Girls and Women. Harriet E. Paine
in the muscles for rowing. If you cannot row, perhaps you can ride. If you cannot ride, perhaps you can drive. If you cannot drive, perhaps you can exercise in the gymnasium. If you cannot do any of these things, do what you can. Walk from your door to the street and back again. Do the same thing over in fifteen minutes, and unless you are a miserable bonâ fide invalid your muscles will soon become more useful. Doing errands, and going about to people who need you, will give you valuable exercise for which you take no thought.
But some of you are too busy to exercise many hours a day in the open air, and so you ought to be. The next best thing for you is housework. Perhaps you do not like that because you see it under the wrong angle of vision. Whether you like it or not, it is within reach of most of you, and would do you good.
But suppose your books and your sewing are necessary and keep you busy all day. Then you are to remember to change your position often. At the end of every hour, when you open the window, take a few deep breaths, stretch your arms and legs and fingers, and you will be better able to go on with your task.
Eat such food as you can thoroughly digest.
There are persons who are always troubled as to what they shall eat, and who, with all their care, are always ailing. I do not want you to think about your food so much that you can digest nothing, but I believe that a very little observation will teach you what is good for you individually. If you have a dizzy head, or rising of food, or a bad breath, or uneasiness of the bowels, you may be pretty sure that you have eaten something that disagrees with you, and by a little watchfulness you may discover what it is and avoid it.
Food that you can digest very well when you are fresh may be much too heavy for you when you are tired. And if you are thinking intently while you eat, the blood is drawn from the stomach where it should be to the brain where it should not be. Few people can digest vegetables not thoroughly cooked, or fruit not thoroughly ripe. I think the study of Physiology is of more practical hygienic value in teaching the absolute necessity of using food that can be readily assimilated by the body, and in showing how different foods should be combined to that end, than in any other way. A little fish or meat, especially beef, considerable bread, especially of the coarser grains, some vegetables, and fruit according to individual organizations, make up the necessary daily fare. A tired stomach should begin with soup. As for the thousand appetizing viands set before us, each must decide for herself what to eat. As long as you have none of the symptoms of indigestion, it is probably safe to gratify the appetite and take delight in food without further care; but if these symptoms appear, think first whether you were too tired, or had too busy a brain to digest anything; next, whether anything you ate was unripe or underdone, and finally, whether there was anything in the bill of fare which had ever troubled you before. Then correct your future practice accordingly, and think no more about it. Depend upon it, you will soon be well, and, further, you will find, with mortification perhaps, that some of the headaches you thought came from overtaxing the brain, or from sensibility to the woes of the world, were really due to improper food. As compensation for your mortification you will be a more useful woman for your whole life.
Work regularly with both body and mind.
Those who must work for self-support are probably, on the whole, in better health than those who are free from necessity. A girl who stands all day behind a counter runs some risks in health, but her chances are still as good as those of the fine lady who broods over imaginary ailments till they become real. To those who must work I have but little to say, for they have a narrow margin of choice. There are several suggestions to be made, however. If your work is physical, use a little of your leisure every day in some mental occupation. The best thing is to do some real studying. If you can only spend fifteen minutes every day on history or literature or botany or French, you will find yourself the better for it bodily, because it will give you an outlook beyond the daily horizon, and take your thoughts from your own weariness. If you have no leisure, or if your work is so exhausting that even fifteen minutes of study seems burdensome, then keep some interesting novel of good tone at hand, and read a little in that every day to change the current of your thoughts. If you find, however, that you usually have more than an hour for your novel, you may suspect that fifteen minutes of study would not hurt you.
Do you know that you are never resting when you are thinking that you are tired? When you are tired rest at once, if you can, by sitting or lying down, or taking recreation, as experience has shown you to be best. But then think no more about it. Perhaps you may be overworking. If you truly believe this and see any possibility of saving yourself, do so, even if you have to give up something which seems particularly important. If you must overwork—and there are such cases, though they are not so common as we think—accept the condition as a part of the discipline of life, rest whenever you can, and say and think as little about it as you can. This advice is to save you from one form of the nervous diseases which are the peculiar misfortune of our time.
If your work is sedentary take physical exercise in your leisure time—out of doors, if possible; but remember that housework is the best substitute for that.
The women who are not obliged to work are those who most need this precept. They can drive, and by and by they cannot walk. They can lie on the lounge when they feel indisposed, and they lie there long after they would get up if they had any work to do. They have the best chance for complete physical development, but they have great temptations to neglect their opportunities. Among the sweetest of such women there is an alarming amount of nervous disease, which is, alas! at the foundation a refined selfishness. To speak plainly, as one has said, we are all as lazy as we dare to be, and these women have no check upon laziness. No power of body or mind can be preserved without exercise, and the muscles grow soft, and the moral fibre grows weak. These women are lovely, they speak in gentle voices, and they never use a harsh word, but they rule all about them with a rod of iron. Dr. Weir Mitchell, in his blunt way, says that nervous diseases among women have destroyed the happiness of more families than intemperance.
By and by the invalid cannot rally even if she has the will, but it is hard to decide where responsibility ends. If your mothers or your aunts are nervous invalids, do not judge them. Causes may have been at work which you cannot see. Pity their terrible misfortune, and do all you can to make them happy. But you, who have the added light of another generation, are inexcusable if you fall into such a state.
How can you avoid it? It is easy to say, "Do not talk about your headaches, or your delicate constitution;" but how are you to help thinking about these things? Decide on regular daily work for yourselves. If you are still school-girls and your head feels heavy in the morning, think whether you would be justified in staying at home if you were a teacher. Teachers have headaches too, but they seldom stay at home for one, and they are seldom the worse for going to school.
When you leave school undertake some regular work. Take charge of the marketing, or oversee the housekeeping for a year. Ask the officers of the Associated Charities to give you something definite to do, and do it regularly. If you are not fitted for visiting the poor, suppose you make experiments in natural science. See what Lubbock did with ants, bees, and wasps. There are thousands of such experiments to be tried, but few people have the leisure for them. You may not understand your results, but you can make the accurate observations which are absolutely necessary before a great man can find out the laws which govern them.
Some mental work you must do. Of course you wish that. If you are in a city like Boston, I will tell you what you will be tempted to do. You will be tempted to sandwich your parties and calls and concerts with two or three courses of morning lectures given by highly trained specialists. In this way you will get a delightful society knowledge of history and literature and art and science, but you will not really exercise your mind very much. Your knowledge will be available for talk, but not for thought. Go to the lectures by all means—though perhaps one course at a time will do; but be sure that every day at a fixed hour you study the subject of the lecture by yourself, and make it thoroughly your own.
Am I wandering from the topic of health? I think not, because during the last fifty years we have learned almost all the laws of health, and yet we are not much better than before, for our nerves are still on edge. Now girls, even rich girls, can control their nerves, if they begin soon enough, with will and intelligence.