Women, Look Here! by Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 30, 1866

Women, Look Here!

By Editor

If it were justifiable to use hard words at all, the writer hereof would think it excusable when he hears women complaining of all the ills conceivable, and sees them go into the streets, or out to walk with only thin shoes and thin cotton stockings on their feet, and knows they have no adequate protection for their limbs. But that is not the worst feature. It is far worse to see them send their children out equally exposed. It is murder in the first degree. We happen to know some women who have recovered health by learning how to make themselves comfortable—how to clothe their persons so as to keep the temperature of all parts of the body uniform. And we have known scores of poor women who went prematurely to their last rest because they never learned the comfort of being warmly clad. There are plenty of inhuman mothers left, who will sacrifice a child's health in order that she may "look pretty," or look as well as somebody's else child does. There are very few days pass that we do not see illustrations of this criminal vanity that not only make our heart ache, but bitter words come into our mouth. Feeling thus, we want the women who read the Rural to carefully peruse the following from the pen of Dr. Dio Lewis: It is sound common sense. It is truth.

'During the damp and cold season deficient dress of the feet and legs is a fruitful source of disease. The head, throat, and liver are perhaps the most frequent sufferers. The legs and feet are far from the central part of the body. They are not in great mass like the trunk, but extended and enveloped by the atmosphere. Besides, they are near the damp, cold earth. For these and other reasons, they require extra covering. If we would secure the highest physiological conditions, we must give our extremities more dress than the body.

We men wear upon our legs, in the coldest season, but two thicknesses of cloth. The body has at least six. Women put on them four thicknesses under the shawl, which with its various doublings, furnishes several more—then, over all, thick, padded furs: while the legs have one thickness of cotton under a balloon.

'They constantly come to me about their headache, palpitation of the heart, and congestion of the liver. Yesterday one said to me, 'All my blood is in my head and chest. My head and chest go bumpety-bump, and my heart goes bumpety-bump.' I asked, 'How are your feet?' 'Chunks of ice,' she replied. I said to her, 'If you so dress your legs and feet that the blood can't get down into them, where can it go? It can't go out visiting. It must stay in the system somewhere. Of course the chest and head must have an excessive quantity. So they go bumpety-bump, and so they must go, until you dress your legs and feet, in such a way that they shall get their share of blood. In the coldest season of the year I leave Boston for a bit of a tour before the lyceum—going as far as Philadelphia, and riding much in the night without an overcoat; but I give my legs two or three times their usual dress. During the coldest weather, men may wear, in addition to their usual drawers, a pair of chamois-skin drawers with great advantage. When we ride in a sleigh, or the cars, where do we suffer? In our legs, of course. Give me warm legs and feet, and I'll hardly thank you for an overcoat.'

'My dear madam, have you a headache, a sore throat, palpitation of the heart, congestion of the liver, or indigestion? Wear one, two, or three pairs of warm woolen stockings, and thick, warm shoes, with more or less reduction in the amount of dress about your body, and you will obtain the same relief permanently that you would derive temporarily from a warm foot-bath.

'I must not forget to say that a thin layer of India-rubber cemented upon the boot-sole will do much to keep the bottoms of our feet dry and warm.'