Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-08-16

sscribed solely to improper dress Many
women who lace tightly are rot anemic,
and many anemic women are not tight
laced. The fashion of dress is one Of the
most reprehensible practices Of the present
day, but there are others more potent In
the causation of disease The anemia OF
young women has a far wider significance
than anything which relates to the changes
OF dress and conventionalities of society.
Too early development, too early marriage,
Is the successive combination of conditions
In the life history of young married women,
and the anxieties of maternity are far more
frequently the causes of anemia than tight
corsets"
Do you know, to women, this sounds
amazingly as if the doctor was speaking un-
vanished fact? eff matrimony could be
delayed till later years." he goes on to say,
I'VE would see fewer such cases. Innutri-
tion and malnutrition during girlhood are
also prevalent causes. The pampered, cod
died and badly nourished girl, the anemic
bride, usually makes sickly mother. The
habltual constipation of young women is
another very common cause. 1t Is usually
the result of habit, improper aliment, over
strain of the mental and cultivation of the
emotional at the expense of the physical
development
WORRIED INTO ANEMIA
DR. Taber Johnston said 'The worst case
OF anemia l ever saw was in woman who
was not, but who wanted to be, married.
For nine years she had been an invalid, but
had been reused by the Weir Mitchell treat
ment, and was much improved In her case
the same kind of nervous prostration was by
constant and long brooding over her solitary
condition.
In view of such pieces of truth-telling the
report might we'll close with the remark
that the subject was too broad for single
essay" 1t is an unmistakable fact that the
reading of love stories and love dreams from
early girlhood are destructive to the phys
lcal and moral life of women. It is time
that mothers and fathers looked this matter
squarely in the face. Spite of poetizing
and 1dealizing of women, the young beauty
and the girl are flesh and blood with nerves
to be excited by vivid descriptions, which
react on the whole physical economy. Ban
lsh utterly from these considerations all
thought of levity or grossness. The purest
love dreams Of the purest girl, blameless as
the passion of mother for her child, have,
like it, power to stir the nerves, accelerate
breath and heart beats, turn the hands and
feet cold and flush the brain, fixed up in its
exquisite imaginings in creative effort to
perpetuate them.
LIKE SMOKING OPIUM.
She goes through drama devoid Of one
incident which might not figure in any
printed story, with an intensity which ex-
hausts the nervous centers and dulls natural
appetite for food, leaving her in reveries
which have the same morbid effect on the
system as smoking opium, though in less
degree-not always less dangerous or dis
organizing.
The regulation of affectional instincts is as
indispensable to the health of women as
control of maniacal and hysteric tempers,
which do far less harm in the aggregate than
this 1ncessant tippling of the Imagination.
French novelists give the subject in its
bald hideousness of the Latin nature, low
cred by ages of crude animality, of which
Balzac's Rose Cormon is the most producible
type 1t is simple justice to the American
girl to say that the physical element does
not enter her dreams, which are of the
ideally noble and fascinating hero Marie
Bashkirtsef is the melancholy revelation
of this dream life of anemic girls, which,
utterly devoid OF grossness, yet wrecks
health by its intensity. In view of the
quality of literature, which is the mental
food of girls, I often feel that it is mis-
fortune they are taught to read before they
are 21.
HIGH PRESSURE moBATRY.
The remedy of this disease of partial cul-
ture, this spiritual vice, is not wholly to be
sought in physical treatment No wonder
1t battles doctors of repute. 1t Is well if the
Weir Mitchell treatment of rest, electric
ity, massage and diet can forward the res
toration of lovesick, melancholy single
women, and equally lovesick, disappointed
wives. This subtle self-worship which sets
Its happiness upon a single cast, the chance
of being installed at high pressure idolatry,
for life in the mind of some man, is suicide,
real nobility of Marie Bashkirtzef7s nature
showed itself in her final rejection of the
adulation offered her in the name of love,
She found better satisfaction in work, in the
most toilsome of arts which took her into
sympathy with nature and common life.
But, alas! the force which had been wasted
in 15 years of precooious lovemaking was
not to be replaced. The finer types of |
women die Of such exhaustions as she died, |
as Daudet's Mile. LIE Quesnoy dies ''on her |
youthful face the dull, naughty rancor of |
those who, longing to live, die too soon,
and to whom disillusion has not said fare |
we'll"
Women of an inferior type languish for |
lack of experiences they covet, or from |
their over fulffllment. In the lower orders, |
[ have known hard-working Norwegian |
woman of 40 and and an Irish cookmaid of |
81 to die speedily of acute disorder brought |
On, the physician said, by disappointment |
in love affairs.
But as the doctors say, the subject is too
broad for a single essay.
SHIRLEY DAKH