Note D. The following chapter is a part of my small work entitled Letters to the People on Health and Happiness, published by the Harpers, who have loaned the stereotype plates here used.
Before reading it, I would ask that my definitions be borne in mind when I class the degrees of health, and also the fact that when I give my own observations I am confined to those persons whom I know well enough to ascertain exactly their state of health, while there may be others in close vicinity not noticed, whom on enquiry I might find to be vigorously healthy women.
Every woman who has any kind of liability to be a mother, or a nurse of the sick, or to meet other exhausting emergencies of the family state needs a reserved force of vital strength which many women who seem to be in perfect health find lacking in such emergencies. This want of this is one cause of the frequent failure of health after marriage, and is one result of a transmitted delicate constitution.
I also ask special attention to the fact that women in the country of the industrial classes have not the robust health of earlier generations. In addition to other causes, for this, is the overworking and anxiety consequent on increased civilization. The fashions and expenditures of cities stimulate the country, and the mothers strain every nerve to secure for sons and daughters a style of dress and furniture in former days unknown. This and the desire to accumulate, wears out many a wife and mother before half her days are accomplished, making her a perpetual invalid or sending her to an early grave.