It seems to me that the ancients very appropriately had a goddess as
well as a god of health and the healing art, inasmuch as the care and
preservation of health comes so largely within the natural sphere of
woman. Vigorous constitutions can be built up in well-conducted
homes, and this even when the natural constitution is feeble. I have
done in my time a great deal of talking on the subject of healthful
homes. At Mrs. Black’s some one is sick half or more than half the
time; I visited Mrs. Black once to offer any service in my power,
when two of her daughters were ill. Mrs. Black said: “It is
impossible to keep well in this world where there are so many things
to induce disease.” I replied: “We must not blame the world too
rashly, Mrs. Black, for we shall find that while there are many
things to induce disease, there are just as many to produce good
health.”
“Look at our changeful climates: hot one day, cold the next.”
“True; but if, summer and winter, we would wear a flannel garment
next to the skin, varying the thickness of the garment with the
change of season, we should, provided we kept the feet in
sufficiently thick shoes, very seldom be affected by the changes in
the temperature.”
“As for flannel,” said Mrs. Black, “my girls won’t wear it;
it makes them look so stout and full about the chest and waist.”
“I hope the day will come,” I replied, “when a wasp-waist and a
pair of thin shoulders will not be esteemed beauty: we have had our
ideas ruined by trash novels, praising ‘fragile forms’ and
‘delicate beauty,’ ‘dainty waists,’ ‘snow-drop faces,’
and a lot of other nonsense. What prospect have such beauties of
seeing three-score, or what physique are their sons likely to
possess? Indeed, Mrs. Black, I think you should have made it a
matter of course, from infancy, that your children wore flannel
under-garments. Really, there is nothing cheaper, safer, or more
comfortable. I knew a young girl whose two elder sisters had died
with consumption; symptoms of the disease appeared in her: a friend
took her to a famous physician. He said: ‘She had better be sent
to the south of France.’ The lady replied: ‘Doctor, her parents
are absolutely unable to take her away from home; they have not the
means.’ The doctor meditated: it was November: ‘Has she flannel
on?’ No, the young lady did not like flannel. ‘Take her home,’
said the doctor, ‘and put her in heavy flannel from her neck to her
toes, and see that she wears it, with some variation as to quality,
twelve months in the year.’ The order was obeyed, and for ten
years she has been in good health.”
“And there is another means of health-preserving, Mrs. Black, which
we greatly neglect — sunshine. Plenty of sunshine is a very
wine of life. We should let it fall broadly into our rooms,
especially where we eat, sit and sleep. Nine months in the year our
windows should daily stand broadly open for a sun-bath. In our hot
summers, our homes seem to get saturated with sunshine, unless our
houses are very thickly shaded by vines and trees, and possibly then
two hours of early morning sunshine will be enough.”
“But, my dear Miss Sophronia, it ruins the carpets.”
“Better sacrifice the carpets than the health: we are too much the
slaves of carpets; if I could not have the carpet and the sun, I
would give up the carpet. The sunbeams hold no spores of disease:
carpets frequently do; sunbeams have no dust, dangerous to weak
lungs: carpets do. But, Mrs. Black, a drugget, or a carpet-cover, or
even a coarse sheet can be flung over the carpet if it needs
protecting; and then let in those invigorating rays, which God meant
should counteract disease. I believe many diseases can be cured by
merely plenty of fresh air and sunshine.”
Mrs. Black was dwelling on my heterodoxy as to carpets.
“Dear Miss Sophronia! banish carpets! bare floors! What would you
do? How would you live?”
“Mrs. Black, it seems to me that we do not sufficiently value
mattings, especially in bed-rooms. They are free from dust; of a
good quality, they wear a long time; they are easy to sweep; they
look clean; and the sun does not harm them: remember, they grew under
tropic suns; they have no harmful dye-stuffs in them. Some object
that they are cold, but this can be obviated by rugs laid before the
bed, washstand and bureau. Let me tell you my experience: I spent a
year once, while my house was being built, with my half-sister in the
city. She treated me royally; my bed-room was dressed in rose and
gray French chintz, rose-tinted wall-paper, and had a rose-colored
velvet carpet. It was altogether too fine for the sun to shine in:
the sun would ruin it. A furnace, with air-feeders from out of
doors, kept the house warm and dry; but nevertheless I was a martyr
to rheumatism. Cousin Ann, hearing this, sent for me to spend the
next winter with her at the farm. My room had white-washed walls,
white curtains, a white counterpane and white matting.”
“Goodness!” interrupted Mrs. Black, “I should think it would
have made you think of a whited sepulchre!”
“Not at all,” I retorted: “its conditions were such that it was
unlikely to have in it either rottenness or dead men’s bones.
Color was lent it by three or four bright rugs and a colored set of
toilette mats, with a few pictures. I kept wondering why that simple
room looked and felt so beautiful. I perceived that the
floods of sunshine, which, during the whole day, poured in at one of
its three bright windows lent it its chief charm. My health was
perfectly restored.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Black, “my girls would rather be sick half
the time than get well by wearing flannels and stout shoes, and going
out in the sun exercising and spoiling their complexions, or having
their carpets and curtains faded out by having all the blinds open.”
“But as a mere matter of beauty, Mrs. Black,” I urged, “there
is no beauty in a sallow, sickly complexion, and if they are sick
half the time, what will result? Medicine and bad digestion will
ruin their teeth; ill health will make their faces wan and faded;
their color will be lost; their hair will be dry and thin; at
twenty-five they will look ten years older; they will have a fretted,
disappointed, troubled expression, and will always feel dispirited
and uncomfortable.”
However, there is no use talking with Mrs. Black. It is no wonder
that her girls are so captious, and look so feeble. Thin-soled
shoes, no flannel, no exercise, very little fresh air, and almost no
sunshine in their house; and this record might do for very many other
families.
