The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1880-11-10
CONCERNING WOMEN.
Woman as Sanitary Reformer.

woman as sanitary ReiormeTs
At the recent English Sanitary Congress
DIR. Richardson gave lecture on woman
'sas a sanitary reformer." He observed that
long before sanitation was heard of the
good, Clearly housewife was a practical san
itary reformer The Office of prevention of
disease was especially fitted for women.
The training required was simple, and every
woman willing to go through it might be-
come mistress by it 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 sys-
TENS of the Dody-the digestive, the circu-
latory, the respiratory, the nervous, the
sensory, the absorbant and glandular, the
muscular, the osseous or bony, and the
membranous If she would act on this
knowledge there would hardly be one de-
formed child left in the land in one or two
generations. An educated woman, 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 we'll as useless, or who was in
tent on destroying the perfect arch of the
foot In contracted foot-vice, elevated on a
peg-top. The educated woman would mas
ter the structure of the house, demand to
have plan of every drainpipe on the es-
Enlistment, and would insist on having
every drain kept as systematically clean as
the china in the housemaid's cupboard.
She would see to the biennial publication
of the dwellings as though a Passover were
still universal practice. DIR. Richardson
concluded: One effort as a Sanitarian
would call forth all her powers. She will
ha- f.lI
might that process which l have elsewhere
called the intermarriage. OF disease. She
viii tell her sisters what that terrible proc
ess means. She will tell that disease
heredity united in marriage means the con-
tinuance of the heredity as certainly as
that two and two make four; that madness,
consumption, cancer, scrofula, yes, and
certain of the contagious diseases too may
be perpetuated from the altar; and that the
first responsibilities of parents toward their
offspring ought to be, not how to provide
for wealth and position over which they
hzveno control, but that preliminary healthy
parentage. which is the foundation of health,
and without which position and wealth are
shadowy legac es indeed. Delicate ground
you may say | admit the fact. But in a
world in which those who study the living
and the dead most carefully rarely see
man or woman heredltarilly free from dis
ease, even this ground must be entered on
by the enlightened scholar. touch on it
here for the best If all reasons, that the sub
jet it includes, affecting deeply the human
heart in its sympatbies and affections, is one
on which the influence of woman, the arbi-
tress of the natures that are to be, is ALL
potent for good or evil. To know the first
principles of animal physics and life; to
learn the house and its perfect management;
to learn the simpler problems relating to
the fatal diseases; to ordain the training of
the young; to grasp the elements of the
three psyche physical problems; the human
temperaments, the moral contagious, with
their preventions- and the heredities of dis
ease, with their preventiOn-these, in all
respect and earnestuess, / set before this
congress as the heads of the educational pro-
gram for our modern women in her sphere
of life and duty.