Preserving the Health of Young Girls by Kate Upson Clark

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 1, 1907

Preserving the Health of Young Girls

By Kate Upson Clark

Two well-known singing teachers have recently testified that their girl pupils are ailing most of the time. Lessons are skipped, progress is impeded, voices are injured by such indisposition, life is demoralized generally. One of these teachers said that at least half his pupils were under the doctor’s care all the time.

“And then I am blamed for not developing their voices properly,” he complained. “Sick girls can not learn to sing, even if they could keep up their lessons regularly.”

A young college girl has just brought to New York the news that a large proportion

of her classmates are either in the hospital or their own rooms under the care of physicians. There is no epidemic in the institution. The girls are just “laid up” with that ordinary ailment generally called the grip.

“Of course they are sick,” commented the girl, nonchalantly. “Girls are always sick. They can’t stand the strain of college life like boys. It isn’t to be expected.”

Remarks of that sort are too common. It seems as if a large class of people take it for granted that women are naturally invalids, which sounds almost as if they accused their Maker of having done his work badly.

But we are persuaded better things of humanity. Reverently, we believe that the Creator meant girls and women to be strong, bright, merry, and useful, to possess health and all the glories and blessings which go with it.

In the first place, the singing teachers and the college girl probably took no account of the fact that most of the ailing maidens were wearing lingerie waists, coming down to breakfast in them on cold mornings; sitting in them through drafty lectures, concerts, plays; their bare necks and shoulders showing through the dainty embroideries, and their sleeves short. If our boys had been arrayed so foolishly, they, too, would have had “all kinds of the grip.”

Perhaps boys and girls are equally subjected to the strain of late hours, indigestible food, wet feet, and constant excitement. Quiet evenings at home are rare for either girls or boys over seventeen. Even in our colleges for girls there is a continual succession of class and society and general entertainments, which, coupled with their study, keep the nerves of the student in a steady quiver (a paradox, but true) from one week’s end to another.

The girls, too, have almost or quite as much outdoor exercise as boys do in these days. In fact, the only sanitary condition in which boys have the advantage would seem to be in this matter of clothing. The costume of men is not entirely hygienic; but it is far more comfortable and more conducive to health than that of girls and women.

Thin shoes are responsible for many ailments of girlhood; tight shoes, for many more. A long-continued course of tight shoes is enough to give even a strong person nervous prostration. The heavy hat is another source of ill-health among girls. The craze for becoming “picture hats,” some of them ridiculously large and cruelly heavy, must be modified if girls are to keep well.

Given a generous and healthful diet, plenty of outdoor exercise, nine hours of quiet sleep in each twenty-four, pleasant occupation, and, perhaps most important of all, loose and comfortable clothing, and our girls would be able to bear, without illness, all the noble and pressing duties which a wise Providence has appointed for the modern maiden, in her preparation for the important responsibilities of free and happy American womanhood.—Kate Upson Clark