Woman her diseases and their treatment Author:John King Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WOMEN: Their Diseases and their Treatment, INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. Hygiene—Exercise—Cleanliness—Clothing—Air—Early Marriage—Sexual Abuses. The structur... more »e of the human female differs considerably from that of the male, in consequence of which we observe certain functions, which belong exclusively to the female sex, as menstruation, child-bearing, and lactation. These peculiar functions and differences of organization, being subject to derangements and diseased conditions, give rise to a class of maladies not met with among males, and which require a separate and especial notice. However, before entering upon an examination of the Diseases of Females, it may be proper to make a few brief remarks concerning the Hygiene of women. Without a strict attention to the laws of the animal economy, females cannot expect to make healthy women, healthy wives, healthy mothers; and unless these be healthy, we cannot expect healthy offspring. The female who neglects the hygienic rules, or who enfeebles the powers of her system, by a course of thoughtlessness and misgovernment, or by pursuing a fashionable routine of dissipation, will make only an invalid, sterile wife, or, should she unfortunately give birth to offspring, they will be of delicate, sickly constitutions, seldom attaining adult age. There is no doubt but the decay of once great nations was as much owing to the condition of their women as to any (7) " other cause—prosperity and wealth begetting ease, luxury, and refined dissipation,—these, in their turn, begetting enfeebled, exhausted, and diseased constitutions, from which follow, as a necessary natural result, both physical and mental imbecility of offspring, which are well calculated to destroy families, races, and nations. In order, therefore, to secure and r...« less