The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1886-07-21
DELICATE GIRLS.
Rosy Cheeks and Elastic Steps Better
Than Pale Faces aud Headaches.

~~S.Ns.~ssOe~
From an address by DIR. r. NJ.
Hodges before the Massachusetts Med
ical Society:
A Justly distinguished master of the
Girls High and Normal School in this
city is reported to have said that
principal qualification for the Office he
held should be a good medical educa-
ton. The first hour of his school-day
was spent in going from room to room,
at the call of teachers, to see pupils
who tainted or vomited, Of were in
"spasms," in Mysteries, or in some
other way had come to q pass which
alarmed the inexperienced. These
phenomena he clearly recognized as
due to fatigue, insufficient sleep and
the want Of an adequate breakfast-a
meal which these girls were too tired
to eat, or which they did not think
worth wasting time upon, when home
duties demanded their cooperation, .
morning lesson was to be looked over
or a neglected task to be made up. and
a long walk interviewed between their
homes and the school.
The special provocatives Of delicate
health" in young women are in great
part social. The deleterious influences
Of q multiplicity of engagements, Of
the exacting demands Of ambition,
fashion and gayety-and not infre-
quently Of an early betrothal-are in
tensified by the capacity for endurance
which belongs to the sO-called weaker
sex. A girl can tire ont her partners
in the german one after another, and
a feeble wife can carry her baby twice
rs long rs her athletic husband. The
more strain there is upon the strength
of women the more completely they
forget themselves and their material
wants. They submit and give no signs
of their emotions to the depressing in
fuences of misfortune or an unhappy
home. They suffer and are silent with
what have been called ''bad husband
headaches" They stifle wounded
pride which is deep in proportion to
the smallness of the family income and
yield to the aggressive attacks Of neu-
rotic influences (the least wearing Of
which may be the mentaD only when
the limited energy their bodies possess
is exhausted and which, when once
lost, they rarely have the physical
capacity or power of mechanism to re-
place.
The bodies and brains Of young
women in the wealthiest and most lux
urious circles of society constantly re-
veal their imperfect nutrition. Refined
emaciation, fair anemic complex
ions, eyes made brilliant by dilated
pupils, decorous concealment of unde-
veloped busts and slender arms, excit-
able and restless temperaments--want-
ing sometimes in self-control, but
oftener sobered by overconscientious-
ness-are the retributive symptoms
which betray a lack of food, sleep,
fresh air and repOse. Some Of those
who embody these conditions delight
to think that providence has distin-
guished them from the common herd
BY certain peculiarities of constitution.
and they cherish with great self-satis-
faction their supposed idiosyncrasies in
regard to what they eat and in refer
ence to various habits of life. They dc
not know, or are unwilling to admit,
that "want of Tone" of which they
complain. is only another name fol
the inertia Of exhaustion. - Boston
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