Читать книгу The Education of American Girls - Anna C. Brackett - Страница 10

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All parts of the body are, of course, as long as life exists, in a state of continual wear, old cells being constantly broken down, and new ones substituted in their places. When the Apostle exclaimed, “I die daily,” he uttered an important physiological as well as a spiritual truth; though, if he had said, “I die every instant,” he would have expressed it more exactly. It is only by continual death that we live at all. But continual death calls for continual creation, the continual destruction for continual repair, and this is rendered possible by means of food and sleep. Clothing, too, properly belongs under this division; for, were it not for this, the heat of the body would often be carried off faster than it could be generated, and the destructive process would outstrip the reconstructive. Moreover, the clothing too frequently interferes with the normal functions of the most important repairing organs, and its consideration, therefore, must constitute the third branch of our inquiry. The division Repair, then, will embrace a consideration of

1 Food,

2 Sleep,

3 Clothing.

Food.—The kind and quantity of food must obviously vary with age, temperament, and the season. But three general rules may be laid down as of prime importance: the meals should be regular in their occurrence; they should be sufficiently near together to prevent great hunger, and absolutely nothing should be taken between them. An exception may, however, be safely made to this last rule, with regard to young children, in this wise, making a rule which I have known as established in families. “If the children are hungry enough to eat dry bread, they can have as much as they want at any time; if they are not, they are far better off without anything.” These are the plainest rules of Physiology, and yet how few of the girls around us are made to follow them! Nothing is more sure to produce a disordered digestion, than the habit of irregular eating or drinking. If possible, the growing girl should have her dinner in the middle of the day. The exigencies of city life make this arrangement in some cases inconvenient, and yet inconvenience is less often than is popularly supposed synonymous with impracticability. If this cannot be done, and luncheons must be carried to school, the filling of the lunch-basket should never be left, except under exact directions, to the kind-hearted servant, or to the girl herself; and she should under no circumstances be allowed to buy her luncheon each day of the baker, or the confectioner, a usual practice twenty years ago of the girls in Boston private schools.

There are children and young girls who are said to have cravings for certain kinds of food, not particularly nutritious, but in ninety-nine per cent of these cases the cause of the morbid appetite can be found in the want of proper direction in childhood. The fact is, that the formation of a healthy appetite is properly a subject of education. The physical taste of the little girl needs rational direction as well as her mental taste, though mothers too often do not recognize the fact. It would seem almost like an insult to the intelligence of my readers, to say, that warm bread of whatever kind, pastry, confectionery, nuts, and raisins, should form no part of a girl's diet; did we not every day, not only in restaurants and hotels, but at private tables, see our girls fed upon these articles.

The German child, in the steady German climate, may drink perhaps with impunity, beer, wine, tea and coffee; but to our American girls, with their nervous systems stung into undue activity by the extremes of our climate, and the often unavoidable conditions of American society, these should all be unknown drinks. The time will come soon enough, when the demands of adult life will create a necessity for these indispensable accompaniments of civilization; but before the time when the girl enters upon the active duties of a woman, they only stimulate to debilitate.

It cannot be too often repeated, that the appetite and the taste for certain kinds of food are, to a greater degree than is usually acknowledged, merely the results of education; and the mother who sees her daughter pale and sickly, and falling gradually under the dominion of dyspepsia, in any of its multitudinous forms or results, and who seeks the physician's aid, has too often only her own neglect to blame, when the medicines fail to cure. From the food is manufactured the blood; from the blood all parts of the living tissue of every organ; not only bone and muscle cells, but nerve cells are built up from it, and if the blood be not of the best quality, either from the fact that the food was not of proper material or properly digested, not only the digestive organs, but the whole system, will be weak. Moreover, those organs which await for their perfect development a later time than the others will be most apt to suffer from the result of long-established habits, and it is as true of the human body as of a chain, that no matter where the strain comes, it will break at its weakest part. The truth of what is here stated may be illustrated by the teeth, which are formed at different periods of life. Many have a perfect set of what are known as first teeth; but in too many children in our American homes, the second teeth make their first appearance in a state of incipient decay, while it has become almost proverbial, that the wisdom teeth are of no use, except to the dentist. Mothers have only to consult easily procured books to learn the kinds of food most easily digestible, and most nourishing. That they do not do so, results from the seeming general belief, that this matter of eating will take care of itself, and that it does not come within the province of education. The whole matter lies in the hands of women. The physician can do but little, because he can know but little. It is the intelligent women of America who must realize the evil, and must right the wrong, if we would see our girls what we most earnestly desire them to be—perfectly healthy and well developed.

Again, the cure of many diseases, especially those which are prevalent in the summer months, belongs more to the women of the household than to the physician. They alone can check the evil at its commencement. Every educated woman ought to know, for instance, that cracked wheat and hominy, oat-meal, corn-bread, and Graham bread, should not, as a general rule, be made the staple of diet in case of what is popularly known as “summer complaint”; and yet, how few girls seem to have any idea, when they are thus sick, that it is a matter of the least consequence what they eat, or that they ought not to make their breakfast of Boston brown bread; and by how few of our girls is it considered a matter of any moment that the opposite trouble exists for days. Ought they not to be educated to know that they can devise no surer way of poisoning the whole system, and then of straining all the contiguous organs, than by wilful neglect in this direction? When some facts are obvious, and some are latent, the blame, if trouble exists, is not unnaturally laid on the visible facts. It is evident to the physician that the girl has attended school. It is not so evident that, since her earliest childhood, she has been fed on improper food, at irregular hours, and that the processes by which the poisonous dead matter is removed from the system, have been irregularly carried on. His questions put on these topics are put in a general way, and answered in the same, with, perhaps, a worse than foolish mock-modesty to prompt the reply. He does the best that he can, but he cannot help stumbling, if he is required to walk in the dark. This false shame of which I speak, on this matter, seems to be a folly peculiarly American, and I am quite sure that it is not so common now as it was twenty years ago, though there are still many American women who would choose to run the risk of making themselves sick rather than to tread the folly out under a pure womanly scorn. This is also a matter which belongs to education.

One great trouble with our American girls, and one which can be remedied by us, though we cannot remedy the climate, is not that their brains are overworked, but that their bodies generally, including brain, are underfed. I do not mean that they do not eat enough in bulk, though that is often the case, but that they do not take in enough of the chemical elements which they must have to build up the system. Their food is not sufficiently nutritious, and the energy of the digestive organs is wasted in working upon material which, if it does not irritate and inflame, is at least of no economic value, and is simply rejected by the system; or, worse still, in default of better, it is absorbed, and the whole blood becomes poisoned. Sometimes our girls do not eat often enough. For instance, a girl who, after tea, has been obliged to employ her brain in unusually hard work, might probably be helped by eating some nourishing food before sleep. If she do not, the result will not infrequently be that she will awake tired and languid; she will sit idly at the breakfast table, play with her knife and fork, and feel only disgust at the food provided. She may soon suffer from, if she does not complain of, back-ache and other attendant troubles, the simple result of weakness. It is only Micawber's old statement over again: “Annual income, twenty pounds, annual expenditure, twenty pounds, ought, and six; result—Misery.”

After a long course of this kind, the physician is summoned, and the girl is forbidden to study. But it seldom occurs to any one that if 5 - 8 = −3, the two may be made equal just as easily by adding the three to the five as by subtracting it from the eight, i.e., although we, as a nation, are supposed to be, at least, more conversant with arithmetic than with any branch of school study, though we do know that 8 > 5, we do not see that 5 + 3 = 8, and so we try to cancel the offending −3 by diminishing the 8. But would not the other process be quite as rational? Physical life is only a simple balance of forces, the expenditure and nourishment corresponding exactly to demand and supply in the Science of Political Economy.[2] They tend continually to level themselves. Have we not the right to decide in which way the leveling shall be effected—the equation be formed? This is a simple solution of the difficulty. I suggest that this experiment be tried: let the girl study her extra time in the evening, if she desires, only being cautious that she do not infringe upon her sleep hours; then give her a supper of bread and butter and cold meat, and send her to bed. If her digestive organs are in good state, she will very possibly sleep a sound and dreamless sleep, and rise refreshed in the morning, with a good appetite for her breakfast. By this simple hygienic remedy, aching backs may not only be prevented, they may be gradually cured. I am stating actual facts. If the evening be spent in conversation, or mere lounging over books, the supper will not be needed, and will prove, if taken, only a burden; but if, as has already been said, it be spent in actual brain-work, the tremendous and unusual strain on the whole nervous system, occasioned by the destruction of nerve-cells, must be made good, or those organs most intimately connected with the nervous system and the sources of life, will be sure to suffer. It must, however, be repeated here, if we would secure the good results desired, that the supper must be of nourishing, not of stimulating food.

Even the destruction, through exercise, of the inferior muscle-cells demands food before sleeping. It is no merely fashionable custom which calls the dancers at an evening entertainment to the loaded supper-table, as those of my readers who have attended the so-called cold-water Sociables will bear me witness. It may be seriously questioned whether the regulation which forbade any refreshment except cold water was not, like many other unthinking, economical plans, really no economy at all. Instead of one pantry's furnishing food to the famished dancers, this was furnished for each one at home, from her own mother's private stores, and as the members of the Sociables met at each other's houses in order, the total result of expenditure to each family, at the close of the winter, was probably the same as it would have been, had each family furnished, on one evening, a moderate entertainment of the same sort to the bankrupt systems. Fashion is often wiser than we think her, especially when at parties for the “German” she prescribes a cup of beef-tea as the regulation refreshment.

A long, rapid walk in the evening, as we all know, will produce the same effect. We return, and remark that we are hungry, merely meaning that we have received polite official notice that our physical bank account has been overdrawn. If we do not pay any attention to this notification, we shall surely in time be passed from adversary to judge, and from judge to officer, and finally be cast literally into a prison from which, unlike some of our city prisons, we shall not escape till we have paid the uttermost farthing. Then we shall be likely to receive from the kindly friend whom we summon to visit us, wise and good advice, on the extravagance of spending so much. But might not the advice be possibly quite as useful if delivered in this wise: “Why don't you earn more, and make larger deposits.” The force of weakness compels us to stop spending our muscle cells; the kind friend, as far as is possible, puts a stop to the expenditure of nerve cells, and draws on the funds derived from the Cinchona forests of South America and the iron mountains of Missouri, to make new deposits on our account; and when the matter is thus doubly settled for us by nature and science, we go on our way rejoicing, only to repeat the same insane folly. But it is not good for one's credit to overdraw too frequently her bank account; and there may come a time when suspension means bankruptcy, and when all the kindness and skill of all our friends can be no longer of any avail. Is it not our own fault, and shall we not so educate our girls that they shall not fall into it, since they comprehend its unreason?

We are undoubtedly creatures of habit; but we oftener apply the word to our mental and moral than to our physical nature, and wrongly. When regular and constant demands are made upon any organ of the body, the body, as it were, falls into the habit of laying in enough force in that particular department for that particular purpose, as the scientific steward at Vassar lays in for each day so many pounds of beef or mutton, because he can rely with certainty on its consumption. If in any case the demand is, for any reason, slackened, there is a surplus of energy which must find a vent, or render its possessor very uncomfortable. Need mothers be reminded of how very troublesome the little girl becomes in a short school vacation, or during the first days of a long one? Or need teachers be told that it is only a loss of time in the end, to assign at the commencement of the September term lessons of the same length as those which were learned with no difficulty in June? There is a decided inertia in the bodily functions, and time is required for a sudden change. Inconvenience in such a case will be sure to arise, unless the surplus force be instantly directed into other and unobjectionable channels.

If the reverse takes place, and the demand be suddenly increased, the result is weakness, debility, and finally disease; though precisely the same amount of work might have been done, not only with safety but with positive advantage, provided the increase of the demand had been gradual.

Is there any country in the world equal to America in the irregularity and spasmodic nature of the demands which society makes upon its women? Are there any girls in the world so ready to rush headlong into all kinds of exercise, mental or physical, which may be recommended to them, as our American girls? It is a pity that, to balance our greater amount of fiery energy in the matter of education, we have not a sounder philosophy.

Once more, physical life is only a balance of forces, as spiritual life is a series of choices, and the question is not simply how much intellectual or brain work we are doing. This question cannot justly be considered apart from the other inquiry, of how much appropriate material we are supplying for the use of the brain. We cannot judge whether the amount of force expended be healthful or unhealthful till we know how much force has been and can be generated. There is undoubtedly a limit to this last factor in our problem, but if we do not exceed this limit in our expenditure, it seems unquestionable, that the more brain work we do, the better will it be for the entire system, and the stronger will be our health, this being only our power actively to resist the destructive forces of nature.

The nervous system, at the head of which stands the brain, is undoubtedly the regent of the monarchy of the body, whose sovereign is the thinking spirit; and all the organs in a well-regulated body should be worked in the interest of the organ of thought, as servants for a wise and watchful master. It seems sometimes as if we were in danger of forgetting that though “the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee, nor again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you,” there will come a time when the thinking spirit, grown to full stature, shall say to all of them, “I have no need any longer of any of you.”

The consideration of the subject of Ventilation properly comes under this division, for pure air is as much food for the body, as meat or bread. This whole matter, however, seems to be practically not well understood, if we may judge from the results so far, and no extended discussion of the means will be in place there. It is sufficient simply to indicate its immense importance. But that bad air is likely to be a more active cause of disease in America than elsewhere seems true, for in no other country are furnaces and closed fire-places in so general use. Moreover, the women and girls who spend most of their lives in the house, will be expected to show the evil effects more than the men and boys, who do not. The practical suggestions on this point are apparent to every one.

One more thing which the body, to be healthy, demands for food is Sun-light, that invaluable medicine for all forms of nervous disease, which Americans, more than any other people, curtain carefully out for fear of fading carpets and furniture. But what are French moquettes, brocade, or satin, compared with rosy cheeks, clear complexions, and steady nerves? If we would only draw up the shades, open the shutters, and loop the heavy curtains out of the way, or, better still, take them down altogether, might we not look for a marked improvement in systems affected by nervous diseases? This want of sun-light may be expected also, of course, most to affect those who remain within doors, and who, even in walking, shade themselves with veils and sun-shades from the life-giving rays of the sun.

Sleep.—To many of the organs of the body there have been allotted seasons of comparative quiet and repose, even during the day. If the rules for food be observed, the stomach, for instance, has, as stomach, its vacations from labor, by means of which it is enabled to prepare for, and perform, its regularly recurring work with vigor. Even with organs where this is not the case, the action is slackened very materially at times, as in the case of the heart and lungs during sleep. They must continue to work, though more slowly, and the part of the nervous system which carries on their involuntary and mechanical action, has also then a partial relief. But the only rest for the thinking brain is to be found in normal sleep. From the instant when, in the morning, we become conscious of the external world, to the instant late at night, or, it may be, early in the morning, when we pass through the gates of sleep, out from companionship, into an utter solitude, it never rests from its work. Whether, by volition, we summon all our intellectual power to the closest attention, and turn, as it were, the whole energy of our being into one thought-channel, till the organs of sense become simply outside appendages which disturb the internal self with no imported knowledge, or whether, lying idly, as we say, on the sofa, we let our thoughts wander as they will, thought still goes on. Coming and going more rapidly than the shortest pendulum can swing, inter-weaving more subtly than the threads of the most complicated lace under the fingers of the skillful worker; “trains of thought” pass and repass through our minds, following, as we mechanically express it, the Laws of Association. Only in losing consciousness, do we cease to destroy the brain cells; it is only in sleep that the brain can rest.

But it must be remembered that the matter which is thus destroyed, is, as Maudsley[3] so finely shows, the very finest result of the creative life-process, the most precious essence. It is like the oil of roses, to produce one drop of which, unnumbered roses must be crushed. The force required to produce a nerve cell is said to be immeasurably greater than that demanded for a cell of muscle, of bone, or of cartilage. In the nerve cells, lies not only the directive force of the whole complicated machinery, but the material with which the creative intelligence must work. Let us also remember that our waking hours far outnumber those spent in sleep, and we shall begin to realize the immense importance of sleep, even to the fully developed organism. But when we add to the mere labor of repairing the daily waste, the task of construction, which has to be performed during the years of growth, we shall only deepen the impression. I believe that every school-girl under eighteen years of age, and many over that age, should have at least nine hours of uninterrupted sleep in pure air, and the younger ones need even more.

Much, at least doubtful, advice, has been given on the subject of early rising. That the system which has, perhaps, taken no food since six in the evening, should be ready for any amount of labor in the morning before breakfast, does not seem a rational conclusion, and I believe that many nervous diseases must be charged to the idea, that there is virtue in early rising, this implying, generally, either work before breakfast, or, at best, a shortening of the hours of sleep. It should, however, be remembered that in some cases, the greater amount of sun-light obtained by rising with the sun, may, and probably does, compensate for lack of other food. But when early rising means, as it often does, rising long before the day begins, this cannot be said, and sooner or later, the over demand upon the system will make itself felt when it is too late to remedy the evil.

The habit of regular sleep is also one which should be formed by education. The child who is accustomed to go to bed at a regular hour, will also generally form the habit of falling asleep regularly.

If parties for children and young people could be made fashionable under the name of matinées, they might not have bad results; but as they are at present carried on, they are an unmitigated evil, and one that is sapping to a fearful degree the nervous force of our girls. What mother would give her little girl a cup of arsenic, no matter how tearfully or earnestly she might plead? The very idea of education lies in the directing of the capricious and irrational instincts, the blind and ignorant forces, into their proper channels, by the rational and enlightened will of the educator. But if, instead of this, the unformed will is made the guide, the very reverse of education is taking place. It makes no difference to the physical forces, however, whether the hours lost from sleep be lost at a party or at a lecture, a sermon, or tableaux for the benefit of foreign missions. Nature makes no distinctions of motive. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” is her motto. If one opposes himself to her laws, the offender, not she, goes down; and as Sancho Panza very wisely remarks, “Whether the stone hit the jug, or the jug the stone, it is bad for the jug.”

It is remarked by all foreigners, that in America the children rule the house. This is simply saying that we are, as a general rule, an uneducated people; which is undoubtedly true. When we learn the immense importance of sleep to the health of our girls, and when we know that our rational convictions should lead them, and not their irrational desires, us, we shall hear less about their breaking down in health as they grow toward maturity. We shall see fewer pale faces and angular forms; though they will probably never, while they live in this climate, acquire the ruddy glow of the Englishwoman or the German, or the rounded outlines of the nations of Southern Europe.

Clothing.—With the external form of the dress as to cut, trimming, or color, this essay has nothing to do. Unless a dress be cut so low in the neck that it becomes an unhealthful exposure after taking off warmer clothing, it in no wise concerns this branch of the subject. I wish to speak only of the underclothing habitually worn by our girls, and its mode of adjustment; these being, as I believe, the causes of much exhaustion and disease.

If technical terms, uncomprehended by any class of readers, be used, it is simply for the sake of brevity; and because, as Kant says, “completeness must not be sacrificed to popularity,” the attainment of which would be “a didactic triumph, attained only by omitting everything complicated, and saying only what exists already in the consciousness of every one.”

The two rules for clothing evidently are given when we say, first, that it should be sufficiently warm to prevent the heat generated by the body from being too rapidly lost; and second, that it should be sufficiently loose to allow unimpeded muscular action, whether voluntary or involuntary. But it is very rare to find either of these rules observed by girls, and it is also rare to find mothers who are aware that their daughters are daily violating them.

First, as to the warmth: Every girl who is to be reared in this climate of extremes and sudden changes should wear shirt and drawers of wool next her body, and woolen stockings, during at least eight months of the year.[4] The merino underclothing, so generally worn, is preferable to cotton or linen, but all-wool flannel is far better; and if trouble is anticipated from shrinking and fulling, the use of red flannel will prevent this entirely. I am not speaking of becomingness and grace; I am speaking of health and conservation of force. Each organism can generate but a certain amount of vital force, and if a large proportion of this has to be expended in keeping up the even temperature of the body, a smaller part than otherwise will go to the carrying on of the other functions. But relieve the system from the continual drafts made upon it, resulting from insufficient clothing, and it will be able to assume duties to which before it found itself inadequate. Some exceptions must be made to this statement in the case of those to whose skins flannel proves an irritant—but they are comparatively few; and even in these cases the flannel could be worn outside, if not inside, of the cotton or linen underclothing. The mother who will see to it that from her earliest years the girl is protected, over all parts of her body, by flannel underclothing, may simply prevent evils which, afterwards, she and the most skilful physician combined will find themselves unable to overcome. But the facts are, that, from the earliest days of life, when the dimpled neck and arms must be admired by visitors, through the days of childhood, when, dressed during the coldest weather of winter in linen and white cambric or piqué, with her body unprotected from the chill, the little girl is led slowly and properly up Fifth Avenue, to the nights when, heated by dancing, she exposes bare neck, shoulders and arms to draughts of cool air, she is, as a general rule, never warmly enough dressed for our climate. I repeat, then, that for proper protection a girl should always be, during at least eight months of our year, clothed, body, arms, legs, and feet, in wool; and pass to the second thought on the subject—i.e., clothing with regard to the mechanical effects of pressure.

We have been continually told that our girls ought not to wear corsets. It has been well said by some woman, that if a man could succeed in fashioning a woman exactly as, according to his theories, she ought to be fashioned, he would not admire her after the work was done; and though the remark was made only with regard to intellectual education, it can be well applied to this subject of corsets. If now, at this present moment, all women were to satisfy this demand, and leave off their corsets, the very men who entreated them to do so, would at once entreat them to resume them. The truth is, that it is not the corsets in themselves that are injurious; they become so only when they are so tightly drawn that they prevent free inspiration, or when, by their great pressure, they force the yielding ribs from their normal curve, compress the lungs, and displace the organs of the abdomen, crowding them into the pelvis, and thus displacing or bending out of shape the organs therein contained. Let the girls keep on their corsets, but instead of the unyielding cotton, linen, or silk braid, let these be laced by round silk elastic cord. They will then give support where it is needed, and yet will yield freely to the expansion of the chest, returning again as the air is expelled, and so preventing discomfort. This is a very simple expedient, and yet perfectly successful, and the girl who has tried it for three days will discard the inelastic braid forever. I say elastic cord, and not ribbon, because the elastic ribbon is too strong, and does not sufficiently yield.

Girls do not know that they dress too tightly. They will repel indignantly the idea that they “lace;” and yet, if they be asked to take a full inhalation, it becomes perfectly evident that the outside resistance is a very positive element. To prove this, it is only necessary for them to put on their corsets laced as above described, and then try to button the dress. It will, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, be found, I think, that the dress, which before came together without the slightest difficulty, will no longer meet. There is necessary no other proof that an unnatural pressure has been habitually used, although, from the very fact that it has been so long habitual, the girls are entirely unconscious of it. The Chinese women, I suppose, are not conscious of their compressed feet, and the two cases are exactly parallel. No dressmaker knows the meaning of the words “loosely fitting.” She is not to be blamed. She looks at her work with an artistic eye, as a Parisian glove-fitter looks at his, and wrinkles are the one thing which she spends her life in striving to avoid; and, as a general thing, she is not a student of Wordsworth to the extent of assuming as her motto,