m
to be--perfectly healthy and well developed.

Again, the cure of many diseases, especially those which are prevalent
in the summer months, belongs more to the women of the household than to
the physician. They alone can check the evil at its commencement. Every
educated woman ought to know, for instance, that cracked wheat and
hominy, oat-meal, corn-bread, and Graham bread, should not, as a general
rule, be made the staple of diet in case of what is popularly known as
"summer complaint"; and yet, how few girls seem to have any idea, when
they are thus sick, that it is a matter of the least consequence what
they eat, or that they ought not to make their breakfast of Boston brown
bread; and by how few of our girls is it considered a matter of any
moment that the opposite trouble exists for days. Ought they not to be
educated to know that they can devise no surer way of poisoning the
whole system, and then of straining all the contiguous organs, than by
wilful neglect in this direction? When some facts are obvious, and some
are latent, the blame, if trouble exists, is not unnaturally laid on the
visible facts. It is evident to the physician that the girl has attended
school. It is not so evident that, since her earliest childhood, she has
been fed on improper food, at irregular hours, and that the processes by
which the poisonous dead matter is removed from the system, have been
irregularly carried on. His questions put on these topics are put in a
general way, and answered in the same, with, perhaps, a worse than
foolish mock-modesty to prompt the reply. He does the best that he can,
but he cannot help stumbling, if he is required to walk in the dark.
This false shame of which I speak, on this matter, seems to be a folly
peculiarly American, and I am quite sure that it is not so common now as
it was twenty years ago, though there are still many American women who
would choose to run the risk of making themselves sick rather than to
tread the folly out under a pure womanly scorn. This is also a matter
which belongs to education.

One great trouble with our American girls, and one which can be remedied
by us, though we cannot remedy the climate, is not that their brains are
overworked, but that their bodies generally, including brain, are
underfed. I do not mean that they do not eat enough in bulk, though that
is often the case, but that they do not take in enough of the chemical
elements which they must have to build up