symptoms. not fighting the real disease; and just as long as such plans are adhered to, just so long will the agonizing groans of millions of suffering women ascend to heaven, craving the help from thence that is denied them here.
To cure the outer, physical, and most of the mental and emotional ills of women, nature herself must be taken as both copy and guide. Indian women, negresses, and, in fact, none of the dark-skinned women of the world, are ever troubled with the grievous catalogue of disorders and complaints that afflict so many millions of the fair daughters and mothers of our otherwise favored country. And why is this? The answer is plain. In the first place they are born right, and of perfectly healthy mothers, whatever may be said of them on the score of morals, beauty, and intelligence, — they being confessedly as far inferior to American women in these three respects, as themselves are undoubtedly inferior to their dark-skinned sisters in point of health and physical stamina. This is proved by their utter freedom from all diseases of the pelvis and nerves, and by their exceeding brief, and almost painless, illness in confinement; nor is this fact accounted for on the theory that were their children as large-brained as American babes, their sufferings would equal those of our wives and mothers; for there are large-brained oriental people, but the results in no wise differ from the rule laid down.
Now, why this immunity from disease? I reply: because, first, they live right; they are not pampered with health-destroying hot teas, coffees, pork-fat, sweets, quack doctors, or any other abomination. Second, they have plenty of out-door exercise; consequently their lungs are well inflated and their blood oxygenized. And, third, they are not worn out by exactions which kill half the white wives before their lives are more than half spent!
The domestic habits of American women are by no means calculated to promote health or prolong life. An excess of fat food, doughnuts, rich, indigestible pastry, hot drinks, hot air, feather beds, close rooms, lack of amusement, warm bread, and compressed chests, are, each and all, making sad marks upon American women. But this is not the worst feature of the case, by any means, in two respects. 1st. Whatever other just things our country may boast, — whatever pride it may fairly have in its institutions, — it is a deplorable thing that marriage in our land,
