The housewife under consideration, Mrs. T.F., aged twenty-eight, married
five years, two children, complained mainly of headache, occasional
dizziness, great irritability, and fatigue, so that quarrels with her
husband were very common, though there seemed nothing to quarrel about.
The family was not rich, but lived in a comfortable apartment; there
were no serious financial burdens, the children were reasonably healthy
and good, and the closest questioning revealed the husband as a kindly
man who never took the initiative in quarrels but who was never able to
keep silent under provocation. The couple was still in love and there
seemed to be no essential incompatibility.
Questioned as to her habits, Mrs. F. said she did all her own housework
except the washing and ironing and scrubbing. She had a little girl
three times a week to take the baby out. Before marriage she had been a
stenographer, but never earned high pay and had no love for her work. In
fact she gave it up with relief and found housework with its
disagreeable features much more to her taste than business. She had been
of a placid, pleasant temperament and could not understand the change in
her.
Since all this did not explain her symptoms, closer inquiry was made
into her habits. She arose with her husband at seven-thirty, prepared
his breakfast, sent the oldest child off to kindergarten and then had
her own breakfast, which usually consisted of toast and coffee. At noon
she had a very small piece of meat or an egg and a few potatoes with
tea. At night she ate sparingly of the dinner, which usually was meat,
potatoes, another vegetable, and a dessert. Her husband here stated that
she ate at this meal less than the boy of four and a half.
Comparing her buxom figure with the diet a discrepancy was at once
apparent. She then confessed with shame that she was a constant nibbler,
eating a bit of this or that every half hour or so, and consequently
never had an appetite. The food thus nibbled usually was either spicy or
sweet, and she consumed quite a bit of candy. Her bowels moved
infrequently and she always needed laxatives. In her spare time she felt
rather "logy", rarely went out, except now and then at night with her
husband, and spent her leisure hours on the couch reading or nibbling.
This in itself would have quite explained much of her trouble. It has
been pointed out that body and mind are not separable; that mental
functions are based on the bodily functions, and that mood may rest on
no more exalted cause then the condition of the bowels. But a more
intimate questioning revealed sexual habits which are easily drifted
into by people of an amorous turn of character and who are really fond
of one another. These both husband and wife frankly said they had not
meant to speak of, but with their disclosure it was evident that a good
deal of importance was to be attached to them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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