The dress reform problem : a chapter for women / by E. Ward & Co.

  • E. Ward & Co.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The dress reform problem : a chapter for women / by E. Ward & Co. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    intellect must have a large brain to nourish it; a large bx’ain needs a well-built strong body from whence to draw its resources. You may point to illustration after illus- tration of the fallacy of the assumption—to those weak and puny in body whose intellects have been gigantic— you may show how frequently the great successes of mind over matter are won by the feeble and the sickly. We know it ail, but hold to our dictum—“ Nature’s old salique law will not he repealed.” In the long run, the stalwart frames of healthy men carry the day ; and where feebler frames of either sex achieve the like result, it ean be done only by drawing upon vital forces which ought to be religiously conserved to do battle with the natural ills of advancing old age. Yes ; we “ women are fearfully weighted in the race of life,” and if we desire to do a man’s work in the world—by that phrase we mean not a man’s work proper, but the accomplishment of the same amount of work, be it mental or bodily—then it becomes imperative that we hasten to liberate ourselves from the weight of physical disabilities under which we have laboured and groaned for centuries. The burden of life must be made less heavy for us. We must have common sense to see there should be no more reason for the bear- ing of children to be a source of danger and of dread to the civilised woman than it is to the savage, who retires from the family circle for a short hour or so, and then calmly returns to cook the next meal with her new-born baby slung upon her back. It is both instructive and saddening to ponder over the list of preventable diseases to which any one of us, at any moment, may fall a victim from sheer ignorance or