This is the most momentous health-problem with which we have to deal,--
to secure the proper physical advantages of civilization for American
women. Without this there can be no lasting progress. The Sandwich
Island proverb says,--

"If strong be the frame of the mother,
Her son shall make laws for the people."

But in this country, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that
every man grows to maturity surrounded by a circle of invalid female
relatives, that he later finds himself the husband of an invalid wife
and the parent of invalid daughters, and that he comes at last to regard
invalidism, as Michelet coolly declares, the normal condition of that
sex,--as if the Almighty did not know how to create a woman. This, of
course, spreads a gloom over life. When I look at the morning throng of
schoolgirls in summer, hurrying through every street, with fresh, young
faces, and vesture of lilies, duly curled and straw-hatted and booted,
and turned off as patterns of perfection by proud mammas,--it is not sad
to me to think that all this young beauty must one day fade and die, for
there are spheres of life beyond this earth, I know, and the soul is
good to endure through more than one;--the sadness is in the unnatural
nearness of the decay, to foresee the living death of disease that is
waiting close at hand for so many, to know how terrible a proportion of
those fair children are walking unconsciously into a weary, wretched,
powerless, joyless, useless maturity. Among the myriad triumphs of
advancing civilization, there seems but one formidable danger, and that
is here.

It cannot be doubted, however, that the peril will pass by, with
advancing knowledge. In proportion to our national recklessness of