The Education of American Girls | Page 7

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