And there is the poor stomach, a big nervous centre in close
communication with the brain, protesting and protesting, and its
owner interprets all these protestations into: "I am so unhappy. I
have to work so much harder than I ought. Nobody loves me. Oh, why
am I so nervous?"
The blood also cries out: "Give me more oxygen. I cannot help the
lungs or the stomach or the brain to do their work properly unless
you take exercise in the fresh air that will feed me truly and send
me over the body with good, wholesome vigor."
Now there is another thing that is sadly evident about the young
woman who will not take fresh air, nor eat the right food, nor
masticate properly the food that she does eat. When she goes out for
a walk she seems to fight the fresh air; she walks along full of
resistance and contraction, and tightens all her muscles so that she
moves as if she were tied together with ropes. The expression of her
face is one of miserable strain and endurance; the tone of her voice
is full of complaint. In eating either she takes her food with the
appearance of hungry grabbing, or she refuses it with a fastidious
scorn. Any nervous woman who really wants to find herself out, in
order to get well and strong, and contented and happy, will see in
this description a reflection of herself, even though it may be an
exaggerated reflection.
Did you ever see a tired, hungry baby fight his food? His mother
tries to put the bottle to his mouth, and the baby cries and cries,
and turns his head away, and brandishes his little arms about, as if
his mother were offering him something bitter. Then, finally, when
his mother succeeds in getting him to open his mouth and take the
food it makes you smile all over to see the contrast: he looks so
quiet and contented, and you can see his whole little body expand
with satisfaction.
It is just the same inherited tendency in a nervous woman that makes
her either consciously or unconsciously fight exercise and fresh
air, fight good food and eating it rightly, fight everything that is
wholesome and strengthening and quieting to her nerves, and cling
with painful tenacity to everything that is contracting and
weakening, and productive of chronic strain.
There is another thing that a woman fights: she fights rest. Who has
not seen a tired woman work harder and harder, when she was tired,
until she has worn herself to a state of nervous irritability and
finally has to succumb for want of strength? Who has not seen this
same tired woman, the moment she gets back a little grain of
strength, use it up again at once instead of waiting until she had
paid back her principal and could use only the interest of her
strength while keeping a good balance in reserve?
"I wish my mother would not do so many unnecessary things," said an
anxious daughter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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