The average American girl approaches puberty without any definite knowledge of what a menstrual flow means. If you are one of these neglected girls and have had a fright when you first menstruated, had all kinds of stories put into your head, you must try to forget the fright and realize that all the stories are really nothing but stories. If you have passed over one or two periods after the first one made its appearance, it does not mean that you are going to become crazy, that something is wrong with you, but that the fright, the tales you have heard and the sensitive condition at your age have all affected your nervous system, and you will come out all right after you possess a full knowledge of these things as we go on from Chat to Chat.

The average American girl commences to menstruate at about fourteen years of age. Now if you have menstruated two years earlier or two years later it means nothing but a condition of your race, how you have lived, in the country or the excitements of the city, and[15] other social conditions. From the time a girl first menstruates she can count on about thirty years of activity for the ovaries and womb. That is, if a girl menstruates for the first time at fourteen years of age, she ought not to have any cessation of the periods until she is forty-five years of age. So you can see that the later she is in starting, the later she will be in stopping. Of course the same thing happens when the girl commences to menstruate earlier, she will stop earlier.

The ovaries are two little sack-like organs lying on each side, in the pelvis, or the groin. From each ovary runs a little tube to the womb, which is situated beneath them right in the middle of the body. Now every month the ovaries send down the tubes a little egg which lands in the upper part of the womb, and when the womb is full of blood, which occurs every month in the healthy girl, this egg is carried away in the blood.

I do not intend to talk to you about the process of procreation or the physiology of conception; all these matters you may read about in the many good books which have been written upon those subjects. What I want to tell you are facts and things not to be found in books and which will, if you guide yourself by them, make you a strong and healthy woman throughout all your life.

[16]

From the time you first realize that you are no longer a little girl, but growing into a woman, you should commence to take the best of care of the ovaries and the monthly flow. These ovaries hang in the body by very tender and delicate ligaments. Never mind the names the doctors call these cords or other ligaments; we are always going to speak in the simplest language, so that you may get a clear understanding for the advice I shall give you. These ovaries are sensitive to all movements of the body and to your emotions. Anger, outbursts of indignation and wrong reading, all these produce an effect upon the ovaries, especially so when your period is in full activity.

You may be a romping, strong girl with well-developed muscles and bones and never had to be careful of what you did. But when the age approaches where you begin to feel strange, somewhat timid, and have new ideas and peculiar thoughts, when the old kind of rough exercise tires your back, it means that your ovaries and womb are receiving more than the usual amount of blood and are in no condition to be harshly knocked about. At this time there may be slight bleeding from the nose, for the first time a soreness of the breasts and nipples, a light feeling in the head and a disposition to easily get out of patience with your companions and things about you.[17] When these many different feelings come you may know that the ovaries are getting ready to prove that you are a woman in the making.

Now remember that the monthly flow of blood does not come from the ovaries, but from the inside of the womb. The ovaries make the eggs and send these eggs down into the womb, as I have told you. When you are married these eggs are made alive by the husband’s germ of life and remain in the womb, growing for nine months, when the little babe is old enough to be born and make you the happiest woman alive—that is if you are in good health. As long as you are a virtuous girl the womb cleanses itself every month. Of course this does not take place after you are married, for if so, you can readily see that the blood would carry away the egg. And it will do this even after you are married and have a little live egg in you, if you have not taken care of both womb and ovaries. This condition may become a regular habit, and then you end in being the most miserable woman on earth.

Because these things have not plainly been told the girls is the cause for so much injury being done to the womb and ovaries while growing. You have not been warned that you should cease all rough play, active sports, should not stand all day upon your feet nor dance late into the night. Some girls have[18] been brought up to be over-active at this time just to prove that they will not acknowledge that there is any change or difference in them. Nature always punishes such an insult to her laws, and the teacher who places such ideas in the girl’s mind is generally one whom Nature has already punished by denying her any of the sweet and powerful instincts of woman. Have nothing to do with these unfortunate and harmful creatures. You must assist Nature in her attempts to make you a complete woman; give in to her by keeping quiet, not fretting nor getting angry because you have to give up some dance or basketball game. If you do not give up many of these pleasures when you are a growing girl, you will have to give them up later on in life; give them up forever.

For the first two years from the commencement of your first monthly period you should be quiet, obtain plenty of sleep and good food and take no exercise except walking, swimming and bending of the body in your room night and morning. Skating is not injurious if it is not overdone and you keep your feet dry and warm. Some girls have been injured for life—though they did not know it at the time—by sliding downhill on sleds. They were tossed off or ran into some post or fence and were slightly bruised. Such a slight accident caused a rupture or strain on the ovaries or womb,[19] perhaps the tender ligaments were stretched and the ignorant girl continued her play with them in this condition.

Much of this advice may seem old-fashioned to you, but in all truth it is advice founded upon the NEW experience and knowledge of all physicians who have seen the havoc wrought by carelessness and ignorance in these matters.

The womb, hanging by its delicate cords, is at this time in the girl’s life growing rapidly and consequently receiving plenty of new blood. It has not reached full development and it takes but little to put it out of place and have it stay there. The ovaries may be so twisted and put out of order that nothing can be done for them in later life but to cut them out with a knife; then you are ruined as far as womanhood is concerned.

Young age has wonderful powers of repairing injuries. If it were not so, but few would ever reach full growth. But there are some injuries youth cannot correct, and these are the distortions and displacements of woman’s sex organs—the internal ones. If you jar or tear these organs, the ovaries and womb, while you are growing, you do not know of the injury at the time. Everything at this age is strange to you in feeling and function, and slight pains in the back or groin, irregularity[20] or too little flow, you think is nothing. But it is EVERYTHING to you when you reach the marriageable age, or when your time comes to become a mother.

The womb is pear-shaped, big end upwards. It should hang nearly straight in the body. The small end is the outlet which opens at the time the baby is to be born. It also opens slightly every month to let out the blood, then closes when it has emptied itself. Now you can readily see that if it is twisted, tipped backwards or otherwise out of shape, birth can only be given at great risk to both the babe and its mother. It may be out of place so that nothing but an operation will save life. It may be so turned backward that the child is smothered while trying to grow, and then must come a horrible operation. Even the unmarried woman will suffer from any of these misplacements of the womb. Every month the blood tries to pass off it finds obstruction; pains, griping pains occur, sometimes the blood cannot pass away but remains to cause inflammations and tumors, and unless corrected by an operation the poor woman’s life is one of torture and invalidism.

Ignorant, never having been told of these important matters, you may have tried to vault in the gymnasiums, played a fierce game of basketball or gone to a dance when your[21] flow was on. This, strange as it may seem to some, is the most frequent cause of “Women’s Troubles,” “Female Weakness,” etc. Now there is absolutely no reason for a woman to have “troubles” or “weakness.” Nature has so made woman that in reality she can stand much more strain and endurance of a certain kind than man can. At the start she is possessed of everything which makes a strong and well being throughout all her life. She has to be of this nature, for just think, she does the work of two beings. While the child is growing in the womb she has to watch and feed herself to give the little one good blood—HER blood. When it is born, she has to do the same thing—give it good, health-giving milk. Then as the child leaves her breasts, she has to watch and care for all its growing years. Besides all these cares she has her household, her husband, her hundred and one duties to perform. Surely all this requires a strength of body, a determined will and an all-absorbing love. No man could or would do all this—Never!

A perfectly well woman, a woman whose sexual parts are in their places and strongly attached there, does all this tremendous work happy, smiling, and reaches the grandmother’s chair with the sweetest countenance to be seen on a human face.

[22]

It used to be so; we see but few happy and uncomplaining mothers now. And there is but one cause for all the present misery and race suicide.

Ignorance of sex laws and prudery in all the most vital matters pertaining to young girls is the reason and cause.

No exercise which puts a strain on the body should ever be taken by the growing girl. Especially true is this when you are having your menstrual period, for then you should be as quiet as possible. In many cases it would be best for the girl to remain away from school. If you have to go to school, that is if you cannot make your mother understand the matter, you should be allowed to sit and not stand at your lessons. Every girl should be placed in the unembarrassing position to leave and go home at any time during school hours.

Thousands of girls have been ruined in health because their male teacher or gymnasium instructor could see only a pupil and not a growing woman, because a condition which should excuse one girl or make allowance for another, or a state of sexual nervousness which means the girl ought to be sent home at once, are subjects that are not talked over between a male principal and a woman teacher—that is, not as they should be talked over. It is an[23] old story to the doctor, these nervous and sexually-ill young women. Taken unwell in school, perhaps suffering pains caused by a previous “standing it out,” the poor girl increases the injury to her organs, and besides being unable to put her mind upon her school work, she suffers the humiliation of a low mark.

But we cannot do these necessary things at the public schools, girls so often tell me. Well, there is but one answer to such a complaint. If the schools are so regulated that a growing girl cannot have the best of care, consideration and instruction in these vital matters, we had better close them all—every one. But what we can do is to have schools for girls only, and these must have teachers whose first thoughts are the physical welfare of all the pupils and who are thoroughly conversant with sex hygiene and all this means to the future women of our land.

I have to speak of this most important matter to you girls because in a few years most of you will have daughters to send to school, and as it is almost a hopeless task to bring the present generation out of their mucilaginous prudery, YOU must take hold as mothers and demand that such care and instruction will be given your girls that we shall no longer have this sad condition of suffering and childless[24] women as has existed the last forty years or so. You will find the young men of your generation aiding and forcing these common-sense forms of education, for they, too, are being instructed in the matter from their side of the question.

I remember a beautiful girl of fifteen years of age, who was brought to me suffering from a nervous breakdown. There was nothing the matter with her except everything. Never having had that care and instruction she should have had, one day in school her pains became unbearable. She cried, and when she went to ask her teacher to excuse her, this misfit of a teacher sent the embarrassed girl to the PRINCIPAL. Of course she would not go and tell HIM what the trouble was; she left of her own accord and was marked for it. But this was not the worst of it; some evil-minded boys in her class laughed at her when she returned a few days afterwards and uttered those despicable hints which go straight to a good girl’s heart. And she never told her mother, because her mother had never told her anything. A girl in the school—oh, there are a lot of these kinds, I dare say you all know one or two of them—told her what to do to keep the monthly flow away.

So she finally had to go to the doctor, who found a frightful state of things—one ovary[25] ruined for life. For three years she remained an invalid, and the shock she received, added to the drugs she had taken, had made her one of those many unfortunate women which fill our land.

All heavy lifting is dangerous to the womb and ovaries during the growing period; therefore all the apparatus in the gymnasiums for testing the strength of arms and back should be avoided. Many a foolish or uninstructed girl has made herself a girl of muscles, but ruined her WOMANLY POWERS in so doing. Save all your strength and force for what Nature intended a woman to DO; don’t throw it away in doing gymnasium stunts. No real youth or man likes to see a girl do these things; his applause does not come from the heart, but only from the head. Such a girl may have strong arms in which to carry a baby, but the chances are some other woman will have to give her the baby to carry. Of course every girl should exercise, but it must be such exercises as is governed with her sexual organs ever in view. As an example, dancing is good recreation and exercise, but it should not be indulged in two days BEFORE the menstrual period and not until two days AFTER.

Another thing which affects the womb—retention of urine. That is, keeping the bladder[26] full. Many girls have been brought up in such ignorance and under such false ideas of prudery that they will suffer pain from distention of the bladder rather than allow the slightest hint to escape them that they need immediate relief. This brings about not only a weakness of the bladder, which will in later life be very annoying and really embarrassing, but the pressure of a full bladder on the surrounding parts—the womb and its attachments—is apt to displace it and irritate it. Then again, a girl may be within a few days of her flow, and here the pressure of a full and hard bladder may set up an inflammation and bring on the period before its time. All this tends to start an irregularity, and when this irregularity is fairly established, the girl’s, and later on the woman’s, life is only an existence full of misery.

In fact, I think I am justified in saying that ninety per cent. of the women suffering from nervousness, hysteria, restlessness and pain, comes from the sexual organs being out of place, twisted, early inflammations and general lack of care of them from want of knowledge.

And it is so easy for a girl to grow into complete womanhood, full of life, good health and scarcely any unnatural knowledge that she has ovaries, womb or breasts. Most women to-day only know they have a womb from the[27] severe pains and that “bearing down” feeling about which they constantly complain.

Please understand that in this CHAT we are only considering general and common conditions which injure all growing girls and result in miserable health in after life. I am only hinting about the errors due to ignorance which produce our hysterical women and childless wives. And I want to repeat this fact, that there is absolutely no reason for all this invalidism and suffering among women and girls.

The general rules I shall give you for perfect condition and good health must be followed by all girls and young women, but I shall have to devote some time to the special needs of girls who work in shops, large stores, factories and those who are brought into close intimacy with men in offices.

Those dragging pains in the small of the back so many suffer from during the menstrual flow, and those racking headaches, are not natural. The pains mean that the womb is dragging or else pulling upon its supports; that you need to rest and keep off your feet as much as possible. If you are a schoolgirl, you MUST stay at home and rest upon your back much of the time. There is no excuse for your not doing this. To force you to go to school to take an examination or make up[28] a certain lesson is criminal. STRIKE! It would be a good thing if you all formed a union for the protection of your future health, and demanded your sex rights. Rest you should, and must, from all mental or physical excitement if you wish to be a woman who will be a blessing to those around her instead of a burden.

Which had you rather YOUR daughter should have, a certificate of perfect health, with the knowledge that when she marries she can become a mother without danger to herself and child, that she can remain happy in the nursery instead of miserable in the hospital, or a diploma stating that she can read French poetry and write an essay upon “Woman’s Career”?

Some of these statements you girls will have to read to your mothers. Then if prudery has blinded them to the truth, take the matter into your own hands. It is upon you, in the future, that depends the decent regulating of instruction in the public schools. The girl who goes to dances or any evening entertainment lightly clothed, low neck and short sleeves, while she is menstruating, as thousands do, will certainly land in the doctor’s hands or become one of those pitiful things, a drug fiend. And the drug habit starts from taking “some harmless thing” to ease the pains or stop the flow.

[29]

That curse of the American girls, constipation, does as much if not more, to hurt the womb than a full bladder. We shall have a lot to say about this matter later on in our Chats about the skin and complexion.

When the menstrual period first makes its appearance the swelling and tenderness of the breasts, the itching, a feeling of fullness in the region of the womb, are all natural and should not cause any worry. If you are in perfect health and KEEP so, these little symptoms will become less noticeable as you grow into full womanhood. So do not get frightened, do not take any medicines nor act upon the foolish advice from other girls. The flashes of heat, frequent blushing, dizziness and the frequent desire to pass your water, are all natural. There are some fortunate girls who approach and pass this first period without all these uncomfortable symptoms, but most of you will have some or all of them.

The itching of the skin, pimples on the face and body, sometimes a sore throat, all these are nothing but indications of the great revolution you are going through from being a girl to becoming a glorious woman. Then there are the toilet duties to be done at this period and throughout your life which make for perfect health.

[30]

Oh, yes, I shall tell you all about these matters and what to do.

During the periods of the first year or so you are in a condition to catch many of the diseases all around you, such as tuberculosis—consumption—erysipelas, tonsilitis, scarlet fever and the mumps. Remember I do not say you are liable to catch such a disease as consumption, only that you are in a condition when the germs can find lodgment better than at other times. Of course you should never sleep in a room with a consumptive or even be around one at any time, but should it happen that during your developing period anyone with the disease was liable to be brought into contact with you, keep away, away in the open air.

At this period also mumps may be a serious matter for you, so if you have a little brother or sister who is suffering from this disease of childhood, you should keep out of the room and, if possible, out of the house. No matter if you did have the mumps when a little girl. If you catch the mumps during the first years of your young womanhood the affection MAY go to your ovaries. This, of course, produces a painful swelling and, if not attended to by a reputable physician, will go to destroy the usefulness of the ovaries—prevent you from ever having children. This has happened in[31] girls who did not know—or rather their mothers did not know—what the danger was, and when the girl grew up to be married and no children came, she was blamed, often accused of being one who did not want children. Many a time when a young woman had been married several years and was childless, I have asked the mother if her daughter had the mumps when she was growing into womanhood, and if she suffered pain in the groin and back.

“Why, yes, Doctor—but what has that to do with it?”

“Didn’t you know that the mumps sometimes went to the ovaries and destroyed their function?”

“Why, no; it can’t be possible?”

“Yes, possible and probable. Your daughter can never have children because you did not tell her all about her sex organs, and when her little brother had a swelling and pain in the glands of throat and jaws, you did not know enough to send her away or keep her away from him, telling her plainly why you did so.

“But you were never allowed to mention these things when you were a young woman—you never knew these important things? Exactly so, and this is the punishment thousands of mothers and daughters are receiving for this prudery.”