elatives have died of this
disease, against its invasion. It is voluntary inspiration. Nothing is
more simple. Let her stand erect, throw the shoulders well back, and the
hands behind; then let her slowly inhale pure air to the full capacity
of the lungs, and retain it a few seconds _by an increased effort_; then
it may be slowly exhaled. After one or two natural inspirations, let her
repeat the act, and so on for ten or fifteen minutes, twice daily. Not
only is this simple procedure a safeguard against consumption, but, in
the opinion of some learned physicians, it can even cure it when it has
already commenced.

At first the monthly loss of blood exhausts the system. Therefore,
plenty of food, plenty of rest, plenty of sleep, are required. That
ancient prejudice in favour of early rising should be discarded now, and
the girl should retire early, and if she will, should sleep late. Hard
study, care, or anxiety should be spared her. This is not the time for
rigid discipline.

_Clothing_ is a matter of importance, and, if we were at all sure of
attention, there is much we would say of it. The thought seriously
troubles us, that so long as women consent to deform themselves and
sacrifice their health to false ideas of beauty, it is almost hopeless
to urge their fitness for, and their right to a higher life than they
now enjoy. No educated painter or sculptor is ignorant of what the model
of female beauty is; no fashionable woman is content unless she departs
from it as far as possible.

Now beauty implies health, and ugliness of form is attained not only at
the expense of aesthetics, but of comfort. The custom of fastening
growing girls in tight corsets, of flattening their breasts with pads,
of distorting their feet in small high-heeled shoes, and of teaching
them to stoop and mince in gait, is calculated to disgust every observer
of good sense and taste, and, what is of more consequence, to render
these girls, when they become women, more liable to every species of
suffering connected with child-bearing.

The monthly change is the prelude to maternity. On its healthful
recurrence depends present comfort and future health; and not these
alone, but also happiness in marriage, easy child-beds, and the
constitution of children to a degree the thoughtless girl and even the
mature woman rarely understand. She, therefore, who neglects the due
care of her own condition, violates a duty owed to others as well as
herself. We