Our Girls Part 18

The dear Christ suggests the intimate relations between the soul and the stomach, when, before appealing to the hearts of the mult.i.tude, he filled their stomachs with good food.

In the Bible there are scores of expressions and phrases which point to the stomach as the seat of the sympathies.

All the bright ones, with subscription papers in their hands, wait till after dinner.

If they catch a man with a perfectly satisfied stomach, they are likely to get a good round sum, even for the Hottentot-red- flannel-shirt-fund.

The fact that the b.u.mps of the heart are in the upper part of the brain, matters little, if the condition of the digestive apparatus controls their action. When I remark that the heart is located in the stomach, it will, of course, be understood in a practical, rather than in an anatomical sense.

The condition of the stomach determines the action of the emotions to an extent which cannot be predicated of the intellectual faculties. When one is dyspeptic, he may multiply and divide; he may not disgrace himself even in the role of a logician; but if you appeal to his sympathies,--to any of his emotions,--you will wake up a pig, a porcupine, or, possibly, a tiger.

Leaving out the Bible intimations and statements, and the ill.u.s.trations which abound in English and German biography, no observing person will fail to recall numerous ill.u.s.trations in his own experience.

THE WAISTS OF JOLLY GRANDMOTHERS.

What sort of a waist has the grandmother who comes in from the country to take care of you through a typhoid fever?

When nine o'clock comes, she drives the young ladies off to bed. She may not speak it out, but she thinks, "trash! trash! Oh, do get out of my way, and lie down carefully on a soft couch, where you can rest, or I shall soon have you too on my hands."

Has she one of these wasp-waists? No indeed; hers is a jolly one!

Who ever saw a happy, helpful grandmother with an hour-gla.s.s waist?

Is a grandmother full of tickle? Can she join with the young people in laughter and sports? Can she? Then I know, without seeing her, the style of her form.

You see all the tickle comes from that part of the body.

The conditions of the organs within that part of the body known as the waist, decide whether you shall be happy or unhappy; jolly or blue. One condition, and the most important one, is that those vital organs shall have room to work in. If you squeeze them, you squeeze and strangle all the jolly in you.

Tie a cord about a child's arms and legs, and then say, "Now, my dear, you may run and play."

Ah, I used to know a grandmother, and, although she has been among the angels thirty years or more, I can't think of her even now, without a sigh of regret that she could not have lived forever in this world, she was such a joy to us all.

She is happier in heaven, I suppose, but I don't see how she could be happier anywhere, than she used to be here.

When her loving, laughing face appeared at the door, how we small chaps did tickle and squirm all over. But I must stop writing of her, or I shall have to lay down my pen. Never have I seen a girl of eighteen who was half so lovely.

But let me think; why did I bring forward this treasure of my heart?

Oh, I remember; it was to speak of her waist. How we used to laugh at her shape. We insisted that she was bigger around the waist than anywhere else.

"Well, perhaps so, boys, but there is where all my jolly comes from.

Look at your little slender things, they aint jolly; they can't laugh; they only give little giggles."

Ah, the dear, beautiful, blessed soul! What a jolly angel she must make. Oh, I do hope, if I ever reach there, I may be a little angel, so that she can take me into her arms, and press me into her warm, loving bosom just as she used to. When I hear her laugh I am sure I shall feel at home, no matter how grand and dazzling the great White Throne may be.

ABOUT THE TREATMENT OF DISEASES.

Dear girls, bye and bye you will be wives and mothers, and will have occasion to consider the treatment of various diseases. Not that diseases are inevitable, but we must consider things as they are, and not as they might be.

The mother, if she be wise, has the selection of the doctor, and the management of the sick ones. This supervision of the health of the household falls so naturally into the hands of women, the nursing and other duties incidental to sickness, are so universally hers, that even among peoples and tribes where women are but slaves, their authority in all that concerns the management of the sick is unquestioned.

En pa.s.sant it may be remarked that nothing but the blind, stupid prejudice of men would oppose the introduction of women to the medical profession.

It is a profession which belongs to them. Nature herself has decreed it, and when the hard, selfish, overbearing tyranny of men shall permit things to take their natural course, we shall have very few men in the medical profession.

But my object in this chapter is to speak of a fundamental misapprehension underlying the profession of medicine. This misapprehension is, that diseases are local.

Let me give an ill.u.s.tration or two.

A doctor attempts a case of catarrh. He opens the nostril with his speculum, turns in a strong light, takes a long, careful look, then examines, perhaps with a microscope, some of the fluid which the patient blows out of his nose, and then the doctor says, "Ahem!

ahem! this is a case of sick nose. It is a case of nasal catarrh.

The pituitary membrane is congested, and is secreting a morbid mucus. Ahem! you really should have called upon me before."

Then the doctor proceeds to inject various stimulating caustic fluids into the nostrils. He gives a snuff. He introduces a crooked tube into the man's mouth, and turns the end up back of his palate, and, getting into the back opening of the nostrils, he blows in certain medicated powders. The nose is better at once, the treatment is continued, the patient is soon cured; with the first cold or stomach derangement the symptoms return, the second cure is more difficult, the third is very difficult, and then the patient goes to another doctor, who tells him he is very sorry that he has been so quacked, but he will make a sure cure this time. He goes through with the same performance, with similar results. The patient now abandons hope, and goes snuffling about, to the great discomfort of himself and friends. In just this way a hundred maladies are treated,--an inflamed eye, a noise in the ear, a rheumatic knee, a gouty toe, a pain in the liver or spine, a sore throat, and so on through the whole list. The doctor finds the sick place, and then proceeds to attack it.

The idea that the disease is in a certain part of the system, and that the artillery must be directed to that precise spot, is not only common among the doctors, but is so plausible that the people all adopt it. This is the fundamental misapprehension underlying the disastrous failure in medicine.

The catarrh is not of the nose, but of the man, showing itself in the nose. The bronchitis is not a disease of the throat, but of the man, showing itself in the throat. The sore eye is not a disease of the eye, but of the man, showing itself in the eye.

A local disease is impossible. The organism is one and not many.

Even a gun-shot wound is not a local trouble. Suppose a man's little finger is shot away. The man is not in the condition of a table with a corner shot off; he is not even in the condition of a steam engine with a valve or screw destroyed. Neither approaches the case of the man with the maimed hand. The table is, except the small point touched by the bullet, exactly as before. Feel of it. There is no unusual warmth, no trembling, no sympathy with the wounded corner.

In fact, the table is quite well, thank you, except where it was. .h.i.t. Now examine the man with the hurt finger. Look at his face. How pale and excited. Feel his pulse. It is 120 instead of 75. The skin of his toes is in a peculiar condition. What is the matter with this man's toes? They are suffering from a wound in his little finger.

While no doctor fails to talk much of the vis medicatrix naturae, while the condition of the general system is constantly invoked to explain this and that, the treatment of most local affections is conducted on the plan of repairing the wound in the corner of the table.

Here comes a man with a limping gait. He shows an ulcer upon his ankle. The disease, sir, is not of your ankle, but of your system. I will direct you how to improve your general health, so that this ulcer will disappear, with no other local treatment than cleanliness. You can't be cured by any doctor stuff put upon the sore. This is the flag of distress which nature hangs out to give notice of trouble within.

We are at sea and descry a vessel with a flag of distress. Our captain believes in the doctrine of local diseases, and sends a boat's crew to cut down the flag; whereupon he struts about the deck exclaiming, "We've done it! we've done it! we have cured them!" The doctor who treats the ulcer, salt rheum, catarrh, or any other local manifestation, as the disease itself, is about equally bright.

But here comes a bad case. How pale and weak he seems. His pulse is 110, he is distressingly emaciated, and seems ready for the grave.

His cough and labored breathing suggest consumption, and we apply the stethoscope to the chest. Ah, it's all of a piece. His lungs are terribly ulcerated. "Now," says some wise doctor, "here it is. We've found his trouble. We must bring our medicines to bear upon these ulcers." "Yes, Doctor, that's it," gasps the patient; "just fix me there, and I shall be all right." Then the wise doctor proceeds with his inhalations, and keeps up the pitiful, suffocating farce, until the patient, notwithstanding this most skillful treatment, sinks and dies.

As a matter of fact, this man's system, from some inherited taint, or from some vicious habit, unhealthy mode of life, or some other cause, was sick all through and through for months or years before the malady was localized in his lungs. The ulcers in his lungs, like his rapid pulse, emaciation, and sickening perspiration, are simply manifestations of the disease. The real disease is systemic, like all others, and must be treated like all other diseases, by lifting up the general vitality.

This must be done through sunshine, fresh air, exercise, cleanliness, much sleep, cheerful society, and a wise diet. To give such a patient medicated vapors, drugs for his stomach, or whiskey, is a barbarism, that must soon give way before the advancing light of our civilization.

SUNSHINE AND HEALTH.

Five or six years ago, when "Our Young Folks" was first published, Messrs. Ticknor & Fields asked me to write some articles for that magazine, about the management of children. One of those articles was the following. It was published in the September number of the year 1865:--

A Few Plain Words to My Little Pale-Faced Friends.