CONTENTS.

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George H. Napheys
  • PUBLISHERS' NOTICE.
  • EDITOR'S PREFACE.
  • PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
  • PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
  • BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

  • Introductory.15-22
    • Knowledge is safety—The peculiarities of sex—Examples of individuals belonging to both sexes and to neither sex—The sphere of woman

  • Part I. THE MAIDEN.
  • Puberty22-52
    • What it means—Age when it arrives—Causes that hasten it—Causes that delay it—Brunettes mature early—The signs of puberty—Its dangers—Spinal disease—Green sickness—Hysterics—Secret bad habits—Hygiene of puberty—Diet—Exercise—Clothing— Precautions during the monthly changes—Between the monthly changes—What to do when the changes are delayed—When they are painful—The age of nubility.
  • Love52-89
    • Its power in life—What it is—It is necessary and it is eternal—Of second marriages and of divorce—Courtship—Love at first sight—How to choose a husband—Shall cousins marry?—Marriage between different races and different nations—The proper age of a husband—His temperament—His moral and mental character—Words of warning—Signs of character on the body—The engagement—Concerning long engagements—The right time of year to marry—The right time in the month to marry—The wedding tour.

  • Part II. THE WIFE.
  • Hints To Young Wives90-132
    • The wedding night—Should husband and wife sleep together or apart?—The most healthful bed—The dignity and propriety of the sexual instinct—The proper indulgence and the restraint of sexual desire—Marital relations, when they should be suspended—When they are painful—Barrenness, its causes and its cures—Advice to wives who desire children—The limitation of offspring—When it is proper—Justifiable means—Injurious means—The crime of abortion—The nature of conception—Signs of conception—How to retain the affections of a husband.
  • Inheritance132-166
    • The varieties of inheritance—The legacy of beauty—The complexion—What physical qualities each parent bestows—The inheritance of fertility and longevity—Even deformities sometimes transmitted—How to have beautiful children—Talent and genius may be transmitted—The physical traits of fathers in daughters, and of mothers in sons—Examples—Influence of education on inherited qualities—Transmission of disease—Of mutilations—How to avoid inherited ill tendencies—The excess of women—How to have boys or girls at will—Twins and triplets.
  • Pregnancy167-218
    • Veneration of the pregnant woman—Signs of pregnancy—Quickening—Mental changes—Miscarriage, its causes, symptoms, and prevention—Mother's marks—What makes them?—How to avoid them—Education of the child in the womb—Are double pregnancies possible?—Instances of double children—Can a child cry in the womb?—Is it a son or a daughter?—Are there twins present?—The duration of pregnancy—How to calculate when the confinement will come—Care of health during pregnancy—The food, clothing, exercise, bathing, ventilation, and sleep—Effect on health of body and mind—Relations of husband and wife during pregnancy.
  • The Confinement219-242
    • Preparations for childbirth—The signs of approaching labor—The symptoms of actual labor—Attention is required during labor—To the mother—To the child—To have labor without pain—The risks of childbed—Weight and length of new-born children—The duration of labor—Stillborn children—Imprudence after childbirth—To preserve the form after childbirth.

  • Part III. THE MOTHER.
  • Nursing243-270
    • The duties and privileges of a mother—Hindrances to nursing, and when it is improper—Rules for nursing—Influence of diet on the mother's milk—Influence of pregnancy on the milk—The mother's mind and her infant—Striking examples—Position of the mother while nursing—Qualities of a good nursing mother—Excess and deficiency of the milk—Wet-nursing by virgins, aged women, and men—Rules for care of health while nursing—Relations of husband and wife at this time—Over-nursing and the signs of it—Directions for mothers who cannot nurse their own children—How to select a wet-nurse.

  • Part IV. THE CHILD.
  • The Care of Infancy

    Top

    KNOWLEDGE IS SAFETY.

    'Knowledge is power,' said the philosopher. The maxim is true; but here is a greater truth: 'Knowledge is safety,'—safety amid the physical ills that beset us,—safety amid the moral pitfalls that environ us.

    Filled with this thought, we write this book. It is the Revelation of Science to Woman. It tells her, in language which aims at nothing but simplicity, the results which the study of her nature, as distinct from that of man, has attained. We may call it her physical biography.

    It is high time that such a book were written. The most absorbing question of the day is the 'Woman Question.' The social problems of chiefest interest concern her. And nowhere are those problems more zealously studied than in America, which has thrown aside the trammels of tradition, and is training its free muscles with intent to grapple the untried possibilities of social life. Who can guide us in these experiments? What master, speaking as one having authority, can advise us? There is such a guide, such a master. The laws of woman's physical life shape her destiny and reveal her future. Within these laws all things are possible; beyond them, nothing is of avail.

    Especially should woman herself understand her own nature. How many women are there, with health, beauty, merriment, ay, morality too, all gone, lost for ever, through ignorance of themselves! What spurious delicacy is this which would hide from woman that which beyond all else it behooves her to know? We repudiate it; and in plain, but decorous language,—truth is always decorous,—we purpose to divulge those secrets hidden hitherto under the technical jargon of science.

    THE DISTINCTION OF THE SEXES.

    The distinction of the sexes belongs neither to the highest nor to the lowest forms of existence. Animals and vegetables of the humblest character have no sex. So it is with spirits. Revelation implies that beyond this life sexual characteristics cease. On one occasion the Sadducees put this question to Christ: There was a woman who lawfully had seven husbands, one after the other; now, at the resurrection, which of these shall be her husband? or shall they all have her to wife? He replied that hereafter there shall be neither marrying nor giving in marriage, but that all shall be 'as the angels which are in heaven.' Sexuality implies reproduction, and that is something we do not associate with spiritual life.

    It further implies imperfection, which is equally far from our hopes of happiness beyond the grave. The polyp, which reproduces by a division of itself, is in one sense more complete than we are. The man is in some respects inferior to the woman; the woman in others is subordinate to man. A happy marriage, a perfect union, they twain one flesh, is the type of the independent, completed being. Without the other, either is defective. 'Marriage,' said NapolÉon, 'is strictly indispensable to happiness.'

    There is, in fact, a less difference between the sexes than is generally believed. They are but slight variations from one original plan. Anatomists maintain, with plausible arguments, that there is no part or organ in the one sex but has an analogous part or organ in the other, similar in structure, similar in position. Just as the right side resembles the left, so does man resemble woman.

    Let us see what differences there really are:

    The frame of woman is shorter and slighter. In the United States the men average five feet eight inches in height, and one hundred and forty-five pounds in weight; the women, five feet two and a half inches in height, and one hundred and twenty-five pounds in weight. Man has broad shoulders and narrow hips; woman has narrow shoulders and broad hips. Her skull is formed of thinner bones, and is in shape more like that of a child. Its capacity, in proportion to her height, is very little less than in man,—about one-fiftieth, it is said,—which, so far as brain-power is concerned, may readily be made up by its finer texture. Her shoulders are set farther back than in the other sex, giving her greater breadth of chest in front. This is brought about by the increased length of her collar-bone; and this is the reason why she can never throw a ball or stone with the accuracy of a man. Graceful in other exercises, here she is awkward.

    Her contour is more rounded, her neck is longer, her skin smoother, her voice softer, her hair less generally distributed over the body, but stronger in growth than in man. She breathes with the muscles of her chest—he with those of his abdomen. He has greater muscular force—she more power of endurance. Beyond all else she has the attributes of maternity,—she is provided with organs to nourish and protect the child before and after birth.

    PERSONS OF BOTH SEXES AND OF NEITHER SEX.

    Nature is very sedulous in maintaining these differences. It is the rarest thing in the world to find a human being of doubtful sex. Many a physician disbelieves that there ever has been a person of both sexes—a true hermaphrodite. They are very scarce, but they do exist. There is one now living in Germany. It bears a female name, Catherine Hohmann. She was baptised and brought up a female; but Catherine is as much man as woman. The learned professor of anatomy, Rokitansky, of Vienna, asserts most positively that this is a real hermaphrodite. Her history is sad. Born in humble circumstances, when of marriageable age she loved a man, who wished her to emigrate with him to America. But when she disclosed to him her deformity, he broke off the engagement and deserted her. Then her affection became fixed on a young girl; but how could she make her suit to one apparently of her own sex? With passions that prompt her to seek both sexes, she belongs to neither. 'What shall I do here on earth?' she exclaimed, in tears, to a man of science who recently visited her. 'What am I? In my life an object of scientific experiment, and after my death an anatomical curiosity.'

    There are also persons—very few indeed—who have no sex at all. They are without organs and without passions. Such creatures seem to have been formed merely to show us that this much-talked-of difference of sex is, after all, nothing inherent in the constitution of things, and that individuals may be born, live and thrive, of both sexes, or of neither.

    THE SPHERE OF WOMAN.

    Our province lies within the physical sphere of woman. But we will here allow ourselves a momentary digression. It will be seen that while these differences are not radical, yet they are peculiarly permanent. They hint to us the mental and intellectual character of woman. What opinion should we hold on this much-vexed question?

    To this effect: The mental faculties of man and woman are unlike, but not unequal. Any argument to the contrary, drawn from the somewhat less weight of the brain of woman, is met by the fact that the most able men are often undersized, with small heads. The subordinate place which woman occupies in most states, arises partly from the fact that the part she plays in reproduction prevents her from devoting her whole time and energies to the acquisition of power, and partly from the fact that those faculties in which she is superior to man have been obscured and oppressed by the animal vigor and selfishness of the male. As civilisation advances, the natural rights of woman will be more and more freely conceded, until the sexes become absolutely equal before the law; and, finally, her superiority in many respects will be granted, and she will reap the benefits of all the advantages it brings, without desiring to encroach on those avocations for which masculine energy and strength are imperatively needed.

    The most peculiar features of woman's life are hers for a limited period only. Man is man for a longer time than woman is woman. With him it is a lifetime matter; with her it is but for a score of years or so. Her child-bearing period is less than half her life. Within this time she passes through all the phases of that experience which is peculiarly her own.

    And these phases, what are they? Nature herself defines them. They are three in number,—the Maiden, the Wife, and the Mother. In one and then another of this triad, her life passes. Each has its own duties and dangers; each demands its own precautions; each must be studied by itself.

    Let us at once commence this important study, and proceed in the order of time.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

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