Don’t think because you hear so much about the dangerous germs to be found everywhere, that you are certain to catch some horrible disease. True, there is great danger in ignorantly living around these germs, but the danger is mostly in ignorance and not in the fact that the disease microbes are always with us.

The old idea that such germs as those of scarlet fever, typhoid, smallpox, etc., could be carried from the ill to the well on clothing, books, toys and other similar articles is not strictly true. Equally true is it that these kinds of germs do not stay long upon walls of rooms, floors or ceilings. They will stay and breed diseases in such places if they are allowed to thrive under moist and dark conditions.

Sunlight and fresh air are deadly enemies to all germs except those of venereal origin. If a smallpox patient has been confined to a room and after being taken away the room is fumigated and then closed, the chances are that the smallpox germs—some of them—will remain and increase. Hence, to again occupy this room would be dangerous. But if, instead of fumigating the room, if all the windows were open; if every corner and floor could receive the rays of the sun for many days; the last germ in the room would have to give up the ghost.

Don’t think that fumigating and washing clothes or other articles which have come in contact with a diseased person make for absolute safety. But do remember that SUNLIGHT and fresh air are deadly enemies to most disease germs.

There are certain diseases which are carried around by persons in whom you would never suspect danger. Typhoid germs, for example, may be carried around in the intestines of a person who is in apparent health. Now everywhere this person lives, or uses the toilet, the germs are deposited, and if they happen to get into the drinking water—wells or streams—or are carried by the flies’ legs to the food or milk, you run great risks of getting typhoid fever.

Those germs of two horrible diseases which are to be found upon public toilet articles, public drinking cups, upon the leaves of common books—in fact everywhere man or woman is to be found, are not killed by sunlight or fresh air. This subject should be thoroughly understood by every young woman, but it is of too great importance to be dealt with here in a few paragraphs.

The breath of a consumptive patient will not carry directly the germs of consumption to another person. Oh, I know that is what many of you have been taught, but we are dealing with the facts as they are known up to this very year of 1911. It has long been the general idea that disease germs were carried from one person or thing to another person or thing. Now this is not strictly true. All germs increase and thrive in moist and dark conditions. The throat of a consumptive patient is one of these conditions. The germs are sent out into the air of the room in surrounding moisture. They land somewhere; on the tablecloth, in the carpet, or hide in a dark corner. In these places they dry and become dust—germ-laden dust. Now stir up this dust and then you have the germs free to rush into the healthy lungs around them, and then a person runs great risk of contracting consumption.

Don’t stir up a room by dusting if that room has been occupied by a diseased person. Don’t wash the walls or floor of such a room and then close it, unless you want to go into the business of breeding germs.

Knock out the windows of such a room—open it up for the sun’s rays to penetrate and kill off the enemy. Take all carpets out and put them where nothing but DRY air and sunshine can get at them. Do the same thing with every movable object in the room.

Don’t do anything but just this with rooms where scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, whooping cough and other contagious diseases have been running their courses.

I spoke to you about the hands being the greatest carriers of infection. They even carry around the germs of typhoid fever. They have been found on the cleanliest person’s hands after using public toilets. On the fingers, especially.

You are safer in kissing a person who has consumption, than you are in wetting your finger to turn over the pages of a book that has been thumbed by scores of other persons. A person may have the cleanest habits possible yet be a menace to others as well as to herself.

I watched the other day a pair of young schoolgirls trying on each other’s gloves. Up to the lips would go a finger or two, then these moist fingers would clasp the glove fingers and in this way work the glove onto the hand. You all know the process better than I can describe it to you. Now supposing that the girl who owned the glove had rang the bell or turned the knob at the residence of a friend who was ill with, say, consumption, to inquire how the friend was. Don’t you see that it was more than probable that nurse, maid or mother had conveyed moist germs of the disease to the knob or bell push, that the germs dried but had not been long enough in the sun to be killed, and this girl’s glove picked these germs up and then you transferred them to your lips? Dried germs which only wanted the moisture of your lips to become virulently active.

Don’t wet your fingers in trying on gloves—new or old.

Don’t hang on to car straps with ungloved hands. The same don’t applies to water closet chains, handles and many other germ holders you will call to your mind.

In studying the peculiar habits of girls I watched a group in the “Ladies’ Hat Rooms” at a theater. They took off their hats after much pulling of big daggers—beg pardon, I mean pins—out of hair and hats. These dag—pins, were all promiscuously laid upon a dressing table covered with germ-laden dust, only to be taken up again and held in the mouth. The same process was gone through with when they again put on their hats. Pin after pin was taken from the germ cloth and put in their mouths while they adjusted the angle of their hats.

“Say, Mame, lend me a pin, will you? I’ve lost one.” So out of Mame’s mouth came a pin, which was immediately put between the lips of the borrowing girl.

Nasty? Of course. Dangerous? Frightfully so.

Don’t put pencils, pins, string and other articles of the kind in your mouths. Why does a girl think her mouth is a receptacle for every little thing she wants to use temporarily?

I have seen girls and women step up to a box office and as soon as the ticket seller had shoved, with his bare hands, a ticket or two through the window, immediately grab up those dangerous pieces of pasteboard and place them between their lips and hold them there until they passed down the line and into the theater.

And probably, shortly after, this same girl or woman will wonder why she has pimples, blotches or sore lips. Then she goes to the druggist for a “face balm” which temporarily hides the real trouble. Finally she has to go to the doctor, who finds it is too late to repair all the damage done through ignorance, foolishness and the drug.

Don’t use arsenic in any form for your complexion or to give your face a plump appearance. Some of you will tell me of a girl you know who has a nice plump face from the use of arsenic wafers. “She used ‘to be a fright’; skinny in the face and deep lines.” Certainly, and now she looks to be in good health.

But she is not; she is in a dangerous state, and if she keeps up the arsenic poisoning she will discover this fact.

In the girl, arsenic will produce a certain amount of fat—unnatural of course—in hollows or pits which full growth will attend to if the girl will have patience. Poisoning herself with arsenic makes fat in the undeveloped tissues of the face. This gives her a plump appearance. So will plenty of whisky, and in about the same manner. But if the fatness was confined only to the cheeks the harm would not be so great, but like whisky again, it puts fat around delicate internal tissues. A girl who has plump cheeks from the use of arsenic has also a “plumpness” around her kidneys, fat over her growing ovaries and inmeshing the tiny cells of the liver. Fatty degeneration of these organs takes place for which there is no remedy.

All headache medicines, such as antipyrine, are not only dangerous, but will ruin a complexion; bring out pimples as certain as the sun shines. The habitual taking of any kind of bromide, bromo seltzer, bromo quinine, and all the other kinds of advertised “sedatives,” will cause a peculiar rash not only upon the face, but upon the body. I frequently see girls in shops, stores and even in the high schools, whose faces tell the story of some kind of drug-store “treatment.”

Lately there has come to the surface another kind of patent medicine fake which is apt to fool the most open-eyed. This is one you all know of but not about. It is that kind of advertisement which has nothing to sell. It purports to be the outpouring of some philanthropist’s heart who wishes to do something for his suffering fellow man—or generally woman. You see he has nothing to sell—don’t want your money, simply spend thousands of dollars every week to tell you how to get rid of “that uncomfortable feeling.” No matter what is the trouble—house care, worry over your studies or “who sent me THAT valentine”—liver, womb or rheumatism—it is all the same; just go to your druggist and get these simple remedies and take as directed.

Then follows the prescription. At first glance, yes, at the second, you or your mother read the simple home remedies such as tinct. rhubarb, olive oil, simple syrup, extract of quassia, etc., and think that such a recipe must be harmless and certainly good. The advertisement tells you just to get your druggist to fill the recipe. Well, how can there be anything wrong with such harmless and free advice? But you will see inserted among all these harmless and simple and well known remedies, some such direction as “two ounces of badum” or “tinct. of fulum, original package.” Now you see the nigger in the woodpile. The whole scheme is to get you to purchase the fake “badum.” This is distributed among the druggists and when you go to pay the bill you find that the simple prescription is an expensive one. The druggist tells you that the “badum” is a very expensive ingredient. It probably costs the fakers a few cents and is simply sugar of milk or some equally harmless and legally allowed drug.

Don’t kiss anyone but your mother and father.

Don’t forget that flies are the most dangerous germ carriers we have, and don’t buy or eat anything which has been exposed to flies and street dust.

Don’t have any pity for the flies or insects—kill them.

Don’t be a giggling girl. The practice of giggling will certainly develop those tiny skin muscles in a way to make your face show some kind of distortion.

I remember a young girl who was brought to me for her constant habit of giggling. It had grown into a habit and really looked like a case of hysteria. But because I told her mother it was a form of hysteria and should be treated as such, she became offended and took the girl elsewhere. I saw the girl, or rather woman, when she was twenty-four years of age, and recognized her by the peculiar conformation of her face. It was the face of a girl giggler. Her facial muscles had become so developed by her uncontrolled girlish habit that nothing could be done for her. I felt sorry for the young woman, for she had grown to be a very charming and estimable one, who was constantly embarrassed by an expression of contempt.

Good laughter, a hilariousness which has for its cause a real sense of humor, is beneficial to everyone. Such expression of humor gives motility to the face and develops a pleasing appearance.

Don’t swagger around in public nor attempt to thrust yourself forward. A modest girl will not let herself become prominent in public places. Dressing, acting or talking in any way to attract undue attention will soon ruin a girl’s reputation.

Now a little about corsets and a good, supple and attractive figure. I have no objections to corsets as corsets, but every physician knows only too well that a growing girl is injured beyond repair if she, at the developing stage of her life, compresses in any manner the internal organs. Really, this is about all there is to this corset question. If a woman has reached full development with lungs, ovaries, kidneys, all the pelvic organs, having had full play and room for their growth, the proper wearing of corsets will not do her harm; nay, they will do more, they will be a source of comfort to her. Moreover, such a woman will not lace too tightly because always having had full play of her lungs and other internal organs, she will be distressed if they are too tightly confined—their own needs and development send her warning when she has gone too far.

But it is sadly different with the young girl who has from fourteen years or even from sixteen years of age, worn corsets made for the full-grown woman. Every inch of a girl’s waist, all the region of the pelvis and the upper portion of her body, should be absolutely free from any pressure. Just take a little growing twig and tie a string around it. Next year you will see a deep constriction. The following years you will notice that the twig does not grow well, that the sap cannot run freely up, that when it does blossom, the blossoms are poorly nourished and lack the luster of its unconstricted companions.

Dress so that there is no pressure upon the pelvis or around the lungs. Try, when you have on one of these modern coats of armor now made for the fat or thin woman, the deep breathing exercises I have recommended. You cannot go through with the exercise.

Oh, but you say, we take off those corsets when we take the exercises. Certainly, but when you gird yourself up again and squeeze, punch and groan while getting into one of those “can’t sit down” things, you are undoing all the good the exercises have done.

Let your clothes hang from the shoulders. Shoulders were made to carry weights, the waist and the pelvis to carry and protect the greatest force in nature—the power of motherhood.

If you knew that when you grew to full development you would have to be a carrier of wood or water upon your shoulders, that this would have to be your career, would you go to work and place some constriction or in some way injure the growth of your shoulders—do something which would prevent you from doing what you were born to do?

Of course not. Well then, take the best care of your pelvis and their contents. Give them exercise, shape, health, beauty, by letting them grow unrestricted. You may not know it; but the condition of a woman’s pelvis tells in her face. Broad hips mean happy and painless motherhood. Early constriction of the lungs and internal organs means a miserable existence for a woman, married or single.

Early constriction of the body means lack of bust development. This means that your little baby, so hungry for its mother’s milk, will have to be artificially fed.

Don’t think that there is any other way of a complete bust development than freedom of bodily action while growing. Those advertised things are more than useless; they are positively injurious. You can never have the ability to nurse your child if you fall into the hands of these criminal advertisers of “bust developers.”

I have now outlined in a cursory manner the main facts in modern physiology, which, if you allow to sink into your memory, will make for a life of perfect health. Don’t think that life is all pleasure or all misery. It is a happy combination. Happy because all our burdens are for a purpose, and when these purposes are well understood, the burdens cease to be real burdens, but tasks whose outcomes are seen to be pleasure.

The real reasons for so much misery among girls and women is unhealth, rather than ill health. Unhealth is avoidable; so is much ill health. You all know how and why.

I have said little to you about morals because when a girl is in perfect health she is moral. By this I mean, perfect mental health, as well as purely physical.

Let me explain. A girl has good physical health, she is also in good mental health, hence she is morally healthy. She has had good home instruction—but not as thorough as is now needed—and has no uncontrollable evil thoughts. Some of her companions tease her upon her moral nicety. One day, with a party, she is persuaded to take a glass of beer or champagne. She takes another. Well; she loses her chastity. Bad girl, immoral girl? Not a bit of it. She fell because she was not MENTALLY in good health. What injured her mentally? The beer and champagne. They will do it every time.

Don’t touch them!

Don’t think that you know more than your mother about what is best for you. You don’t.

Sex Knowledge

judiciously imparted is the greatest insurance toward the development of sterling manhood and womanhood. It is the duty of every man and woman to be informed upon the subject of sex and the care of the body. It is a subject vitally important to every individual.

Dr. Howard presents facts as they are, and speaks from a knowledge gained through years of study and experience in the great hospitals of the world. He shuns no details and presents a clear cut analysis of the wages of sin and ignorance.

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