Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1883-06-01
Our Women.

To the fact that our women are not
well nourished by plain and substantial
food, we add another, that they over
work and, we can account for the some
what anomalous fact that woman's
physical condition does not improve
with the advJnce of science and popular
education. While il is true that she is
overtaxed or overtaxes herself, from n
kind of servile regard to customs and a
desire for exhibition, a needless and
false display. il is yet still more evident
that care, anxiety, undue solicitude and
excitement are doing still more fear
tul work of sapping the foundation of
female health. 1t is a well known fact
that the heavy. non-excitable German
and Dutch females are able to perform
much exhaustive labor, toll, working
on their muscle and ''not on their
nerves." To us they may seem plod-
ders, and yet an astonishing amount of
labor is performed in the long day, con-
tinued year after year till old age ar
rlves. Indeed the labor of the self
poised is not exhaustive toll, but SYM
metrical development, really adding
force and stamina.
They have more muscle and bone,
solid and firm; we, more brain, nerve,
eXcltablllty, tim, g0-dhedd. We
''crowd on steam" and are running the
machinery of this wonderful mechanism
at a fearfully destructive rate of speed.
We have an especially excitable, nerv-
Gus temperament Our young women
are beautiful, but their beauty too often
fades soon after assuming the cares of a
family. They are in haste, more gov
erned by the clock than by Judgment
They time" themselves and expect
their labor to be completed ION time.
that is, before dinner, so that the after
noon may be given to fancy-work and
the like. There is often a fated idea
that ''some one is coming and will find
them in the suds" or out of order:
Having company" is great event,
one demanding tOilsome cooking, for it
is custom to prepare dishes for such
that, if intelligent, we would not dare
to give to our own family, not to chill
dren, certainly. Regarding such COM
pany as gang Of spies, as it might
seem, a vast amount of cleaning seems
demanded lest some innocent dust, a
stray leaf or bit of paper, little spider
silk, etc. might be discovered by argus
eyed visitors. Instead of the social
element, a real advantage from these
social interviews, they often prove a
disadvantage, laborious and irksome,
while their unnecessary intricacy, on
account of the unusual labor, etc, rem
ders them less frequent than our higher
nature would indicate. That was a
noble example of clergyman's wife,
rs was assured by her, who made no
other change in the family affairs, when
visited, than to increase the dishes
and the amount of food, proportion
ately.
Again. most of our " nervous" wom-
en- stimulate, not all of them by the use
of alcoholic preparations, but by the
irritants of the castor, by strong tea,
coffee, the spices and certain extracts
or essences. A hard days work is too
often preluded by unusually strong tea,
which acts as an irritant, an excitant,
the effects, in some respects, being not
unlike those of ardent spirits. These,
like the partially intoxicated person,
are certain to labor beyond their real
strength, which must exhaust. We
need no other evidence of the irritating
nature of this tea, than the fact that it
produces wakefulness with an absolute
certainty, as watchers" well know
If this irritation is on the nerves, result
ing in the evidence that such "work on
their nerves." to this undue and ex-
hausting haste, this is ruinous waste of
vital force, we may add in inference
that much of the prevailing neuralgia
is produced by this nerve excitation
We may infer, therefore, that all such
excited action and unnatural effort
must tend to exhaustion, pain, sickness
and premature death. While hard
work may destroy hundreds, it is be-
lieved that this excitability, this toll
under the unfavorable circumstances of
thigh pressure and these forebod-
ings, the fruit of tea-excitement, etc,
will destroy tens of thousands, directly
and indirectly. = DR.. Hannaford, in
Golden Rule.