The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1884-10-10
THE HEALTH OF GIRLS.
DIR. Mary Stafford on the Necessity of
Open Air Exercise.

Open Air Exercise.
DR.. Mary Stafford, professor in Boston
University, has lately published book
called ''IIealth for Girls" Dr. Stafford
opens by describing a couple of boarding.
school misses, pale and languid, who came
to the same farm house where she was re-
creating last summer, down in Maine. She
describes these languid young ladies as
getting up late in the morning with bad
headaches, and soon retiring to sofa or
hammock to read novel. They slept after
dinner, and sat up late at night. They
sauntered and lounged all summer, and
took no part in healthful sports and ex-
ercise In another chapter, headed 'My
Little Patient she gives picture repre-
sentative of a large class of schools girls
This one was thirteen.
''What a wretched little huddle she
looked as | came down to her. She is only
thirteen, but the tired-out-ness of forty-five
was on her pale face. Her lungs were
lost-folded up somewhere between her
rounded, bowed shoulders, as she dropped
in her chair.
''Sit up! sit up-up-up!' l said, my
own lungs aching sympathetically at sight
of her.
II can't" she said with hopeless re-
signation.
Il drew her shoulders back, but they fell
forward in "a moment. Her school is
about four blocks from her house, but she
almost always rides on the horse cars that
pass the door. When she gets home from
school. does she do as does her brother two
years older? He takes bat and ball and
makes a Decline for the nearest playground
and there with rollicking set of play
mates. throws his whole soul and body in
to fun-making for two or more hours
mo. she has no healthfnl outdoor sport,
but piano lessons and embroidery, with
dropping shoulders and curving spine unfit
her for evening study, towhieh her brother
comes with mind fresh and body tingling
with ruddy health. His ideas are clear,
and he gets his lesson easily, while his
pale and nervous sister goes to bed dis
couraged and in tears, and rises unrefresh-
ed the next morning to go through the
same high-pressure routine again. DIR. SAT
ford gave the girl no medicine, but sent for
her mother, and put an idea or two into
her head Dr. Safford's talk to her on the
lungs, ribs, shoulder-blades, muscles, etc,
rather discouraged her as the work to be
de done was unfoded, but the girl was
reused up, for ''the idea that she was de-
formed had taken hold of her.
''The muscles that should help hold
your daughter erect, are heightened, re-
laxed and weak; in consequence, her
shoulders stoop Let her try to take full
deep breath. You see how she gasps, how
the shoulders are drawn up. 1t is i'm
possible for her to fully initiate her lungs
and expand her chest. Bear in mind that
filled with air. that cell becomes dead
cell, and the beginning of disease"
Another point Dr. Stafford brought ont
as vigorously as the preceding. 1t was in
regard to the manner of the girls sitting
down: she slid down until she rested the
weight of her body on the lower segements
of her spine.
Il called her mothers attention to this.
| explained how this position caused heat
and pressure where the child spoke of hav-
ing pain. ''This lower part of the back
was never intended to sit upon | said
emphatically. The spine was made to keep
erect, sitting or standing.