The practical housewife : $b A complete encyclopædia of domestic economy and family medical guidePhilp, Robert Kemp
General
The practical housewife : $b A complete encyclopædia of domestic economy and family medical guide
Philp, Robert Kemp
Formulas, recipes, etc.; Home economics; Medicine, Popular
What I am now about to say, some of my readers may perhaps think out of
place; nevertheless I shall say it. A woman cannot really do her duty as
a wife, mother, or mistress of a family, unless she is fully sensible
of the importance of health, and gives to all sanitary measures their
due attention. With loss of health come diminished powers of usefulness.
Languor and delicacy in a wife may call forth the sympathies, but do
not increase the comforts or happiness of a professional or business
man; neither do they render a woman more inclined for, or equal to, the
performance of her part in domestic life. And too many of our young girls
render themselves languid, feeble, and delicate, by inattention to the
commonest requisites of human nature. The crying evil of towns is usually
the want of baths attached to houses, and the small size of bed-rooms;
now these are in general accepted as things which must be endured, and
little or no attempt is made to palliate them. All medical men, however,
agree that plentiful ablutions of the body with cold or tepid water, and
a good supply of fresh air in every sleeping and living room, do more
to preserve health than all the drugs in the pharmacopœia. And next to
these come early rising, avoidance of late hours and crowded assemblies,
regular exercise in the open air, and attention to diet. By this latter
we do not mean actual eating, but abstinence from pernicious viands,
as pastry, sweetmeats, rich gravies, unripe fruit, &c. Pork, veal, and
various kinds of vegetables can only be eaten sparingly and occasionally
by some persons. Spirits should only be used medicinally, that is to say,
at times when common sense tells us they might be of benefit. To take
them habitually is equivalent to slow poison.
Besides the benefit a woman derives in her health and person from
attention to all matters relative to personal care, she will gain another
in the effect of her example upon her dependants; for we are all, to a
certain extent, creatures of imitation, and prone to follow example,
be it good or bad. Servants who see before them one who consistently
practises the virtues of economy, regularity, personal cleanliness, and
general neatness, will never run diametrically counter to all this,
but will in some degree shape their conduct accordingly; while all the
precepts in the world, without practice, will but go in at one ear and
out at the other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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