The Four Epochs of Woman's Life: A Study in Hygiene | ||
PREFACE.
--"Henry VI."
PERFECT health is essential to perfect happiness. The greater the knowledge of the laws of nature, and the more closely these laws are lived up to, so much nearer "ideal" will be the health and happiness of the individual. Hence the necessity that these same laws should be as familiar to the adult man and woman as the alphabet. Further, with our present knowledge of the certain suffering, disease, and death that are bred by ignorance of all these subjects, it is little less than criminal to allow girls to reach the age of puberty without the slightest knowledge of the menstrual function; young women to be married in total ignorance of the ethics of married life; women to become mothers without any conception of the duties of motherhood; other women, as the time approaches, to live in dread apprehension of "the change of life;" and many women unnecessarily to succumb to disease at this time.
The masses of women have at last awakened to a sense of the awful penalties which they have paid for
This is preeminently the day of preventive medicine; and the physician who can prevent the origin of disease is a greater benefactor than the one who can lessen the mortality or suffering after the disease has occurred.
ANNA M. GALBRAITH.
15 WEST NINETY-FIRST STREET, NEW YORK,
November, 1901.
The Four Epochs of Woman's Life: A Study in Hygiene | ||