A Physician's Counsels to Woman, in Health and Disease (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PUBERTY. enter now upon the consideration of the preludes to maternity. It has been well said that the first steps the young girl takes in the painful way which conducts her to the joys of the mother are decisive for her future health. The approach to womanhood is a gradual one. Step by step the little girl separates herself more and more widely, in mind and body, from the boy, her companion. One by one many of the common points of resemblance between them disappear. Nature is preparing her for the destiny which awaits her. The hour finally comes when the maternal sense is awaked, and, hand in hand with a transformation of the moral nature, it brings to light a new physical function. The establishment of the monthly change, the expression of womanhood, is not, therefore, a sudden one. It is announced from afar. An attentive eye can discern it in the distance. The Signs of Puberty. These are seen earliest in the outlines of the figure. The breasts, in particular, enlarge, but a deposit of fat also takes place elsewhere under the skin, at first in the groins and then over the whole body. At the same time, if everything goes on well, the life-forces seem to arouse themselves to increased activity and brilliancy; they brighten the complexion, animate the look, enrich the voice, and change the whole expression of the face. The tastes, the thoughts, and the disposition are modified. All these alterations take place in the midst of a disturbance of the nervous system more or less perceptible, and place the health in a condition of peculiar sensibility to any morbid influence which may attack it from without or from within the system. It is well, therefore? for hygienic reasons, that every mother should be acquainted with the time, at least proximately, at which this ...