating to
he fatal diseases to ordain the train
ng of the young; to grasp the elements
# the psycho-physical problems the
human temperaments, the moral con-
agions, with their preventions, and the
leredities of disease with their proven
ion-these, in all respects and earnest
less, set before this Congress as the
reads of the educational programme for
ur modern woman in her sphere ofduty.