“THE CURSE” LIFTED, 
OK 
MATERNITY MADE EASY, 
HY 
JAMES C. JACKSON, M. D., 
Consulting Physician at “Our Home on the Hillside," 
The Sanatorium, Dansviuue, N. V. 
DANSVILLE, N. V. 
SANATORIUM PUBLISHING CO., PUBLISHERS. 
188.'). The Laws of Life: 
A FAMILY HEALTH JOURNAL. 
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THE LAWS OF LIFE, Dansvi i.i.k, N. Y. “THE CURSE” LIFTED, 
OR 
MATERNITY MADE EASY. 
BY 
JAMES C. JACKSON, M. D., 
CONSULTING PHYSICIAN AT “ OUR HOME ON THE HILLSIDE,” 
The Sanatorium, Dansville, N. Y. 
(ANSVILLE, N. Y. 
SANATORIUM PUBLISHING CO., PUBLISHERS. 
1885. “THE CURSE” LIFTED: 
OK, MATERNITY MADE EASY. 
A distinguished English writer, in an article on physical 
fcJucation, takes occasion to say that half a dozen English 
country gentlemen can not be brought together of an after- 
noon for purposes of business or recreation, without sooner ox 
later having their conversation turned to the improvements 
everywhere going on in England with reference to the breed- 
ing and rearing of animals. They will talk of horses, cows, 
sheep, swine, fowls, dogs or game, the best kinds or breeds, and 
the best methods of feeding and rearing them, with the profits 
attaching thereto. But never a word is heard, except indi- 
rectly or in the lowest tone of voice, by inuendo or remotest 
hint, with reference to the breeding, rearing and training of 
children. These are begotten, brought forth and brought up 
with no system or plan, without reference to science or the law 
of proper physical education. The whole subject of how to 
have healthy mothers with healthy and beautiful children, 
both exhibiting a high order of growth, culture and perfection, 
is tabooed, and discussion of its merits, by common consent, 
utterly and entirely foreborne. 
The charge thus brought by this writer against the English 
people has equal force when made against the people of the 
United States. No where can the same number of persons be 
found living under institutions of civilization and Christian 
inlightenment, where less attention and heed are given to tiia 
taws of life and health, so far as these pertain to the repro- 4 
“ THE CURSE ” LIFTEP : OR 
duction and improvement of the species, than amongst the 
people of the United States. Acute, far-sighted, reflective, 
largely executive in matters pertaining to the making of 
money, the securing of means of personal ease and comfort, 
the increase of education and of opportunities for social cub 
ture, the American people are in most respects far behind the 
people of many European nations in the attention paid to 
physical health. 
For the last ten years it has been my determination,— 
life and health being spared sufficiently long to enable me to 
do it,—that this great question should be so discussed and 
elaborated in all its bearings, that on the part of our people, 
ignorance should give way to knowledge, and indifference in 
matters pertaining to physical life to earnest and sincere faith 
and desire to change for the better. Without arrogance or 
ostentation, or the setting up of claims to superior intelligence, 
my determination has been, through “The Laws of Life,” and 
by means of tracts, pamphlets and books which I might have 
opportunity to write, to speak the truth on matters pertaining 
to health, so faithfully and without fear, that at the close of 
my labors I might consciously feel that, according to the know- 
ledge given me, I had done my duty. 
On the topic, then, which I have selected for this tract, I 
ask at the hands of those who may peruse it, no charity or 
lenity of criticism other than that which may appear just and 
right to render, in view of the importance of the subject dis- 
cussed. I admit that at the first thought the theme is one 
calculated to awaken and alarm the falsely modest; but I can 
not shut my eyes or make my own consciousness oblivious to 
the fact, that for want of proper instruction in this particular 
direction, thousands and tens of thousands of women are made 
to suffer from long sickness, children are born into the world 
unhealthy, and live, while they stay in it, sickly and suffering, 
and die while as yet their years are few; and that to igno- 
rance on the part of their parents how to arrange the condi- MATERNITY MADE EASY. 
tion of the mothers’ health before their birth and afterward, 
a large portion of their sickness, suffering and heart-aches are 
mainly to be attributed. 
Come what may, then, as a Christian man, and as one who 
honestly feels that he knows how to aid and assist others, 
chiefly interested in the matter greatly to improve their condi- 
tions, I must speak. My motives are good, and my sense of the 
propriety of speaking impels me to utterance. I can not, 
therefore, and I will not be silent. Hear me then, men and 
women of America, “hear me for my cause, and be silent that 
you may hear.” 
One of the great correlatives of the marriage institution, is 
the reproduction of the species. Those persons, therefore, 
who enter into the marriage state, cherish either vague or 
well defined desires with reference to the having and rearing 
of children. Of the parties, the mother is the more immedi- 
ately interested in understanding the proper conditions and 
relations essential or incidental to this result, because the 
chief responsibility in the matter rests on her. How she 
lives, what she does, what her conditions are—all bear upon 
what her offspring shall be. Desiring, as both parents natu- 
rally would do, that their children should be healthy, beauti- 
ful and good, it is not a matter of mean importance what kind 
of life the mother shall live during the period of foetation ; 
for the laws both of sympathy and of the transmission of qual- 
ities establish a foregone conclusion, determining in large 
measure that, no matter what the father is in his constitutionai 
or functional characteristics, what the mother essentially is 
during this period the child will be. 
There is no way to account for the general falseness of 
impression existing throughout the entire range of the people 
of civilized communities in respect to the influence which 
mothers have upon their offspring, except on the ground that 
everywhere the people are taught that woman is the inferior 
of man; that in every respect she sustains an inferior relation "THE CURSE ” LIFTED: OR, 
to human welfare, and that with reference to the reproduction 
of the species her inferiority is more decidedly exhibited than 
anywhere else. Science, long ago, in this particular matter 
has determined the question as against the general popular 
impression. But science, as yet, in many directions has come 
to have but slight hold upon the people, and in this particular 
direction has little or none. 
Condition of the Mother before the Birth of her Child. 
Among the conditions worthy of heed during the period of 
maternity, the following should be regarded with attention : 
1. Work.—No woman who is in child-bearing conditions, 
should be subjected to hard physical labor. I know it is a 
common thing, especially with our agricultural and mechani- 
cal population, for women to work during a large portion of 
this period, with rigid exactitude and severe fatigue. It is 
none the less wrong, however, for them to do so, and greatly 
impairs their own health and the health of their offspring. 
While the processes of growth of the child are being carried 
on, nature contra-indicates physical labor, only justifying easy 
life, and this spent largely in the open air. Men of taste and 
culture are less careful of their wives in this matter than they 
are of their brood animals. A man who breeds and rears 
horses or horned cattle with a view to the improvement of 
stock, is never known to subject the females who are to be- 
come mothers to hard labor during these especial peri-oda. 
On the contrary, he is particularly careful not to do so, the 
general opinion of intelligent men having settled the question 
that hard work, whether of draft work nr road driving, is 
unfriendly to the health of the mother, and most decidedly so 
to the symmetry, beauty and power of endurance of the off- 
spring. 
An easy life should therefore be the life of the human 
mother during the period of gestation. All means whereby MATERNITY MADE EASY. 
7 
her mind can be kept quiet, her higher nature can be cultiva- 
ted, and her life made one largely of reflection but even more 
largely of pleasantness, should be secured to her. On no 
account should she be permitted to impose upon herself heavy 
task-work of muscle or severe taxation of the general nervous 
system. It is enough for her physical organization to meet 
the new condition to which it is subjected, under the best of 
circumstances. If these are unfavorable they result in undue 
expenditure of constitutional force, weaken the power of con- 
stitutional endurance of her child, and relate both unhappily 
to life after the child is born. 
2. Dietetics.—During this period a woman should live 
upon very simple food. It is a popular fallacy, almost univer- 
sal, but none the less open to criticism, that woman during the 
gestatory period needs food of a stimulating and exciting kind. 
Analogy might teach us something in this respect. No man 
finds it necessary to deal thus with his animals, nor do animals 
manifest any peculiar and supreme instinct in this direction 
indicating the existence of a particular necessity on their part 
thus to be dealt with. The peculiarity of appetite oftentimes 
experienced by women, and which in their estimation justifies 
gratification and particular -indulgence, is unnatural and 
should be contended against; for its indulgence is productive 
of ill results health wise to them, and constitutionally to their 
offspring. To the degree that a mother experiences a special 
longing for particular articles of food, especially if these be of 
a blood-heating or inflammatory nature, if she indulges it, will 
she carry over the morbid appetital sensibility to her off- 
spring, and on this ground, if on no other, should she forbear 
to yield; for no greater infliction of injury can well be en- 
forced upon a human being, than that which is found to have 
taken place in the organization of his appetites and passions, 
after such manner as to make these the overruling or su- 
premely controlling forces in his nature. 
To be born with passional forces so arranged and organ- 8 
“ THE CURSE ” LIFTED : OR, 
ized as to make them all-prevailing in their demands upon 
individual life, thus taking the reins and swaying the forces of 
the human being through his entire earthly career, is very 
unfortunate and greatly to be deplored. In no way, however, 
can this be guarded against so successfully as by the manner 
in which the mother shall care for and look after her own 
passional and propense elements during the period in which 
she carries her offspring under her bosom. A woman who is 
to become a mother, for the sake of her child if not for her 
own sake,—but nearly as much for her own sake as for that 
of the child,—should never indulge in highly seasoned and 
rich, stimulating foods. For the child’s sake she should not 
do it for reasons already assigned. For her own sake she 
should forbear to do it because of the greatly added hazards 
to which it subjects her at the period of giving birth to her 
child. Really there is no necessity for much suffering at the 
period of confinement, nor for loss of life then or immediately 
subsequent thereto, if women would but relate themselves to 
proper conditions of life during the anterior period. It is 
because their habits, under our present methods of living, are 
in almost every respect false, that there is great risk attendant 
upon confinement or immediately subsequent thereto. Where 
one animal, domestic or wild, is made to suffer much or dies in 
consequence of bearing young, a thousand women die; yet 
this is not after the natural order of things, nor in conformity 
with the Divine arrangement, God's plan being that according 
to the rank in the scale of organized life is the security for 
such life. Human beings as compared with other animals, 
ranking all of them, should find it compatible to bear young 
of their species with danger to themselves as much less as 
their scale of being is superior. But a departure from the 
simplicities of Nature has broken in upon their guaranties 
and so converted these into liabilities, making them to live all 
the while under conditions of hazard, or in circumstances 
which are perilous. MATERNITY MADE EASY. 
9 
Every woman, therefore, no matter of what type of build 
o temperament, of what age or vocation in life, who is in con- 
ditions of maternity, should persistently refuse to eat animal 
food, to drink stimulating or narcotic beverages, to use spices 
or other condiments, to eat great varieties of food at any given 
meal, or to indulge in any irregular habits of eating. If 
appetital desire is strong, it should be curbed by determina- 
tion of will. I repeat, that to the degree that the mother in 
her own life exhibits particular deviation from a normal stand- 
ard of life, especially in her dietetic habits, will she carry this 
peculiarity to her offspring, and will render what in her is a 
temporary passional exhibition, in them a constitutional and 
life-enduring proclivity. 
The best kinds of food which women in conditions of gesta- 
tion can eat, considered with reference to their own health and 
the constitutional health of their offspring, are to be found 
within the range of the grains and fruits grown in our coun- 
try. Let these be prepared in the simplest possible way, and 
eaten only twice in the twenty-four hours, and it will be found 
that the persons thus partaking will have little or po desire, 
as the period of maternity advances, for rich, condimented 
preparations; and that they will come to the hour of travail 
with so much elasticity of body and self-possession as to pass 
through it with little suffering, and will recover from it with 
so little risk, and with such rapidity as ever after greatly to 
recommend to their favorable notice the suggestions herein 
laid down. 
3. Dress.—Gestatory women need, from the commence- 
ment, to dress with great care in two directions : 
(a)—With reference to abundant warmth of the lower por- 
tions of the body. On no conditions should the legs be neg- 
lected. They should be clad with especial reference to warmth 
and equalization of circulation. Cold, chilled lower limbs are 
a great drawback upon the healthy condition of a child-car- 
rying woman. The habits with women of wearing tight shoes. 
* 10 
“ THE CURSE ” LIFTED : OR, 
of girting the leg just below the knee with a garter or elastic, 
of arranging the skirts of the dress so that in walking out 
the lower limbs become damp, are indefensible upon all physi- 
ological principles. In this respect there needs to be great 
reformation, and with no persons more than with those in the 
conditions at present under consideration. 
(b)—The dress about the upper part or trunk of the body 
should be by such persons always worn loose. No girdles, 
cinctures, whalebones, stays, corsets, or anything of any kind 
should be permitted to constrain or interfere with the freest 
action of the bowels, liver, stomach, heart or lungs. The 
dress, if fitted to the form, should be so arranged that as the 
form changes the dress can be made to change with it. A 
better style of dress would be that of the gown or flowing 
robe, with short skirts, instead of the close fitted waist. It is 
generally supposed by women who are friendly to the A neri- 
can Costume, or to essential modification in the style of dress 
commonly worn by women, that the short dress is unbecoming 
to one who is in such special conditions as make the subject of 
this lecture. On this point I wish to say that this impression 
is unfounded. In such state women look better in the Amer- 
ican Costume than they do in the long dress; and there is no 
reason, on the score of propriety, why they should not wear it. 
But there are many reasons why, on the score of health, they 
should wear it. We, therefore, who advocate reform in dress 
for woman, are earnest in commending the American Costume 
to those whose conditions are such as to involve, for good or 
ill, not only their own health but the health of their offspring. 
They have a double interest in a change of style of dress, foi 
the long, flowing-skirted dress is one which they can not wea» 
without at least great suffering to themselves, and ofttimes 
injury both to themselves and their children. 
During the latter period of maternity the necessities oi 
accommodation to especial conditions are imperative. The 
very circumstances of the case make them such. They can MATERNITY MADE EASY. 
not be neglected or in any way circumscribed without great 
danger to the health of the mother, to her successful confine- 
ment, and to the life and vigorous health of her offspring. 
In this direction reform is demanded. The habit which 
women have during the earlier periods of pregnancy, and even 
along the latter months thereof, of so wearing the clothing 
about the chest and abdomen as to preserve the style and 
fashion of dress common to women in ordinary life, is very 
reprehensible. If a woman feels called upon to bear a child, 
she should not be ashamed to recognize her obligations with 
reference to her own health, and its health too. In this direc- 
tion mock-modesty or sham sensibility should not be permitted 
to control her. Her future and that of her child are involved 
in her understanding what should be done, and conducting 
herself rightly about it. I am ashamed of my countrywomen 
because of their shamefacedness on this subject. It was a 
much better philosophy with reference to child-bearing which 
existed among the Jewish people in the days of their prosper- 
ity than at present obtains with the American people. In 
truth, of all modern nations American women are the most 
fastidious and mock-modest in this regard. English, Irish, 
French and G-erman women bear children and are not ashamed 
of so doing. But an American woman exhibits her weakness, 
frivolity, vanity and lack of good taste in no direction more 
decidedly than in putting on a simpering, half blushing, half 
silly-faced air with poor attempt at concealment, whenever she 
is placed in conditions where it is likely that her peculiar cir- 
cumstances will be known. 
Let every woman of good sense so arrange her life as to 
have it understood by everybody, instead of attempting to con- 
ceal it from everybody, that she is in a state of maternity, 
when this is a fact. It will be an honor to her. She will be 
respected and esteemed all the more by the other sex, and the- 
good opinion of her own sex will be secured to her none the- 
less therefor 12 
“ THE CURSE ” LIFTED : OR, 
4. Life in the Open Air.—During the period preced- 
ing the birth of a child the mother should live as largely as 
possible, and with regularity of habit, in the open air. Very 
much of her active life should be expended out of doors. 
There is no condition of living necessary to health which 
American women need so much as that of activity out of 
doors. Whenever I can get proper opportunity in private or 
public conversation, be it deliberate or interlocutory, I feel 
myself called upon to urge this point. I may be regarded 
almost as hobbyish; nevertheless, the health of American 
women is so precarious, so large a portion of their number are 
lacking it, the effects of a change in their habits in this and 
other respects, where such change is made, are so excellent 
and so productive of desirable results, that I feel entirely just- 
ified in pressing upon the public mind the necessity of change 
of life indoors for life out of doors. So much of the future 
of the Unborn depends upon the conditions of the mother 
before his birth, that apparent over-nicety on the part of a 
public teacher may well be justified. Whoever seeks the wel- 
fare of the people, in the way of communicating to them 
added knowledge in directions where such knowledge may be 
made of most important avail, must fulfil his mission in a 
measure after the manner of the prophets of old, who, in order 
to make those to whom they spake, listen and reform, were 
compelled to utter “line upon line and precept upon precept, 
here a little and there a little.” In this way they at length 
arrested the public attention, and induced individual, and not 
unfrequently national reformation. 
Of the great sins common to our people, manifested in their 
bad habits and resulting in their loss of physical health, there 
is none that needs to be talked about and urged upon their 
notice more than this of confining woman indoors. Her deli- 
cacy of physical structure, the predominance of the nervous 
temperament, the narrow capacity of her nutritious organism, 
her precocious maturity when the climatic relations under MATERNITY MADE EASY. 
she lives are considered with reference thereto, the 
quite early period in which for the most part she inaugurates 
marriage, her frequent and rapid child bearing, all combine to 
make it imperatively necessary that she should have habitual 
life in the open air. 
When to the considerations mentioned above the particular 
one now under discussion is added, this necessity becomes 
greatly intensified. Under these new conditions she carries 
two lives—that of her own and that of her unborn 
whose destiny after its birth will all along its earthly existence 
be greatly shaped and seriously affected by the ante-natal con- 
ditions to which the mother subjects it. A woman might 
almost as well undergo daily hemorrhages, or suffer extreme 
starvation or sudden exposure to great extremes of heat and 
cold, or pass through great changes of joy and grief, or suffer 
in any direction severely, as to be confined indoors during her 
gestatory period. In the early part of this period, if her 
health will permit, exercise by walking is of great value. In 
the latter portion of the time her exercise should be taken in 
a carriage, and under the pleasantest and most agreeable asso- 
eiations. The exercise should be habitual, regular and abun- 
dant. 
5. Sleep.—It has been observed by all persons who are 
familiar with the habits of domestic animals, that the females, 
when with young and during the nursing period, are given 
largely to sleep. It is one of Nature’s great restorers from 
the special taxation to which their systems are subjected. 
Of all animal organisms the Human is the most dependent 
upon sleep for healthy reactions of the nervous system. En- 
dowed naturally with a brain larger in proportion to the whole 
body, more compact, heavier and finer in fiber, than that of 
any other animal, the human being is more dependent than 
other animals upon the exercise of those faculties which find 
their proper medium for expression in and through the ner 
vous system. Man not only has to use his nervous system for 14 
“the curse” lifted: or, 
the expression of his instincts, but also for the exhibition of his 
intellect and his heart. Nothing taxes the physical structure 
more than the exercise of the Moral Sense. A man’s organic 
nervous system, if it be true that it is through this that his 
moral and spiritual faculties express themselves, which I am 
disposed to believe, is greatly taxed under the relations to life 
which he establishes or which are imposed upon him. Thus 
his brain, or the cerebro-nervous system, and his organic or 
nutritive nervous system, are, by reason of his large intellect- 
ual, moral and spiritual endowments, working themselves up 
in practical life, constantly liable to very great and, after the 
methods of living usual to the American people, to exhaustive 
taxation. His securities against this lie in his opportunities 
for frequent and long continued sleep. 
Of human beings the female needs the most sleep. There 
is little or no doubt to be exercised on this point. Facts go to 
show it. And of the two, with the American people, women 
are the feebler and generally of the larger and more sensitive 
nervous temperament. It is a fallacy, the opinion which many 
have accepted, that the more nervous the temperament the 
readier does a person recover from bodily fatigue. Persons, 
too. of nervous temperament under American habits of life, 
sleep less than those of other temperaments, but it is not true 
that they need less sleep, nor yet is it true with other people. 
Among savage tribes women sleep most, and they are of a 
higher order of nervous temperament or type of build than 
the men. Under natural, unconventional, unartificial habits 
of life, it is found that women with child sleep more during 
this period and the nursing period than at any other time, 
circumstances being the same or nearly the same. Every 
such woman, therefore, should secure to herself large oppor- 
tunities for sleep; and especially for the two or three months 
immediately preceding the birth of a child should she do little 
else than eat, exercise with ease and abundantly in the open 
air, have her periods of social recreation, and sleep largely MATERNITY MADE EASY 
15 
The more she can sleep, her other relations being appropriate, 
the better—far better for herself as well as her child. No 
woman in these peculiar conditions should go from sunrise till 
sunset without sleeping. From six to eight hours at one time 
is long enough for her to keep wide awake and actively exer- 
cised in mind. If she rises between five and six in the morn- 
ing she will find great benefit to herself in lying down in the 
middle of the day ; and as—according to my suggestions with 
regard to eating — she is to partake of food only twice in 
twenty-four hours, making her dinner between two and three 
or three and four in the afternoon, she can, so far as getting 
or partaking of food is concerned, at twelve o’clock retire ana 
take a nap. I would advise all persons, however vigorous, to 
do this; for I am convinced that if persons who are in the 
habit of eating three meals a day—saying nothing of those 
who eat four, five or six—were to forego one meal and take 
the time usually allotted to it to assume a recumbent position, 
and if possible get a nap of sweet sleep for from five to thirty 
minutes, it would be a great deal better with them healthwise: 
and for women whose organizations are taxed to furnish mate- 
rial not only for their own necessities but for the formation 
and growth of new beings, this is eminently needful. Jjet 
such women, therefore, as are child-bearing accept this view, 
and during their especial periods of taxation get all the sleep 
they can. 
6. The Use of Water.—There has grown up a wide 
spread but rather vague impression that water may be made 
of great use to women during the period antecedent and sub- 
sequent to the birth of a child. This impression is wreii 
founded ; though as it stands in the popular mind it needs 
definiteness. 
Water, whether used as a drink or as a detergent, should 
be soft. It is a very great mistake that persons make wno 
use hard water for any purposes having reference to the needs 
of animal life. All water impregnated with foreign substances “ THE CURSE ” LIFTED : OK 
is more or less unhealthy The medicinal waters, so highly 
recommended, not unfrequently by medical men, and used by 
the people for curative purposes, are great human life-killers. 
They never should be used unless it is for the same reasons 
that drugs and medicines should be used. If one can offer 
a good reason why he should take poisonous drugs or medi- 
cines into his blood, there is no objection to his taking them 
dissolved in water ; but if there is a reason why he should not 
take them, he can not be relieved from the force of the objec- 
tion to taking them simply because they are dissolved in 
water. If there is good reason why a person should take 
lime in any of its chemical combinations into his system, there 
is no objection to his taking it dissolved in water. 
Hard water, for the most part, is made by holding in solution 
some‘earthy salt. Of this the carbonate of lime is the most 
common. Water containing this is inefficient as a skin cleaner 
by reason of its ill adaptation to act as a solvent to the matter? 
lodged upon, or in the interstices of, the skin. Every woman 
knows that she can not wash clothes in hard water. It is 
scarcely less practicable to wash the skin in it, and it is 
scarcely less practicable to wash the blood in it. One’s blood 
needs washing every day. It is loaded with impure, effete 
matters. Nothing helps to cleanse it so much as to introduce 
into it, by means of drinking, abundant quantities of pure 
water. This dilutes the blood, enables it to flow with facility 
through its numerous vessels, and readily to part with the 
effete or waste materials with which it is loaded, which are to 
be carried off by the various excretories existing in the sys- 
tem for this purpose. 
A woman who is with child is very apt to have corrupt or 
impure state of the blood. To aid her in keeping the blood 
in a normal condition, she can do nothing better than to make 
her drink entirely of soft water, and under proper circumstan- 
ces and at a proper temperature of water, to wash her body 
frequently in it. Much of the suffering consequent upon MATERNITY MADE EASY. 
17 
pregnancy and at confinement, and immediately thereafter, is 
owing to the bad condition of the blood of the person. These 
bad conditions are attributable to various causes, of some of 
which I have made specification ; but in a preventive direc- 
tion a woman can take no precaution more likely to be efficient 
than to substitute soft water for hard water as a drink and for 
purposes of ablution. If she is so situated that it is difficult 
to procure soft water from running springs or wells, then let 
measures be taken to secure it for her as it falls from the 
clouds ; and if in catching it, dirt or filth becomes commingled 
with it, let this be separated from the water by filtration. A 
few dollars expended in the direction of a good filter, will fur- 
nish for all purposes of a private family the water which is 
necessary. 
Good times to drink water, in general terms, are soon after 
getting out of bed in the morning, a few minutes before each 
meal, and half an hour preceding retirement to rest, whether 
this latter be in the day time or at night. Abstractly con- 
sidered, it is not well to drink much water at meals,—better 
not to drink any. The practice of drinking largely at meals 
of fluids, of which water is the base, is not good. As a gene- 
ral thing it is not best to use warm drinks. Cold or cool 
water, if not taken in too large quantities at one time, is pref- 
erable. 
In regard to washing the body, it is well, where the person 
has an ordinarily vigorous organization, to do this as often as 
three times a week in the winter season, and from three to 
four times in the warm season. Too frequent washings are 
not desirable. Water-cure people have run into extremes in 
this direction. Washing themselves every day, as if their 
lives depended on it, in many instances they have done them- 
selves harm ; in but few instances, except there have been 
acute abnormal conditions to overcome, have they derived 
benefit from it. We may learn something from living crea- 
tures below us. “ THE CURSE ” LIFTED : OR, 
I readily admit there is more need for frequent washing of 
tire human body than there would he were air and light made 
more available. Air is a good cleanser, aud could the surface 
of the human body be brought into contact with it thoroughly, 
much of the water-washing now necessary would be uncalled 
for. To a certain extent the same is true of light. Washing 
the body in water should never be administered in a cold 
room, nor should the water be cold unless the person is of full 
and quite vigorous habit. As this is not the case with Ameri- 
can women generally, they should have comfortable circum- 
stances surrounding them when partaking of a bath. Women 
who are with child should never, if they can avoid it, admin- 
ister their own baths. They should always he assisted by an 
intelligent attendant, and she should be in good health ; for 
women in the state described are sensitive to external sur- 
roundings, and are affected by them pleasantly or otherwise as 
these are agreeable or not. 
The best time to take a body-washing is at that period of 
the twenty-four hours when, under the natural combination of 
hygienic agencies, the body is likely to be at its maximum point 
of energy. It is a wise rule to do the hardest work when 
there is the most strength to do it with. Every living human 
organism has its periods of alternation in strength. No man 
is as strong upon just getting out of bed as when he has been 
up and in exercise awhile. Neither is he as strong at night- 
fall as in the morning. As the sun rises and light conies upon 
the earth’s surface, affecting all living things, man is exhila- 
rated, toned up and made vigorous by its influence. From the 
period of the sun’s rising till it reaches the zenith, man grows 
strong. From mid-day till night-fall he grows weak. From 
night-fall to morning light he is weakest. To work him dur- 
ing the nignt instead of the day, is to work him when he is 
the weakest and therefore at disadvantage Proverbially, 
then, night work as against day work is the harder, more tax- 
ing, more ruinous. If the rule be true that the hardest work MATERNITY MADE EASY. 
19 
is to be done if possible when the body is most vigorous, then 
is it good philosophy to take baths when the body is most 
vigorous. With our people this will be found to be at or 
about eleven o’clock in the forenoon. Between eleven ana 
twelve, then, is the best time to take a bath,—not in tne 
morning upon first getting up, as is the usual custom witn 
bathers, nor upon going to bed, as is frequently the custom. 
Those persons to whom this tract will be of special service, 
will do well to heed this point and to follow it up, bearing in 
mind that in their circumstances it will be wise for them gene- 
rally to retire to bed immediately after taking their bath. 
The best effect to be produced by a bath in their cases is that 
of sedation, and a recumbent posture, with the body free from 
the pressure of clothes, is a great auxiliary to a bath in this 
direction. To take a bath, with a long walk after it, is contra- 
indicated in the cases of women in the family-way. They had 
better lie down and go to sleep if they can, to rise up with 
their nervous systems greatly refreshed in consequence of a 
better state of the circulation induced by the bath, and dress- 
ing themselves, to walk out, if they are able to do so, thus get- 
ting their exercise under refreshed and invigorated conditions 
of body. Where there are special reasons, growing out of 
disturbances of the digestion, torpidity of liver, fulness of 
spleen, costiveness of bowels, irritation of kidneys, weakening 
of the abdominal muscles and mechanical displacement of the 
bowels, indicated by their sinking low down into the pelvic 
cavity, sitz-baths of a mild temperature will be found to be of 
fine effect. Connected with these may be worn the abdominal 
bandage, how to make and wear which, please see Miss Austin’s 
tract, “ How to take Baths.” These baths may be taken quite 
frequently and with little or no danger, if properly adminis- 
tered, and especially if the habits of the person are correct in 
other respects. They will be found a great corrector, in many 
ways, of derangements that are likely to arise under the arti- 
ficial and unnatural customs of life common to American “ THE CURSE ” L1ETED : OR, 
women, and will prove, in connection with proper food and 
occasional enemas of tepid water, of great avail in overcoming 
any disposition or tendency to costiveness of bowels. 
1 have now reached in this discussion the point of 
Confinement, or giving Birth to tier Child. 
On this I have nothing to say beyond what is known to pei- 
sons of experience, that under such circumstances every ar- 
rangement should be made for the comfort and proper attend- 
ance of the patient. Assuming that she has previously lived 
hygienically, all she will ordinarily need will be good attend- 
ance, with an intelligent physician within call in case of neces- 
sity, which necessity will but very seldom exist. There is no 
reason why, under natural relations, the birth of a child 
should not be as devoid of danger or hazard, or extreme suf- 
fering to the mother, as that of the young of any animal. 
After the child is born, Hygiene may come into play, so 1 
resume my suggestions at that point. 
In nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, 
after a woman has given birth to a child and has had a little 
opportunity to rest, she will be made all the more comfortable, 
and have her securities for recovery greatly increased, by the 
taking of a bath. This may be given to her, if one so please, 
by towel washing; or she may be lifted into a bath, it being 
prepared for her, and sustained and helped by assistants, who 
may proceed to wash her body all over, cleaning it perfectly, 
lifting her out upon a sofa or lounge, wiping her dry, putting 
upon her clean and well aired linen and laying her in a clean 
bed, putting over the abdomen a wet compress covered witn a 
dry one, a cool cloth upon her head, a warm blanket about ner 
feet, and then allowing entire quiet. If possible to do so, ior MATERNITY MARE EASY. 
21 
the first few days, she should see no one but her husband and 
her chosen attendants. These should be persons of her own 
sex and not more than two, alternating each other in their 
care of her. The room in which she should be placed should 
be large and airy, free from noxious smells, protected from 
noisy sounds, and capable of being filled with light; for, 
although she will be inclined to sleep a good deal, when not 
asleep she will be invigorated by light. Every day she may 
take a bath, and a good way, after three or four days, is to 
fill a tub sufficiently full of water to have it come near the top 
when she sits in it, the water being at a temperature between 
80 deg. and 90 deg., say 90 deg. for ten minutes and 85 deg. 
five minutes, then washing the whole upper portion of the 
body over, lift her out and lay her down upon the wiping sheet 
spread upon the bed, the room being warm and no currents of 
air passing over her, and wipe her entirely dry and rub the 
body till the skin feels perfectly soft and velvety, when put on 
her linen, arrange her bed as before, keep her head cool and 
feet warm and the house still, and she will almost certainly g: 
to sleep. 
My own experience with women who have given birth to 
children, leads me to say that in a large majority of cases 
their unfavorable conditions in getting up from confinement 
are attributable mainly to two causes; first, to their bad con- 
dition of living during the period anterior to the birth of their 
children, and second, to noisy., disquiet and perturbed condi- 
tions afterwards. In every town or place where people con- 
gregate, women who are friends feel themselves at liberty to 
press their way into the presence of the patient to look at the 
baby, talk with the nurse, make suggestions while present and 
criticise and gossip afterward. All this should be strictly pro- 
hibited. No matter how vigorous, no woman should under- 
take to cxerqise her strength, if she can avoid it, for eight or 
nine days after confinement. She should not attempt t© do “ THE CURSE ” LIFTED : OR, 
anything except in the mildest and least expensive way • fot 
to avoid child-bed fever is to insure one’s life ;— 
And quiet, 
And simple diet, 
And pure air, 
With plenty of good care, 
And sleep, 
With proper keep— 
the great restoratives. 
With such precautions, and under such circumstances, I 
venture to say that the curse of child-bearing may be lifted, 
the night of sorrow to child-bearing women pass away, and a 
better and a brighter day for them generally be inaugurated. 
I will not close these remarks without an additional sugges- 
tion : which is, that taking the physical constitution, together 
with the mental and moral temperament of American women 
into account, the practice of bearing children so often as is 
habitual with them,—say, during the child-bearing period, as 
often as once in two years,—is indefensible. American women 
who wish to have good health themselves, have healthy child- 
ren, live to old age and have their children thus live, should 
not bear children oftener than once in five years. It may 
readily be seen that to do so as often as once in two years, 
which is now the custom, keeps a woman from the period of 
her marriage till the period when child-bearing becomes con- 
stitutionally impossible, under its constant influence. Any 
one can reckon this up satisfactorily. Take the period of ges- 
tation, add to that the period of lactation, and you have 
twenty months at least,—oftener twenty-two. This, then, is 
the period for one child. Soon after this is weaned another is 
begotten. During the succeeding months the mother cares 
for two children, one lying in her lap, the other unborn. This 
is cruel. No system can sustain it for any great length of time. 
It may be done, but it wears. Some women can endure it, but 
it y* very expensive to their health, and if it be true that the MATERNITY MADE EASY. 
*dfe forces in the system which are constitutional, aie in a 
measure reserved forces, then to the degree that they are 
drawn upon to meet special exigencies are they used up, so 
that they can not be had in their order. A woman may thus 
draw upon those powers which God in nature has given her 
whereby to sustain herself when she is sixty or seventy years 
old so as to have them all used up by the time she is twenty- 
five or thirty years of age. If so, it stands to reason that 
instead of living sixty or seventy years, she will die at twenty- 
five or thirty years of age. 
It is a common practice in this country for men and women 
to thrust their hands down into the Future and draw for their 
present use upon their constitutional resources. They live, su 
far as physical vigor is concerned, constantly in debt. Their 
whole life is mortgaged for present enjoyment, and death fore- 
closes and sells them out, and they pass away untimely to that 
“bourne from which no traveler returns.” 
In no direction is life force spent more unwisely, unthriftily 
and immorally than in the frequent child-bearings of Ameri- 
can women. Married persons should be thoughtful on this 
subject. 
I have thus spoken the thought that is within me. If any 
should feel that I have transcended the bounds of propriety, 
I can only say that I do not thus feel. The subject is one of 
great interest to the people, and in my judgment it is useless 
to try to reach them except in a common way. To get at 
them we must go where they are. No way is so well adapted 
to reach them as the press. They are entitled to knowledge 
that they may become intelligent; to intelligence that they 
may become refined; to refinement that they may become wise 
and good ; to wisdom and goodness that they may come to 
God. “ If any man lack wisdom let him ask it of God, who 
giveth to every man liberally and upbraideth not.” My 
heart’s desire is to be able to present knowledge on matters 
pertaining to life and health,—and I hope also upon other “the curse” lifted: or, maternity made easy 
subjects, to the people at large. I am one of the people. My 
interest is with the people, my hopes are for the people, my 
regards are towards the people,—the great people. 
I am getting into years; but from my boyhood up I have 
never turned away from, forgotten or separated my interests 
from the masses of my fellows. In their struggles, their 
trials, their endurances, their hardships, their poverty, suffer- 
ing and sorrow I have sympathized with them, lived with 
them labored for th.em, and have come to see in many res- 
pects their conditions greatly improved. 
I may not live to see the day 
When the great people shall bear sway 
And “earth be gladdened by the ray” 
Of light that cometh from above. 
Bi.t come it fast or come it slow— 
’Twill come at last, I surely know; 
And heaven and earth will feel its glow, 
And men shall call it Love. OUR HOME ON THE HILLSIDE 
Is a Sanatorium, founded twenty-five years ago on the eastern slope of the 
hills which overlook the village of Dansville, in Central New York. Its object is 
the treatment of invalids suffering from diseases more or less chronic, by a 
system peculiarly its own, and yet strictly scientific in every respect. For 
sufferers whose complaints do not yet involve organic changes of vital struct- 
ures, its proprietors confidently believe that there is no other place in America 
where recovery can more certainly and speedily be hoped for and assured. 
In the first place, the natural advantages of our location are unsurpassed. 
Climatically it is as nearly perfect as any health resort in the world. During 
winters which are of exceptional severity elsewhere, we seem to be sheltered 
from violent storms. Even in midsummer the stifling and oppressive heat of 
other localities is with us unfelt. There is not a single mosquito bar in the 
Institution. The water is especially pure and soft. Malaria is absolutely unknown. 
Underlying the whole hill is one vast gravel bed and sand bank. So perfect, 
therefore, is the drainage that during the summer and autumnal months feeble 
patients often dwell in tents; while nearly a hundred invalids can be seen lying 
upon cots under the shade trees during the greater part of every pleasant day. 
For beauty of situation the Sanatorium is unsurpassed. Founded upon the 
slope of a lofty hill, it commands a magnificent prospect, embracing the pretty 
village of Dansville, and stretching away to distant heights. Travelers whose 
experience includes many lands assert without reservation that few scenes in 
Europe are of more varied or continual beauty than that which greets the eye of 
the visitor from the plaza of Our Home. 
These advantages, however, are nevertheless second in importance to the 
philosophy which guides and controls the Institution. Its medical management 
is not entrusted to ignorant charlatans, but to physicians educated in the best 
schools of modern medical science, and skilled by extended hospital experience 
not only in America, but also in Paris and London, in Berlin and Vienna. They 
are opposed to the widely prevalent method of treating disease through the 
administration of drugs, not from scepticism regarding their usefulness in 
controlling symptoms, but because observation, study and wide experience have 
convinced them that (except in rare instances), for curative purposes, other 
methods are far better. And not least in importance among the influences 
exerted at Our Home is that constant encouragement, that spirit of good-will 
and helpfulness, that thoughtful interest in others* welfare, that Christian 
benevolence, which distinguishes its social atmosphere, and makes it for the sick, 
the disheartened and the desponding, another home—and sometimes almost 
another life. 
Our new main building, constructed of brick and iron, absolutely fire-proof, 
and with the present surrounding cottages, makes our Institution the largest 
Sanatorium in the world. Full information will be freely furnished by corre- 
spondence with Dr. James C. Jackson, if stamps are enclosed for prepayment of 
postage. 
Respectfully, 
THE PROPRIETORS. 
< )ur Home on the Hillside, 
The'Sanatorium, Dansville, X. Y. “OUR HOME ON THE HILLSIDE,” 
THE SANATORIUM, DANSVILLE, N. Y. 
The Only Absolutely Fike-Prook Health Institution in the World.