The girl's own book of health and beauty

Front matter

HI iS»;

»V:i a A\ '^v\ R aSSsSSHK S SsskSk:- . . ss£

, P iv9

Preface

A glance at the “Contents” column of this book will give the reader, or critic, some idea of the general scope of the work.

All throughout, without studying in the least so to do, I have written my chapters in that homely, common-sense way in which a family doctor should ever speak to his patients— eye to eye, mind to mind— and this, I believe, will be found no disadvantage.

For fifteen years or more, I have been a writer on popular medical literature for magazines and journals patronised by the fair sex, and have done my share in answering queries. I ought to know, therefore, what young ladies want to learn, and I have based the instruction given in this book on such knowledge.

I desire to teach my girl readers how to be healthy, because there can be no beauty without health. Brightness of eyes, clearness of complexion, and happiness of expression, belong only to the possessor of health. A girl who is but indifferently well, is self-conscious, ill-at-ease in society, not clear in eyes, and very often sallow as to skin. She is not happy, she may powder and paint herself, she may “make up ” as to eyes and eyebrows, and hair, but still I say she is not happy ; she cannot smile the smile that wells up from the heart, and goes curling round the eyes, lighting up the face like a summer’s sunrise. No, she cannot smile, she can only make faces with her mouth, as Kipling expresses it.

But give the girl health, ah 1 then, what ease of mind, what innocence and freedom of movement, mental and bodily, she possesses !

Well, that old parable about the ten virgins who sat up to wait for the bridegroom, is quite applicable to girl-society of the present day. Out of every ten girls, five are wise and five are foolish.

The wise will, I humbly hope, find much in these pages to benefit by, the foolish will go wading through in search of nostrums and recipes to ensure them an artificial beauty. They will wade in vain, for although in Chapter XII. I give a few harmless requisites for the toilet, my

main object all through has been to persuade the reader that health

bounding saucy health — is the fountain from which all true beauty springs.

No.

CONTE N TsT

CHAPTER

I. “ I always Feel so Tired ”

II. Common Sense about Food ; the Health Value of Vegetables ...

III. Fresh Air : as important as Food

IV. Pure Water : Essential to Health and Beauty

V. The Uses of the Skin. Common Sense about Baths. A Beauty Bath

VI. More Health and Beauty Baths

VII. Exercise— Clothing— Hobbies

VIII. Athletics for Girls ...

IX. Healthful Recreations

X. Tricycling : as a Cure for Chronic Ailments

XI. What Cycling can Cure ...

XII. Beauty’s Toilet: The Complexion-The Teeth- Ablution The Hair-A Word about the Eyes

XIII. Gloxinia Schizandria Aramantha C . (A true

Story of Tight-lacing)

XIV. Sleep and Sleeplessness

XV. Sleep and Sleeplessness (continued)

XVI. Sleeplessness, and its Rational Cure

PACK

II So

108 1 16 124 130

X.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

XVII. Irritability of the Nerves — Over-sensitiveness

XVIII. Indigestion : its Causes and Cure ... ... 150

Chapter I. I Always Feel So Tired

“Give me but health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. ” — Emerson.

SOME wild campanula of a sort I had not met with before was growing just inside a bank of furze on the edge of a pine forest, and I naturally enough left the road to cull a specimen. Queen Bolina, my Newfoundland, had disappeared many minutes ago. I could hear her voice even then sounding very far off in the wood’s dark depths. She must have been close on the heels of a hare.

“ I can call spirits from the vasty deep.” I could have called Queen from the forest, for I fear she was trespassing, but would she have come when I did call ? At such times as these when her canine majesty is in chase, she has eyes and ears for nothing except the fur that flies in front of her. So I sat down to wait.

I soon found however that I was not alone. I heard a sigh, a good honest “ Heigho ! ” that there could be no mistake about, and, looking in the direction from which it proceeded, I could see, through my protecting furze bush,

The GirFs Book of Health.

two young girls who had sat down under the shade of a drooping birch tree. Neither could have been over twenty, as far as I could judge.

“ Heigho ! I only wish I were as strong and healthy as you are, Mary.”

“ And as happy ? Ha ! ha ! ha ! ”

It was a merry ringing laugh, that, a moment after, I thought a thrush on a larch tree tried to imitate.

“ It is well with you that can laugh, Mary. I can’t, somehow. Heigho ; I always feel so tired.”

“ Elsie, I do believe you are in love,” said Mary in a bantering tone of voice.

“ Nonsense, Mary, I never knew what the feeling was lik^

I never saw anybody yet worth half an hour’s extra sleep in the morning.”

Now I could tell from their voices and from what I could see of them, that these girls were just innocent, simple, servant lassies. But as they presently began to repose verbal confidences in each other, I felt in duty bound to cough, by way of letting them know there were more ears about than those which belonged to the blackbirds and thrushes.

“ Ahem ! Hem ! ”

There was a little startled scream, if not two, and next minute Mary and Elsie walked shyly past me. A healthier, happier, rosier lass than Mary it would have been difficult to imagine, but I could tell at a glance that Elsie was, what, we medical men in our dry-as-dust phraseology call an anaemic subject. Mind you, I do not believe that there was a single sickly organ in her whole frame. She belonged to no particular diathesis — another doctor’s word — but, she was nervous-looking, rather languid, and pale. On the whole Mary was an interesting and rather pretty girl. Men folks, even medical men folks, cannot help admiring beauty when

T Always Feel so Tired.

they see it, and I could not but say to myself, as she passed on round the corner of the wood, “ many a plainer face than yours, Mary, and many a less elegant figure, are to be seen at every Queen’s Drawing Room.”

Well, I never expected to see Mary again. But I did, and had the pleasure of putting her once more on the straight road to health.

What ailed her, do you ask ? She was suffering from

bloodlessness, and if you turn to chapter you will find

this complaint fully described.

But after Mary and Elsie left the wood that day, I could not help cogitating upon the sad plaint that the latter had given vent to.

“ I always fed so tired.”

It is a plaint a physician hears almost every day in his life. “ I always feel so tired.” And it is the cry of the rich as well as the poor, though one would think they had small reason to complain.

Ah ! one little knows. Money may not be what the less fortunate classes call well divided ; but it seems to me that misery and sickness too, fall, like winter’s snows, equally on the wealthy and the penniless.

“ I always feel so tired.”

Now I might preach a very long sermon, or write a very long chapter on the loss of health, without conveying to the reader half what is summed up in these weary wee words, “ I always feel so tired.”

If you are tired, you can neither be happy nor well, and you may safely take the amount of your chronic weariness as representing your deviation from the paths of health.

I am not going to leave you comfortless, however, and if you feel chronically out of sorts, without feeling any actual pain, except, perhaps, a headache or back-ache now and then,

I think that by a return to obedience to the laws of health,

The Girl's Book of Health.

you may yet speedily get well without even having to call in the aid of a doctor.

Now, the first thing I want you to do, is to read and mentally digest what I say in the chapters which immediately follow this, for, depend upon it, that although there are many people who, for long years, may seem to bid defiance to the golden rules of health, and who live hap-hazard, eating or drinking, when, and how they choose, and who nevertheless seldom have a sick day or a sick headache, everyone is not so constitutioned, there are many weakly people in the world, many who must either always feel tired, or live by rule.

This living by rule, however, is by no means a penance, after a time. It becomes a habit, and habit you know is second nature. If, then, you are one of the tired class of girls, I am glad to be able to give you one word of consolation, one dose of that blessed remedy, Hope. It is this, — live rationally while still very young and you will thus tide yourself over this weary season, and like a ship sailing into summer seas, by the time you are, say, five and twenty, your path of life shall have weathered the storms and floated calmly into the golden seas of health and happiness.

Now, my experience tells me that no invalid — I trust my readers who find themselves ailing will not mind me calling them invalids — no invalid has a firm belief in a cure that is not linked in some small way to the taking of medicines.

Well, I will prescribe medicines towards the end of my little health-sermon. They will be such as shall do you good without the slightest chance of injuring you.

Medicines at times do much good.

The question comes to be how much faith, or how little are you to put in this bottle of medicine, or that box of pills. One thing at least is certain : medicine without proper

I Always Feel so Tired.

regime is quite worthless to the chronically ailing. Don’t forget that, please.

A great fault and a very frequent one with invalids is this : they do not keep long enough on with any line of, say, tonic treatment, to let it have fair play. They are wavering in their wills, uncertain in their thoughts, hopeful at one time, doubtful at another. A good night’s rest will make them awake to the glorious certainty of feeling as well as anyone could be. A restless night causes their souls to sink, as it were, into the pit of despair. Again they are easily led to try this, that, or some other cure which they happen to hear recommended or see advertised. Anything new in a medical way is sure to attract them. Alas ! it is too often some remedy introduced by a vile advertising quack. They try it for a time and hopes are implanted in their hearts, that are only too soon to be plucked out, and thus their last state is worse by far than the first.

Now there are many very excellent tonic medicines in the pharmacopoeia which well deserve to be known, but people who take these expect too much from them, or, rather, they expect a too immediate benefit. No tonic acts for good except in a very gradual way, and when improvement takes place hand in hand with the benefits which accrue from a well-regulated regime, in most cases the return to health is certain.

Constantly, however, during the progress of cure things are occurring to throw the patient back. Bad weather may intervene to interrupt exercise; the system may become constipated, and aperients a probable necessity, though these should be avoided if possible. Indeed, I may add that they are often taken when there is no real necessity for them, especially by nervous patients. So long as the tongue does not become foul or the appetite lost, a few days of a constipated system of body can do little if any harm.

1 6

The Girl's Book of Health.

But, with all drawbacks, I feel convinced thousands of ailing, spiritless, and hopeless ones would get well in a few months by a carefully, determinedly carried out regime, coupled with a simple but tonic plan of medicinal treatment.

I am a very great believer in the benefits of method in a course like that which I am now recommending. Without this method matters cannot progress to a happy and successful termination. I want my invalid readers — and I speak only to those who have no actual incurable disease of any internal organ — to get well and to keep well. But as, happily, the name of my readers is legion, I cannot lay down strict regulations for individual cases, so I shall now give some general advice for self-treatment, premising that it is best always to consult a medical man who knows the constitution of his would-be patient.

You have been out of health, then, for a long time. You have been weary, tired, feeble. You have to work, must work ; but you do not do so with pleasure and with a will. You have not consulted a doctor because you do not think you are bad enough for that ; besides, he might order you impossible things — absolute rest, for example, a change of climate, etc.

Well, then, you begin to long for the dear old days when everything was a pleasure to you, when the sun did seem to shine, when the winds never seemed to blow cold and damp and chill, when your nights were not restless and perturbed, and when during the day your thoughts were not so constantly turned inwards, bodywards, when you were not so self-conscious, not so bound-up in your own person, and when you had but few aches and pains.

Something is to be done, then.

Study method. In your calmest, quietest hour of the day — and that will probably be first thing in the morning — give

I Always Feel so Tired.

yourself up to thinking and planning something that shall benefit and restore you. Consider first what rule of nature you have disobeyed, and resolve to return to discipline in this respect. You must have made some error in diet, you must have been excessive in something. That ought to be remedied forthwith, and at whatever cost. If you are hard-worked — too hard-worked — you must ease off somewhat, or there is only one alternative — you will assuredly throw your life away by bringing on some dangerous and fatal internal complaint, some disease of liver, lungs, heart, or brain.

Next, if you wish to be extra exact, write your symptoms down in a note-book day by day, and also your steady scheme and plan of treatment. This will give you hope, because on looking back for, say a week, to this healthjournal, you will be surprised to find mention of some symptom or symptoms that you do not now feel.

This is a plan which I have over and over again recommended to chronically ailing ones, and I have never found it to be unproductive of good.

Thirdly. Plan out a scale of diet for yourself, and, take my sincere advice, let it be under rather than over the strengthening scale. No matter even if you lose a little flesh, your blood will become pure, your complexion fresh, and heart and mind will be light— you will be happier in a week.

Attend to diet, then ; let it be sparing, temperate, easily assimilated, and taken at regular hours.

Fourthly. Take a warm salt-water bath twice a week at night, and every morning a sponge-bath, also salt-water, as cold as you can bear it.

Fifthly. Take plenty of exercise, and I insist upon it that it shall be of an exhilarating nature. I will not allow you any long, moping walks all by yourself. Walk if you will,

B is

The Girl's Book of Health.

but let it be with a friend. Play at games, ride, row, do what you please, but let it be with friends. Only do not over-fatigue yourself. You will perspire easily at first. Whenever you get home, throw off the damp under-garment, rub down well with a wet towel, then dry off, and if fatigued take a cup of tea, your book, and a rest.

Sixthly. Recreation must not be neglected. You well know the power for good or evil the mind has over the body. Let it be a power for good. The day — I mean as much of it as you can spare — may and ought to be given up to wholesome exercise, but the evening is the time for pleasant chat, for kindly social intercourse, for reading, amusement, or calm reflection.

Seventhly. Let nothing disturb your thoughts before going to bed, and for at least an hour do not converse much. Read rather than talk, and read that which pleases and calms you most.

Eighthly. Attend to the perfect ventilation of your room. Sleep on a hardish mattress, with no more covering than is absolutely necessary, and get up by half-past seven whether you have slept or not.

Ninthly. About medicine. I want you to take nothing for the first week. Abstemiousness and rest will enable the weary brain and heart to get a fair start again. If the system is bound, try fruit in the morning, oatmeal porridge, green vegetables, etc. And if an aperient be absolutely necessary, get the mildest pill you know of, or can procure from your chemist. Probably an occasional glass of Pullna water, half an hour before breakfast, will do more good than anything else. As to tonics ; you want to take these, I know. Well, get iron in a non-constipating form, and take only small doses ; or iron and quinine, three-grain doses thrice a day ; or phosphorus in some form, such as a teaspoonful twice a day of Fellows’ syrup.

/ Always Feel so Tired l9

Cod-liver oil has a wonderful effect for good when it can be borne.

If there be slowness of digestion, with disagreeable feelings of fulness, etc., there are Wyeth’s peptonic tablets, procurable from any chemist ; or pepsine may be taken in a variety of other forms, too numerous to mention, or even

better still, get the new table salt called Pepsalia and use it with every meal.

Let me repeat, in conclusion, that I insist upon your being methodical in your regime and system of treatment. Lay down rules and stick to them, and I believe in a month you will be able to say, that it was a lucky day for you when you procured this book.

BURROUGHS, WELLCOME&CP

T TIRTR A TRY

*A* JLj \j o£«Xj cAj\*

No.

COMMON SENSE ABOUT FOOD — THE HEALTH VALUE OF VEGETABLES.

“ The wise do eat to live. Fools and gourmands live to eat.”— Old Adage.

“Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues.” — Bishop Hall.

As I walked about my garden this morning previously to sitting down to write, I kept debating with myself, whether I should devote my second chapter to a common sense talk about Food, or to a sermon on Fresh Air. And, although I have concluded to take the former first, it is not because it is a whit more valuable than the latter. More people die in this country, before they have reached the age of forty, for want of pure fresh air, than for the lack of, or insufficiency of food.

Now, if I were to give a long lecture here, about the physiology of digestion, I feel quite sure it would not be appreciated by girls, either young or — not so. Ologies of all kinds are distasteful to the young. As a boy told me once : “ they are worser nor salts and senna.” So do not be afraid to read on, girls. I am not going to sermonise about the benefits of slow mastication, nor the act of deglutition, nor gastric juices, nor chyme, nor chyle, nor anything of the kind.

Common Sense About Food.

But of course you will permit me to say something that I have said many times and oft before, though perhaps not to you : Good blood is made from food and not from physic.

Every girl wants to have pure blood in her veins I feel sure. For pure blood you know, means health, and health means happiness.

Besides you cannot have a good complexion if there be anything the matter with the blood. The skin will be dry and harsh if the blood is not sweet, it may be muddy almost, and the eye that ought to sparkle with health will be dull, even fishy — pardon the adjective, it is expressive,— the pupils will not be dark, nor the whites clear.

Well, errors in eating produce slight but frequent fits of indigestion. As often as not the only symptom of this dyspepsia is an irritable or cross temper. The girl is easily worried, and easily made angry, she looks cross and says cross things. Perhaps a minute afterwards she feels she wants to pinch herself hard for having done so. But, alas ! a word once spoken can never be recalled, and many a true friend has been lost on this very account.

Next to the air we breathe, our food is possessed of the most vital interest, yet very few of us ever give a single reasoning thought to what we eat or drink, until we begin to suffer some of the hundred horrors that indigestion can give rise to.

Indigestion is a simple name enough, and yet, what disease is there I wonder that it may not usher in, or even open the door to ?

Indigestion means a diminished power to assimilate food, it means a weakened system, it means impoverished and poisoned blood, it means debility of nerve and muscle, and it means a peevish and irritable temper, gloomy thoughts, and a mind entirely unable to cope with the many duties of

22 The Gi/l's Book of Health.

this work-a-day world. But for all that it is considered by many amongst us an ailment of very little moment.

But, indigestion induces mental troubles as well as bodily.

In her memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith, published many years ago, Lady Holland gives a racy, but truthful description of the miseries which may be brought on by fits of indigestion, even in the comparatively healthy. I transcribe it because I believe that to read it will do even the dyspeptic good.

“Happiness,” says her Ladyship, “is not impossible without health, but it is very difficult of attainment. I do not mean by health merely an absence of dangerous complaints, but that the body should be in perfect tune — full of vigour and alacrity. The longer I live the more I am convinced that the apothecary is of more importance than Seneca, and that half the unhappiness in the world proceeds from little stoppages, from a duct choked up, from food pressing in the wrong place, from a vexed duodenum, or an agitated pylorus.

“The deception as practised upon human creatures is curious and entertaining. My friend sups late; he eats some strong soup, then a lobster, then some tart, and he dilutes these esculent varieties with wine. The next day I call upon him. He is going to sell his house in London and retire into the country. He is alarmed for his eldest daughter’s health. His expenses are hourly increasing, and nothing but timely retreat can save him from ruin. All this is the lobster ; and when over-excited nature has had time to manage this testaceous incumbrance, the daughter recovers, the finances are in good order, and every rural idea effectually excluded from the mind.

“In the same manner old friendships are destroyed by toasted cheese, and hard salted meat has led to suicide. Unpleasant feelings of the body produce corresponding

Common Sense About Food.

sensations in the mind, and a great scene of wretchedness is sketched out by a morsel of indigestible and misguided food. Of such infinite consequence to happiness is it to study the body.”

This is all just as true as it is witty, but however quickly or easily a temporary fit of indigestion may be got rid of, constantly recurring attacks soon begin to tell a tale ; and a sad one, with a very sad ending, it is.

As regards food and eating, I do not believe that any one does arrive at the age of discretion until he is on the verge of forty, unless he has an attack of gout prior to that. Gout is another of the evil effects caused by injudicious eating. If the dyspepsia comes before the gout, the latter may be of a mild form, because the sufferer, by attending to his diet, will considerably mitigate the gouty tendency.

“I’ve been a dyspeptic for fifty years,” an aged clergyman used to say, “and I thank Heaven for it.”

He meant, of course, that attention to the fits of indigestion prevented the occurrence of gout. But his must have been a very mild form of dyspepsia indeed. Alas !

very few dyspeptics live for fifty years, or anythinnear it. &

Young people have to eat to grow, to form bone and muscle and nerve, but grown-up folks have only to eat to live— that is, we should merely take enough food to supply the waste that is continually going on in our systems, and every ounce beyond that is a tax on the system, and just as often as not a poison.

Here are a few facts about food and eating, which may 01- may not be new to the reader.

1. There are three elements of food : (a) The starches found in all cereals; they are hydro-carbons, and are converted into sugar (dextrine) by the action of the salivaas sugar it passes into the liver, where it is reconverted into’

The Girl's Book of Health.

glycogen, or animal starch, but is finally passed off into the blood as soluble sugar. This sugar is actually absorbed in the first instance through the mouth, another proof of the good effects that accrue from perfect mastication, which in itself is often a cure for dyspepsia in some of its forms.

( b ) The albumenoid, or nitrogenous food, found richly in eggs, in meat of all kinds, in milk, and cereals. This is tissue-forming food. It is digested in the stomach only.

(c) Fats which are emulsified after passing out of the stomach, and thus taken up by the lacteals. Therefore, about three hours after a meal, just when the pylorus has opened to permit the passage of the chyme from the stomach, is the best time to take cod-liver oil. The fats, like sugar, assist in keeping up the animal heat, hence they are largely used in cold countries.

2. The less fluid eaten with the food the better. Food should never be washed down with either tea or beer. These may be taken in limited quantities after.

3. Change in diet is most essential to our well-being, but the fewer dishes eaten at any one meal the better.

4. Soups are better in winter than in summer, and if bread be eaten with them, they are nourishing.

5. Food, when partaken of slowly, is less liable to disagree, and there is less chance of the error of over-eating being committed.

6. People who must hurry at meals, should always take, immediately after them, a dessert or tablespoonful of Kepler’s extract of malt.

7. Do not work, and expose yourself to no worry, immediately after a full meal.

8. Eating between meals is the cause of many an attack of dyspepsia, and many a muddy complexion and lack-lustre eye in girls, and the cause also of sleepless nights and nervousness in their elders.

Common Sense About Food.

9. Drinking much of anything between meals is also injurious to the system. If one feels very thirsty and must drink, she ought to do so slowly, and less will be required to satisfy thirst.

10. Perhaps the most wholesome drinks for summer weather are — whey, butter-milk, cold weak tea, or soda-water with milk ; home-made lemonade and appleade are likewise very good, and of the aerated waters, the unsweetened are the best.

11. Beware of aerated waters that are medicated. They should only be used under medical advice.

12. Fruit is a very excellent thing for the blood. Especially is it useful before breakfast in the morning; dates, for example, dipped in pure olive oil— not the flask oil called olive, but made from cotton seed— are a capital and natural cure for constipation. In winter oranges and lemons are both excellent.

Half a lemon squeezed into a small tumbler of cold water and drank before going to bed, the other half being taken similarly in the morning, often serves to keep the liver clear, and to brighten and beautify the eyes and complexion.

Nuts are very nutritious to those who can eat them.