Читать книгу The Physical Life of Woman: Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother - George H. Napheys - Страница 15

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We have shown that there are constantly individual deviations, quite consistent with health, from any given standard. They only become significant of disease when they depart decidedly from the average, either in the frequency of the illness, its duration, the amount of the discharge, or the character. More or less pain, more or less prostration and general disturbances at these epochs, are universal and inevitable. They are part of the sentence which at the outset He pronounced upon the woman, when He said unto her, 'I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception.' Yet with merciful kindness He has provided means by which the pain may be greatly lessened, and the sorrow avoided; and that we may learn and observe these means, their neglect often increases a hundred-fold the natural suffering.

At this critical period, the seeds of hereditary and constitutional diseases manifest themselves. They draw fresh malignancy from the new activity of the system. The first symptoms of tubercular consumption, of scrofula, of obstinate and disfiguring skin diseases, of hereditary insanity, of congenital epilepsy, of a hundred terrible maladies, which from birth have lurked in the child, biding the opportunity of attack, suddenly spring from their lairs, and hurry her to the grave or the madhouse. If we ask why so many fair girls of eighteen or twenty are followed by weeping friends to an early tomb, the answer is, chiefly from diseases which had their origin at the period of puberty.

It is impossible for us here to rehearse all the minute symptoms, each almost trifling in itself, which warn the practised physician of the approach of one of these fearful foes in time to allow him to make a defence. We can do little more than iterate the warning, that whenever, at this momentous epoch, any disquieting change appears, be it physical or mental, let not a day be lost in summoning skilled, competent medical advice.

There is, however, a train of symptoms so frequent, so insidious, so fruitful with agony of mind and body, that we shall mention them particularly. They illustrate, at once, how all-important is close observation, and how significant to the wise physician are trifles seemingly light as air.

If you notice a girl of fourteen or sixteen, who, in walking, always gives one arm in preference to the other to her companion; if, in sleeping, she mostly lies on the same side; if, in sitting, she is apt to prefer a chair with a low back, and throws one arm over its back; if you perceive that she always sits with one foot a little in advance of the other; if she, on inquiry, confesses to slight, wandering pains in one side of her chest—do not chide her for awkwardness. These are ominous portents. They mean spinal disease, than which a more fearful malady is hardly known to medicine.

Not less stealthy is the approach of disease of the hip-joint, of white swelling of the knee, of consumption—all curable if taken in hand at the very first, all well-nigh hopeless when they have once unmasked their real features.

Apart from these general dangers, to which those of thoroughly sound constitutions are not exposed, there are disorders called functional, to which all are subject.