The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-07-06
THE NOTCHED WOMAN.


| have said that doctors are the only class
of men in position to do anything worth the
doing in any effort to stop the crime of abor-
ton, and this is true because it originates
quite as much, if not not more, in physical
than in moral disease.
Our civilization has been so largely built
on hopes of the hereafter that it is peculiarly
deficient in its requirements for the hour. 1t
has taught us to live for what is to be at the
expense of what is, and so in physical cul-
ture leaves us far below the Pagan Greek.
Man, in christian civilization" sees no
beauty in the female form unless there is
notch all around it, like that with which
woodman deadens a tree The deeper the
notch the better he is pleased with it, for it
makes a convenient rest for his arm. In
making this notch for his admiration and
convenience woman as surely, II not as
shortly, takes her own life as the woodman
takes that 81 the tree, and completely units
herself fof the ordinary duties of woman
hood.
After il is made she is no longer help
meet for man, but creature who must live
by his generosity and bounty. She is totally
unfit Tor wife or mother and is good for
nothing but riding in a coach, lolling on
sofa aud nursing small dogs The form
the Greeks was that of a woman who drove
four huge, snortng horses abreast or took
bull by the horns and led him to the altar as
fearlessly as she stepped into her bath; but
the form which is divine to a nineteenth CEN
fury Christian is that of one who faints at
the sight of a mouse and shrieks over spi-
der or an angleworm.
Well the main difference between the two
specimens of female humanity is that of the
notched and the unnotched. The one adds
to the census at a fearful cost of anguish and
risk OF life. The other was and is not ma
terially inconvenienced by the coming-o of
baby.
In the trial hour preceding the birth of the
King of Rome the doctors in attendance
consulted the husband and father as to his
choice between the life of his wife and that
OF his child, and his answer was save my
wife"
Now, not small part of the abortionsts
business comes from the same source. The
husband fears for the life of his wife in the
trial hour-the prospective mother fears for
her own. Our unnatural civilization has
surrounded the operations of nature with
such abnormal suffering and danger that
people grow more and more unnatural in en-
during or trying to avoid them.
Not one woman in every thousand Of the
upper walks of life in any civilized land
breathes below the diaphragm. The fash
ionable notch prevents its rise and fall in
about nine hundred and ninety-nine ladies
and gentlemen. Their vital organs are all
out of place; every operation of nature is per-
formed with difficulty, if not pain; every
breath is limited, every pulsation of the heart
restricted.
Many of our women are no more fit to be-
come mothers than are the wire frames ON
which they model their own deformity. To
those who do add to the population the ex-
pense caused by these deformities becomes
serious item. The cost of doctors and nurses
and appliances foot up fast and makes a
large hole in years salary, and, to avoid the
risk and pain and expense, thousands resort
to feticide. Thousands of women destroy
their own health, or Internationally take
their own lives, to avoid falling into the
hands of a male doctor; for the male ac-
coucher is an unnatural product of an I'M
natural civilization, and one that always adds
to the risk, even when the sternest ne
cessity demands his presence.
Whatever the inspiration or non-inspira-
ton of the Old Testament may be it abounds
in lessons of wisdom, and, no doubt, the
authors gave us freely of their best thoughts.
There is evidence that the story of the So
journ and increase of the Israelites in Egypt
was at least founded on fact, and the increase
seems to be accounted for on the ground that
it was women alone who had charge of
women in the crisis of maternity. Woman
doctors might now lift us out of the slough
in to which we have fallen, but where are we
to find the women who can be made into
doctors?
A female caricature of humanity, who has
tottered up from babyhood in high-heeled
buttoned boots one who has spent years
struggling to move herlegs inside pull-back
or mass of long, heavy skirts, one whose
blood must run blockade at both ankles,
both knees and the waist, is much better fit
ted to become dude than doctor.
You can not lessen the natural circumfer-
nf q a,ic
brain. You cannot convert her body into a
swabstick, for wiplng the streets, without
m uddyIng her brain. You cannot send her
down street inside mule-oad of hounces
and bugles, rolling and pitching like ship
with torn sails in a short-chop sea, without
unsettling her brain. So we have a woeful
lack of brain power on the female side of the
house.
The want of women must, for many year.
confine us to a very limited supply of woman
doctors, and all we can do is to appeal to
such doctors as We have, and ask them to en-
force the laws of nature, and so save US from
the disgusting crimes which grow out of their
violation.
OF course no one or two doctors can COM
pei or induce his or their female patients to
take off their corsets or bands, to remove all
external pressure from the walls of the chest
and limbs and suspend their clothing from
the shoulders; but this might be done by
medical associations.
They could certainly correct that vicious
taste in men which leads them to admire
waist which looks as if it had been cut out of
solid block of white oak, and is more the
form of black ant than anything human.
They could, certainly, make some effective
protest against that slow suicide, out of
which comes so large part of the crime now
attracting public attention.
The women who murder, or consent to the
murder of their unborn children, are gener-
ally if not always, themselves half dead.
numbed, by imperfect circulation Their
souls have been squeezed in and padded out
to fit their miserable apologies for bodies!
There is not room inside an eghteen-inch
waist for mother-love or a conscience, or any
hi inn if nd he doI1