Above all, it must not be forgotten that whenever women do not get out into the air regularly every day--and this means for a time both morning and afternoon--they are likely to become extremely sensitive to pains and aches. This is true of all human beings. Those who are much in the open air complain very little of injuries and bodily conditions that would seem extremely painful to those living sedentary lives and who are much indoors. Riding in the open air is better than not being in the open air at all, but it does not compare in its power to desensitize people with active exercise in the open air. In the older days, when women occupied themselves very much indoors with {272} sewing, knitting and other feminine work, and with reading in the evenings, and when it was considered quite undignified for them to take part in sports, neurotic conditions were even more common than they are at the present time, and young women were supposed to faint readily and were quite expected to have attacks of the "vapors" and the "tantrums." The interest of young women in sports in recent years and the practice of walking has done a great deal to make them ever so much healthier and has had not a little to do with decreasing the number and intensity of the so-called feminine ills, the special "women's diseases" of the patent medicine advertisements. Much remains to be done in this regard, however, and there are still a great many young women who need to be encouraged to take more exercise in the open than they do and thus to live more natural lives. It is particularly, however, the women of middle age, around forty and beyond it, who need to be encouraged to use their wills for the establishment of habits of regular exercise in the open air as well as the creation of interests of one kind or another that will keep them from thinking too much about {273} themselves and dwelling on their discomforts. These are thus exaggerated until often a woman who has only some of the feelings that are almost normally connected with physiological processes persuades herself that she is the victim of a malady or maladies that make her a pitiable object, deserving of the sympathy of her friends.