Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1881-01-07
Woman a. 4 Sanitary Ret0rmer

A: the ,ecer. English Sanitary { IN
, gress Dr.. richardson gave a lecture on
woman "aa sanitary reformer. He
observed that long before sanitation Was
heard Of the good, clearly house wife
was 4 practical sanitary rct1rmer. The
oiii:e Of prevention OF disease was es.
pecially fitted for women Tie training
" quirel WIS simple. and every woman
willing 10 go through it might become
mistress by it Of the Ges.:nics Of the
world. She SHOULD master physiology,
so rs to understood the general CON
struction Of the human body, and know
the great systems Of the boly-the di
Gcstivc, the circulatory, the respiratory,
the nervous, the sensory, the absorbant
AMI glanJuar, the muscular, the osoe-
us or bony, and the ncmbranous. If
she would act on this knowledge there
would hardly be one deformed child
left IL TIE land in oae or two genera
tions. 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, t.
make it bidcous as well as useless, or
who was intent On destroying the per-
feet arch Of the foot in a contracted
foot-vice, elevated on peg-top. The
educated woman would master the
structure Of the house, demand to have
a plan OF every drainpipe on the estab-
lishment, and would insist on having
every drain kept as syste matically clean
as the china in the lousepaid's cup
board. She would see to the biennial
publication of the dwelling as though a
Passover were still universal prac-
tice. DR.. Richardson concluded: One
effort as Sanitarian would call forth
all her powers. She will stand to resist
with her full persuasive might that pro-
cess which have elsewhere called the
intermarriage of disease. She will tell
her sisters what that terrible process
means. She will tell that disease hered-
ity united IN marriage means the con-
tinuance OF the heredity as certainly Us
that two and two make four; that mad
ness, cons lmption, cancer, scrofula,
yes, and certain of the contagious dis
eases, too, may be perpetuated from the
altar; and that the first responsibility of
parents toward their offspring ought to
be, not how to provide for wealth and
position over which they have no con-
troll, but that preliminary healthy pa
rentage, which is the foundation of
health, and without which position and
wealth are shadowy legacies rIoed.
Delicate ground you may say. Iadmit
the fact. But in world in which those
who study the living and the dead most
carefully rarely see man or woman
hereditarily free from disease, even
this ground must be entered on by the
enlightened scholar. 1 touch on it
here for the best Of all reasons, that the
subject it includes, affecting deeply the
human heart in its sympathies and af,
fectlons, is one on which the influence
OF woman, the arbitress of the natures
that are to be, is all-potent for COOL or
evil. TO know the first principles of
animal physics and life; to learn the
house and it's perfect management; to
learn the simpler problems relating to
the fatal disea SEES; to ordain the train
ing of the young; to grasp the ele-
ments of the three psyche physical
problems; the human temperaments,
the moral contagious, with their pre-.
ventions and the heredities of disease
with their prevention-these, in all re-
spect and earnestness, I set before this
congress as the heads of the educa.
honal programme for our modern WON.
an in her sphere of life and duty.