HOW TO GROW HANDSOME: 
OK, 
HINTS TOWARD 
PHYSICAL PERFECTION, 
AND THE 
PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN BEAUTY. 
SHOWING HOW TO ACQUIRE AND RETAIN 
Bodily Symmetry, Health, and Vigor, 
SECURE LONG LIFE, 
AND AVOID 
THE INFIRMITIES AND DEFORMITIES OF AGE 
AUTHOR OF 11 THE TEMPERAMENTS,” ETC. 
D. H. JACQUES, 
NEW EDITION 
The ideu of beauty of person is synonymous with that of health and a perfect 
organization.”—Pritchard. 
NEWYORK: 
S. R. WELLS & CO., PUBLISHERS. 737 BROADWAY, 
1 579. Copyright, 1879. 
S. K. WDLLS & CO. TO 
THE BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTERS 
OF HIS 
NATIVE LAND— 
tlic Wiitu u)i JJaifcm 0f JUmita, 
WHOM HE WOULD GLADLY TEACH 
to i&wome mow Ikamtiuii 
THIS BOOK 
IS 
dedicated, with the most profound respect, 
13T THEIR DEVOTED FRIEND AND ADMIRER, 
€T|)e £Sutt)ov CONTENTS. 
PAOH 
Dedication B 
Preface 9 
Introduction 11 
Structure of the Human Body 19 
The Perfect Man and Woman 81 
The Temperaments .. 14 
Laws of Human Configuration 54 
Embryology 64 
Childhood 76 
Effects of Mental Culture 88 
Moral and Emotional Influences 99 
Social Conditions and Occupations 112 
Effects of Climate and Locality 180 
Direct Physical Culture 140 
Practical Hygiene 178 
Womanhood 201 
The Secret of Longevity 207 
Thf. Arts of Beauty 221 
External Indications of Figure .. 287 
Ihdex 240 PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. 
J N presenting- this edition to the public it is fully appreciated 
by the Publishers and Editor that many volumes of physio- 
logical literature intended for popular reading are in the market, 
and that they are multiplying rapidly in response to an increas- 
ing demand. But so far as a demand exists for books of 
any class, they will be supplied, if there be writers to prepare 
them ; and if the treatises on physiology are acceptable to the 
public, they but whet the appetite for more. As a man’s mind 
expands and becomes cultivated, there is felt the need of 
further and better mental food. The books which at first ap- 
peared to be sufficient and to answer all his inquiries become 
insufficient, and he looks around for fresh and higher teachers 
capable of responding to his numerous and advanced ques- 
tions. 
Most of the volumes intended for public use, found upon 
the bookseller’s counter, relating to the subject which is spe- 
cially considered in this treatise, deal with physiology in a 
rudimentary or fragmentary way. Proceeding from sources 
of authority, they are compilations of precepts with but little 
reasoning or philosophy. Their sphere is, therefore, neces- 
sarily limited, for when a man becomes enlightened by facts 
touching upon a science, and has experienced some benefit 
from them, he is usually led to look into the theory or princi- 
ples which they supplement; he seeks in logic the confirmation 
of his belief. This desire incites an investigation which may VI 
Preface to the Kew Edition. 
be protracted to extremes, with all the possibilities of that kind 
of growth which opens up fields hitherto unthought of. 
The author of “ Hints Toward Physical Perfection ” devoted 
a large part of his life to observations and study in human 
physiology and dietetics, and as a writer for the public was 
far in advance of the average medicist. He aimed to instruct 
the masses, to reduce scientific formulas to plain terms, so 
that all might understand, believing that whatever related to 
health, the public at large had a right to know, for the reason 
that every one has a right to improve and develop himself in 
mind and body to the furthest possible extent; he heeded little 
of that sophistry which would have people believe that learn- 
ing is the privilege of the few, that the masses are not entitled 
to know all, even about their very selves. Indeed, at the time 
when Dr. Jacques first introduced himself to the public as a 
writer on hygiene and physiology, it was the current opinion 
among the laity that the man who had no “professional” 
standing, yet wished to know something concerning his or- 
ganization, of the relation which part bears to part—even if 
the wish were based upon the very laudable desire to know 
enough about medicine to treat himself when ailing- -was in- 
fluenced by a morbid curiosity which it was not fitting to in- 
dulge or to encourage. Nevertheless, the young physician 
might indulge his caprice in the way of investigation, in almost 
every line, and escape criticism merely on the score of its being 
his business. As years passed on, and men and women of 
earnest philanthropy and liberal culture insisted upon doing 
some substantial work for mankind, and made anatomy, 
physiology, and hygiene, their subjects, employing the pen and 
the press where they might, the barriers of exclusiveness one 
by one have yielded, and the masses of the people have been Preface to the New Edition. 
VII 
brought to look more and more into these matters of funda- 
mental importance. 
It is fifteen years or more since Mr, Jacques published the 
first edition, but notwithstanding the prestige of his name as 
an author in physiology, it proved at that time of a character 
so much in advance of popular knowledge and sentiment that 
it found but a limited circulation. To-day the situation is 
greatly changed through the efforts of authors like Thrall,' 
Shew, Richardson, Hufeland, and Verdi, and the able and 
brave enunciations of Alcott, the Rev. Joseph Cook, Mrs. 
Kirby, and others. Comprehensive in its dietetic range, it 
nevertheless furnishes sufficient information for the need of 
general society, with respect to the organization of the body. 
Its details of advice affect more the diet and habits of him or 
her who would acquire a better personal state. All who are 
parents would have vigorous and beautiful children, and to 
such the book is particularly commended, and for their use 
it will be found especially serviceable. It is not a medical 
work, strictly; it is not written for the purpose of ministering 
to diseased bodies, of prescribing modes of cure; its sphere is 
rather to suggest ways of living, based upon the results of 
physiological research, which shall tend to the prevention of 
sickness and to the invigoration of the system. Dr. Jacques 
looks at beginnings, although highly appreciative of the possi- 
bility of amelioration for those who have inherited constitutional 
tendencies to disease. He supplies that information which 
every person is anxious to know concerning the right food to 
eat, the way in which to take exercise, how to work, how to use 
mind and body; indeed, to secure the best possible results. 
A man of constitutional, weakness from childhood, he, never- 
theless, exemplified in his own life the effects of an enlightened VIII 
Preface to the New Edition. 
philosophy, and lived much beyond his expected term of exist- 
ence, accomplishing in its course far more of practical good 
than ninety-nine out of a hundred of his fellows who inherited 
at birth strong and vigorous bodies, and were capable of real- 
izing in their life the delights of health. 
As was intimated in the beginning, intelligent people in so- 
ciety have advanced so far in their reading of physiology and 
hygiene, that they demand the association of reason with the 
precepts of the health reformer ; they would know why some 
persons are weak and broken down by disease at the age 
when they should be exulting in vigor and power of endurance, 
and why others suddenly halt in the midst of a career which 
was marked by the apparent possession of robust health, and 
after a brief struggle die. The truth which is testified in the 
Bible of Christianity, that “ the sins of the fathers are visited 
upon the children,” and that “the tree is known by its fruits,” 
is taking hold of the consciousness of men, and while they in- 
stinctively approve its justice, they yearn to know the reason 
of its being, and the methods of its operation in human life. 
There is certainly an appalling positiveness in the doctrine of 
heredity which, when fairly understood, must compel men who 
have been living heedlessly, to pause, and fearfully to consider 
the whence and whither of their being, and to trace the line 
of their duty in their domestic relations. Once awakened to a 
sense of their physical responsibility to the world, men see 
around them a thousand striking examples of broken moral and 
social law, of perverted minds and impaired bodies, and no longer 
wonder that so many are sick and unsound. Indeed, as they 
advance in their knowledge of hygiene and of the human or- 
ganism, they find themselves wondering that the condition of 
man is not much worse, that more arc not broken in health. Preface to the New Edition. 
IX 
and fewer able to carry the burdens of life, and do the work ot 
the weak and impotent as well as their own proper share of duty. 
The wonderful recuperative quality of the human body also 
astonishes and delights these observers, evidencing as it does 
a most merciful provision of nature in behalf of man. Al- 
though one may be broken in health through inattention to 
her ordinances, if he endeavor then solicitously to observe 
them, he will usually find nature kind and forgiving, and in 
time experience a renewal of his strength. Nature cares for 
her obedient children, and affords them certain proofs of her 
favor even when suffering constitutional ailments, the cruel 
heritage of parental ignorance or folly. 
But it is not fitting to anticipate the reasoning in this line 
of our author, which is more definite than our mere allusions 
can be, and supported by abundant data. Health is the proper 
condition of every human being; disease an abnormal condi- 
tion. It is the province of this volume to show why health 
should be the possession of every man, and why there are so 
few among us who can stand up and say, “ I am well.” In his 
introduction Dr. Jacques has sketched the general outline ot 
the work with much particularity. Believing with Sir William 
Temple “that health is the soul that animates all enjoyments 
of life, which fade, and are tasteless, if not dead, without it; ” 
and knowing by experience that “ a man starves at the best 
and the greatest tables, makes faces at the noblest and most 
delicate wines, is poor and wretched in the midst of the great- 
est treasures and fortunes, with common diseases,” he traces 
that course which the wisdom of physiology and hygiene pre- 
scribes for the maintenance of that most desirable blessing— 
health, and for the avoidance of, or recovery from, those “ com- 
mon diseases,” X 
Preface to the New Edition. 
For the reason that has been given this book did not meet 
the cordial welcome from the public which its author expected 
would be the reward of the labor he had bestowed upon it, 
and, a few editions sold, it was permitted to drop out of print. 
Now, however, when the minds of the intelligent are directed 
to the important prior-questions of life and health, its restora- 
tion is appropriate, and it is believed that its liberal, unparti- 
san tone, the soundness of its philosophy, and the practical 
directness of its suggestions, to say nothing of the purity of its 
style and the delicacy of its language, will secure a wide and 
attentive reading. In the confidence of its value as an evan- 
gel of health, the publishers do not hesitate to commend these 
“ Hints ” to all who desire a better condition of their bodies 
and a better balance of their mental faculties—that corpus sa- 
num allied to that mens sana which is the substantial basis of 
harmony and beauty in human nature. 
Editor Phrenological Journal. 
New York, April i, 1879. PREFACE. 
«deals with subjects of vital im- 
ery man, woman, and child ; and 
;en in a spirit of thoughtful eam- 
dth a strong desire to make it a 
3 great work of human physical 
) improvement. These considerations will, we trust, in- 
ij sure for it such a degree of attention, at least, as will 
enable the public to judge for itself with what measure of success 
our labors have been crowned. 
We have aimed, not so much to unfold new principles or present 
novel facts, as to popularize those which scientific investigation 
had already established, and show, in some cases at least, more 
fully and clearly than had hitherto been done, their practical 
application. 
Our plan has rendered it necessary for us to touch upon some 
topics usually ignored in popular works on physiology and hy- 
giene, and to introduce, in illustration, outlines of the nude hu- 
man figure ; hut as there is nothing, we believe, either in the 
topics themselves, in our treatment of them, or in our illustra- 
tive drawings, at which even prudery itself can reasonably take 
offense, we deem no apology necessary. Our readers will hardly Preface. 
X 
be found among those who are “ ashamed of their bodies” or un- 
willing to be instructed with reference to their organs and func- 
tions. 
We address ourself to all classes and to both sexes, but espe- 
cially to woman, as she is the greatest sufferer from the evils at 
the removal of which we aim, and her condition has the most im- 
portant bearing upon the welfare of future generations. To her 
we appeal, not only for her own sake, but for the sake of pos- 
terity, to give her powerful aid to the cause of physical regenera- 
tion (which is, at the same time, the cause of mental, moral, and 
social elevation), and to lead man with her up the ascending slopes 
which lead to the temple of Health and Beauty. If we shall suc- 
ceed, even in the humblest degree, in awakening her interest, 
enlisting her sympathies, and impressing her with a sense of hei 
dangers and her duties, we shall not have labored in vain. 
New York, March 21st, 1859 INTRODUCTION. 
ERHAPS the proposition (implied in 
- our title) that physical or bodily per- 
fcction lies within the range of human possi- 
hilities, at least, although by no means a start- 
ling one, may call for a few introductory 
remarks in its support. Were a similar state- 
Y ment, however, to he made with reference to 
t > oxen and cows, instead of men and women, 
nothing of the kind would be required. The 
reason is obvious. We have hitherto devoted our attention 
mainly to the improvement of the various species of animals 
and vegetables which have proved useful or agreeable to us, to 
the almost total neglect of our own nobler race. Experience 
has taught us that the former are completely under our con- 
trol—that we can so order their propagation and development aa 
to modify their shapes, sizes, colors, and other qualities at will. 
If we have not yet placed them absolutely beyond the reach of im- 
provement, they are at least so nearly perfect that the additional 
steps required seem not only possible, but easy. 
We have remodeled the horse, for instance, a hundred times to xii 
Inteoduction. 
suit our convenience and pleasure, and to adapt him to the various 
uses for which he is required. For our heavy work at the plow 
and in the dray, we have added thickness to his bones and mus- 
cles, strength to his limbs, and stoutness to his whole frame ; foi 
the carriage and the saddle, we have imparted grace, symmetry, 
and a more delicately molded form ; and for the sports of the turf 
we have given lightness, length of limb, and a hound-like slen- 
derness. In the same way we have multiplied varieties of the 
dog, the sheep, the bam-yard fowl, and the pigeon, changing not 
merely the forms and colors, but also, to a considerable extent, 
the natural instincts of the animals on which we have exerted our 
transforming power. 
The changes wrought in the products of the vegetable kingdom 
are, if possible, even more wonderful. The noble Newtown pip- 
pin and the princely Bellflower are descended from the small, 
hard, and acid crab-apple of Europe ; from which single stock we 
have now many thousands of varieties—sweet and sour, early and 
late, and of almost every possible size, shape, color, and flavor. 
The delicious pear was originally an austere and innutritions fruit, 
cultivation having developed all those desirable qualities which 
now give it so high a place on our tables ; and the juicy and nu- 
tritious peach is said to have been once merely a bitter and poi- 
sonous almond. 
Every pomologist knows that by the use of the means which 
science and the arts have placed within his reach, he can, as a 
general rule, just as easily and surely have good fruit of the va- 
rious sorts cultivated as that of an inferior quality. By trans- 
planting, grafting, adaptation of soil and manure, and the proper 
method of cultivation, he secures the desired results. Having 
wrested from Nature the secrets of her generative and life-direct- 
ing forces, he assumes, for his own pleasure or profit, the entire 
control of her most complicated processes. Like Guy, the wise, 
for whom 
The zephyr in the garden rolled 
From plum-trees vegetable gold, Introduction. 
xiii 
he seems, so wonderful are the results of his manipulations, to 
Work on his Maker’s own receipt, 
And make each soil and element 
Steward of stipend and of rent. 
These facts would seem incredible, were we less familiar with 
them ; hut, as it is, we look upon them as matters of course, and 
no more astonishing than the daily rising and setting of the sun, 
or the regular succession of the seasons. 
When, however, one speaks of the physical improvement of the 
human race in any other than the most general terms, he seems, 
to a majority of minds, to have left the sphere of practical real- 
ities, and to he indulging in fanciful speculations. Having tried 
our skill upon horses and dogs, and upon apples and peaches, we 
can speak with confidence of our power over them. It seems no 
great exploit to give a pear the desired flavor, to stripe a tulip to 
our liking, or to impart the hue we fancy to arose ; but to mold 
the manly or the womanly form into symmetry and grace, to tint 
the cheeks and lips with Nature’s own colors, or to give to the 
hair or heard the silky softness and wavy undulations or spiral 
twinings which the highest beauty demands, is deemed too far 
beyond the reach of huraan science and skill to he seriously pro- 
posed. 
The general principle that man, as an organized being, is sub- 
ject to the same laws that govern all other organized beings, 
must, however, he admitted by all; and every one who has taken 
the trouble to inform himself upon the subject knows that upon 
the nature of the germ from which he has sprung, the quality and 
quantity of the nutriment received, and the character of the ex- 
ternal influences and culture brought to Dear upon him, depends 
the physical character of the human being as well as of the horse 
or the dog. These truths have been announced and reiterated, 
especially during the last quarter of a century, by the leaders of 
huraan progress in the departments of physiology and phrenology 
—by Combe, Caldwell, Cabanis. Broussais, Delaage, the Fowlers xiv 
Introduction 
and others, but they have not yet become a part of the living' 
faith of the world. Only here and there an individual constantly 
acts upon them, as upon other self-evident or demonstrated 
truths. 
Examples, however, illustrating the unprovability of man are 
not wanting. History and observation both furnish them. The 
ancient Greeks demonstrated the power of direct physical culture, 
and the influence of the fine arts, and an esthetic worship in de- 
veloping a high order of personal beauty and vigor ; and the 
modern Turks and Persians furnish noted instances of the trans- 
formations effected by crossings with a superior race, and tho 
selection for many generations of mothers of great physical beauty. 
But there are persons, even in this last half of the nineteenth 
century, who look upon it as little less than blasphemy to talk of 
improving, to say nothing of perfecting, man—the noblest work 
of God, and made in his image. “ Was he not created perfect in 
the beginning ?’ ’ they will ask. The question is irrelevant. It is 
enough for us to point to the fact, too evident to be disputed, that 
he is very far from perfection at present, whatever may have been 
his original state. We may, however, safely admit his pristine 
perfection. The “fall of man,’’ in a physiological sense, what- 
ever may be said of the theological dogma so termed, is no myth. 
Our multiplied deformities and diseases are sufficient evidence of 
its truth. The horse and the sheep, the peach and the plum, as 
they flourished under the genial skies of the primal paradise, may 
also have been perfect, each in its way ; but if so, they shared in 
the “fall.” We have been engaged in restoring their lost vir- 
tues and beauties, till, for them, earth has become, at last, al- 
most a paradise regained. Can it be wrong to attempt to do 
the same for man ? Should we not, on the contrary, find our- 
selves acting in co-operation with God himself, all of whose laws, 
whether revealed through inspired men or written in the great 
volume of Nature, indicate perfection as the ultimate destiny of 
the race ? We are zealously engaged, through the instrumental- 
ities of science and religion in developing and molding the Intel Introduction. 
X-V 
lect and the affections ; but these, in the present stage of oui 
existence, must manifest themselves through the physical organ- 
ization ; and, while this is defect! ,*s, their action must be ob- 
structed and their manifestations imperfect. It is only through a 
healthy and shapely body that a sound and harmoniously devel- 
oped mind can operate with perfect freedom and efficiency. It is 
also true, as we shall show in the proper place, that the natural 
action of the symmetrically developed mind tends to the repro- 
duction of its own symmetry in the physical organization of which 
it makes use, and that therefore in bringing external influences to 
bear upon the latter for its improvement, we but second the 
efforts of the indwelling intelligence. 
We find man, at present, weak, diseased, and if not absolutely 
ugly, at least far below our ideal standards of beauty, both in 
form and in face. Can he be restored to his primeval vigor, sym- 
metry, and grace ? and, if so, how ? 
It is certainly time for us to ask these questions and to set our- 
selves earnestly about the practical solution of the problems they 
involve. The results of our experiments upon the lower animals, 
and upon the products of the vegetable kingdom, point out the 
path to be pursued. We have only to modify our processes to 
adapt them to a change in some of the conditions under which we 
must work. 
It may be urged here that we have not the same control over 
the conditions on which improvement depends, as in the case of 
the lower and subject animals. With them we go back to a 
period previous to birth, and determine the circumstances under 
which conception and gestation shall take place. We can not do 
this, it is true, except in our own persons, in dealing with the 
human subject; but we sway intelligent beings not less surely in 
another way—through their intelligence. We have only to im- 
press the facts and principles involved so clearly and deeply upon 
the public mind that they shall become a part of the established 
faith of the day, and our object is more than half accomplished 
The work becomes thenceforth both an individual and a collective xvi 
Introduction. 
concern, and is zealously pushed forward at all points. Progress 
In this department must be gradual, but each step in the right 
direction sei ares an obvious and permanent benefit. 
We recognize fully the importance of the germinal principle 
and of the original direction given to the vital forces in the repro- 
duction of the human being, and have devoted due attention to 
that point in the succeeding chapters ; but we have given special 
prominence to the equally momentous fact, that the already existing 
and even matured physical organization may, under certain conditions, and 
by the use of perfectly legitimate means, be modified, both in its internal con- 
ditions and in its external forms, to an almost unlimited extent. The for- 
mer branch of the subject has been very fully and quite satis- 
factorily elucidated by other writers, and especially by 0. S. 
Fowler, in his various physiological and phrenological wrorks, 
and by Alexander Walker, in “Intermarriage,” while the lat- 
ter, though the need for its thorough exposition is equally press- 
ing, has received, in some of its bearings at least, very little 
attention. 
The human form is plastic. Until age has hardened its parts, 
it is but an image of soft clay, which we may mold at will; and 
we have explained and illustrated more clearly and fully than has 
hitherto been done, the means and methods by which we may 
most effectually and salutarily act upon it—shown how we may 
impart fresh vitality to the languid frame ; give strength to the 
weak limb; substitute grace of motion for awkwardness ; remodel 
the ill-formed body and homely features into symmetry and beau- 
ty, and postpone indefinitely the infirmities and deformities of 
age. 
We might quote a thousand facts to show the importance and 
urgency of the work we have undertaken. We might point to 
the multitude of puny and deformed children ; to the records of 
infant mortality ;*» to the numbers who crowd our asylums for the 
• One fourth of those who are born die previous to the age of seven year* 
and one half before reaching seventeen. Inteoductic n. 
xv ii 
blind, the deaf and dumb, and the insane ; to the almost univer- 
sal ill health which sustains such an army of physicians, and ren- 
ders so many hospitals and water-cure resorts necessary ; to the 
general lack of physical vigor in both sexes, and especially in 
woman ;* and to the scarcity of even tolerably beautiful forma 
and faces; but these facts will suggest themselves, and need not 
be set forth in detail. 
A popular journalist says : ‘1 The desire for beauty, or at least 
completeness and comeliness of form, is felt wherever a human 
heart palpitates. lAm I engaging V is the incessant, but often 
unrealized question of the maiden’s bosom. ‘Am I command- 
lng ?’ the unexpressed aspiration of the boy. Beauty or strength, 
casketed in a rounded, complete, and admirable physique, free from 
excess or deficiency of proportions, stands among the highest am- 
bitions of the woman or the man. A perfect form—it is the uni- 
versal vanity ; and ‘ How well you are looking !’ is everywhere 
among the most pleasing of compliments. 
We all want to be physically perfect, because we want that 
our presence should awaken attention, deference, perhaps admira- 
tion ; and because, born inevitably to love, we would be capable 
of awakening love in others. The admiration we bestow on a 
perfect form when by chance we meet with one, is a feeling that 
all know at some time in life. It is a feeling akin to worship— 
one in which the head has no part or prerogative. We reverence 
instinctively the largeness of grace, and of the perfection of mo- 
tion, life, and capability of which we perceive that our nature is 
susceptible.”! 
If the simple announcement of our subject do not predispose 
the reader to a favorable hearing, we can hardly hope to secure it 
Miss Catharine E. Beecher, in her “ Letters to the People,” says: “I am 
not able to recall, in my immense circle of friends and acquaintances all over 
!he Union, so many as ten married ladies, horn in this century and in this 
sountry, who are perfectly sound, healthy, and vigorous.” 
t Life Illustrated xviii 
Introduction. 
by urging any extraneous reasons. Who does not desire U he 
healthy, strong, graceful, and beautiful ? and who, desiring these 
qualities, can need other inducements to give his attention to any 
one who shall honestly and earnestly essay, in however imper- 
fect a manner, to instruct him in reference to the means of ob- 
taining them ? 
The race of prudes, however, is not yet extinct, and there may 
possibly be a few among the many thousands who will read so far 
as this, whose squeamishness will utterly condemn the popular 
treatment of some of the most vital questions involved in our 
subject, and in whose presence the human form must never be 
mentioned except in the conventional language of the tailor and 
the dressmaker. To such persons, if any such there he, we have 
only to express our regret that we must part company, and to 
advise them to read no further. There will still remain an au- 
dience sufficiently large to satisfy our highest ambition, to whom 
we may talk, in a reverent spirit and in chaste and fitting lan- 
guage, on any subject, a discussion of which the occasion may re- 
quire, without doing violence to those instinctive feelings of 
genuine delicacy and true modesty, for which no one can enter- 
tain a more profound respect than we. PHYSICAL PERFECTION. 
I. 
STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN BODY. 
La connaissance de la structure et des propriety du corps humain doit dirige 
’6tude des divers phenomenes de la vie.—Cdbanis. 
UR progress in the 
study of the laws 
of life and devel- 
opment, as mani- 
fested in the hu- 
man form, will he 
greatly facilitated 
by a thorough 
knowledge of its 
curious and won- 
derful mechanism; 
and we shall here devote a few pages to the presentation of 
such an outline of a natural system of anatomy, as will serve 
our purpose, and enable the reader the more readily to compre- 
hend the teachings set forth in the chapters which folio w. 
The human body consists of three grand classes or systems 
of organs, each of which has its special function in the general 
economy. We will denominate them; 
1. The Motive or Mechanical System, 
2. The Vital or Nutritive System, and— 
B. The Mental or Nervous System. 
These three systems, each naturally subdividing into several 20 
The Human Body. 
branches, include all the organs, and perform all the compli 
cated functions of the physical man. 
The motive or mechanical system consists of three sets of 
organs, forming, in combination, an apparatus of levers through 
which locomotion and all the larger movements of the body 
are effected. They are; 
L—TEE MOTIVE SYSTEM. 
1. The Bones, 
2. The Ligaments, and— 
3. The Muscles. 
1. The Bones.—The bones form the framework of the body. 
They are primarily organs of support, sustaining and giving 
solidity to every part. 
Plate I. illustrates the position of the bones and the relation 
they bear to the general system. The proportion, however, 
of the framework to its fleshy covering differs materially in 
different individuals; and this fact should be remembered, as 
it has an important bearing upon the doctrine of the tempera- 
ments, laid down in another chapter. 
In the earlier stages of their formation, the bones are carti- 
laginous or gristly in their structures, very flexible, and not 
easily broken. This wise provision of all-wise Mature is illus- 
trated in young children, whose innumerable falls never result in 
a fracture, and whose rapid growth would be entirely inconsist- 
ent with a hardened osseous frame. We may note here, too, 
in passing, that the legs of infants are often made permanent- 
ly crooked by being required, under the injudicious training of 
unwisely ambitions parents, to support prematurely the weight 
of the body. Little is gained by interfering with Mature, in 
such attempts to hasten her processes. 
In due time the bones, receiving deposits of lime, phos- 
phorus, and other earthy materials, gradually harden, and at 
their maturity are composed of nearly equal proportions of 
animal and mineral matter. In old age tie earthy matter often 
greatly predominates, rendering them very brittle. Plate I. 
THE HUMAN EKAMEWOKK. Beauties of the Skeleton. 
21 
Like other parts of the body, the bones have a system of 
blood-vessels and nerves, and, like the other parts, are subject 
to growth and decay, though their changes are less rapid than 
those of the softer portions. Their minute structure is very 
curious and beautiful. 
The genius and skill of man has never yet succeeded in con- 
structing a machine so beautiful in its perfect adaptation to 
its uses as the human skeleton; nor can the wisest of mortals 
suggest an improvement in its structure. See what noble 
twin columns, resting 
upon the firm, but flex- 
ible bases of the feet, 
support, in its proper po- 
sition, the grand arch of 
the pelvis ! And the 
pelvis itself, how admi- 
rably adapted to its va- 
rious functions! While 
it has all the necessary 
strength to support the weight of the body, which rests upon 
it, it is not less perfectly adapted to protect and sustain the 
vital organs situated within it, and to afford them room for the 
The Pelvis. 
proper performance of their func- 
tions. It is larger in the female than 
in the male, for an obvious reason, 
and gives that breadth to the hips 
of a well-developed woman which 
adds so much to the beauty of her 
form. The grand central pillar, the 
spinal column, on whose capital rests 
that sublime “dome of thought,” 
the cranium, has its base on the 
sacrum, a wedge-like bone which 
forms the keystone of the pelvic 
arch. The spinal or vertebral col- 
A Vertebral Joint. 
umn itself is one of the most wonderful of Nature’s wonderful 22 
The Human Body. 
works. It is composed of twenty-four bones, called vertebra), 
linked firmly together by a complicated system of ligaments, 
giving it immense strength, and, at the same time, great flexi- 
bility. It is pierced by what is called the vertebral canal, 
through which passes the spinal cord {medulla spinalis), of 
which we shall have more to say in another place. The spinal 
column is not straight, since that form would have rendered it 
more liable to be broken, but forming a double curve, readily 
yields a little to any unusual pressure. 
Attached to the dorsal or back vertebrae by strong ligaments, 
and bending forward so 
as to form the grand 
cavity of the thorax, are 
the twenty-four ribs, 
twelve on each side. 
The uppermost seven on 
each side are called the 
true ribs, because each 
of them is connected by 
a separate cartilage di- 
rectly with the sternum 
or breast-bone; while 
the lower five are call- 
ed false, because one or 
two of them are loose 
at the anterior extrem- 
ity, and the cartilages 
of the rest run into each 
The Thobax. 
other instead of being separately prolonged to the breast-bone, 
The arms are loosely attached to the body by means of mov- 
able shoulder-blades, which are kept in place by the collar- 
bone and the strong muscles which overlay them. 
Bones are of various shapes—long, as in the arm and leg; 
cuboidal or six-sided, as in the wrist and instep; and flat, as 
in the cranium and the shoulder-blades. The larger ones are 
hollow, which property gives them more strength in proportion Plate 11. 
THE MUSCLES, The Joints and Ligaments. 
23 
to weight than could otherwise have been obtained, and also 
secures a permanent storehouse for nutriment in the form of 
marrow, which seems to he set aside as a reserved fund for 
the sustenance of the body when all other supplies fail. 
The connections of the bones, called joints, are very beauti- 
ful contrivances, which no mechanic or artist could improve. 
These connections are of various kinds—by sutures or a sort 
of dovetailing, by cartilaginous attachments, and by movable 
joints. There are hinge joints, allowing only a forward and 
backward movement, and 
ball and socket joints, which 
allow the bone to move in 
all directions. 
2. The Ligaments.—The 
ligaments have been inci- 
dentally mentioned already. 
They help to form the 
joints, and are properly 
called organs of connection. 
Their strength and toughness is so great, that it is hardly pos- 
sible, by means of any ordinary force, to tear them asunder. 
“It is wonderful,” a late medical writer says, “to see how 
Tebtbbbal Ligaments. 
admirably the ligaments are arranged to 
answer the purposes for which they are 
intended! Where the ends of two bones 
meet, as in some of the joints, ligaments 
pass across from one to the other; and so 
firm are they in their structure, that they 
never allow the joint to become loose, 
however much it may be exercised. Some 
of the ligaments are arranged so as to 
keep the joint from bending the wrong 
way. The knee joint, which, were it not 
for its numerous ligaments, would be alto 
gether unfit for the important offices it 
Knee Joint. 
fulfills, has in it two of these bands, crossing each other like 24 
The Human Body. 
the legs of a saw-horse, in such a manner as to prevent the leg 
from being carried too far backward or forward; and to guard 
against dislocations sideways, strong lateral bands are placed 
on each side of the joint. Not only the large, but the small 
bones of the body, likewise, are bound together in this way as 
firmly as if they were secured by clasps of steel. Add to all 
this, the ligaments, like the bones themselves, are nearly insen- 
sible, being of a white and shining substance.” 
The provision for keeping the joints constantly oiled, so that 
they never wear out and are never injured in any way by fric- 
tion, is not less wonderful or less efficacious than the arrange- 
ment by which they are held together. 
3. The Muscles.—The muscles are simply bundles of red flesh, 
growing tougher and more compact toward the extremities by 
which they are attached to the bone, and terminating in white 
tendons or cords. The muscles are, par excellence, the organs 
of motion. It is by means of them that the indwelling mind, 
telegraphing its mandates through the appropriate nerves, 
effects any desired movement, by causing a contraction of the 
fibers of which they are composed; thus drawing the parts to 
which they are attached toward each other. This contractile 
power is very great—so great, in fact, that it may even destroy 
the cohesion of the parts, or tear the tendon from the bone. 
There are twenty-seven distinct muscles in the human body, di- 
vided into two classes—voluntary and involuntary; the former 
acting in obedience to the will, and the latter independently of 
it. Those by means of which we move the limbs belong to the 
first class, and those which keep the heart in motion and carry 
on the vital processes, while we sleep as well as when we are 
awake, to the second. They present a great variety of forms, 
and are of all lengths, from a fourth of an inch, as in some of 
the muscles of the larynx, to three feet, as in the sartorious or 
tailor’s muscle, which is used in crossing the legs. Plate 11. 
gives a very good representation of the muscles, so far as they 
appear in a front view. 
The muscular system, in its development and organic con. The Yital System. 
25 
dition, is more completely under our control than any ether 
part of the body, a circumstance of vast importance in con- 
nection with the subject of human physical perfectibility. 
The vital or nutritive system consists of three classes of or- 
gans, forming a complicated apparatus of tubes, which perform 
the functions of absolution, circulation, and secretion, and inci- 
dentally of purification. Their principal seat is the trunk of 
the body, and they exercise a minute peristaltic or pulsating 
motion. They are designated as— 
IX.—THE YITAL SYSTEM. 
1. The Lymphatics, 
2. The Blood-Vessels, and— 
3. The Glands. 
1. The Lymphatics.—These are small transparent tubes, 
furnished with valves at short intervals, and connected with 
the ganglia or glands which are distributed over the body, hut 
are most numerous on the sides of the neck, the armpits, the 
groins, and the mesenteric folds of the intestines. Their office 
is to absorb nutriment and pass it into the circulation. They 
convey the lymph from every part of the system to the descend- 
ing vena cava, where it mixes with the venous blood returning 
to the heart. When, through disease or deficiency of food, the 
supply of nutriment from the ordinaxy sources is inadequate to 
the wants of the system, these absorbents take up the fat 
which has been deposited in the cellular tissues, to be reserved 
for a time of need, and empty it into the chyle duct, to be 
thrown into the circulation. This causes the falling away or 
emaciation observed in the sick or starving. Even the muscles 
and cellular tissues are thus appropriated, in extreme cases. 
These organs, when they open into the intestines and serve 
to convey a portion of the nutriment elaborated by the stomach 
through the thoracic duct to its proper destination, are called 
lacteals. 
2. The Blood-Vessels.— That all-important function, the cir- 
culation of the blood, is effected by means of a system of tube^ The Human Body. 
or, rather, two interwoven systems of tubes, which carry it to 
every part of the body and then return it to tire center of cir- 
culation. This center of circulation is the heart, a muscular 
organ situated in the lower part of the thoracic cavity, between 
the two folds of the pleura, which form the central partition of 
the chest. It consists of two parts, a right and a left, in each 
of which are two cavities, an auricle and a ventricle. In other 
words, it forms a double force-pump, most ingeniously con- 
structed, with well-fitted valves, which always act perfectly, 
and never get out of order or wear. out. These pumps send 
the bright-red vitalized blood through the arteries to every 
part of the system, to be taken up by those minuter organs, 
the capillaries, whose millions of fibers permeate every- 
where, and furnish just the supply needed to each organ and 
part. To bring the blood back to the heart to be sent to the 
lungs and revitalized, we have a system of veins, which, com- 
mencing in minute capillaries, like little rills, gradually unite 
and enlarge till they pour their contents, river-like, through 
two large tubes (one ascending and the other descending), into 
the right auricle or receptacle of the heart. A muscular con- 
traction sends it into the right ventricle, which, contracting in 
turn, forces it into the pulmonary artery and thence into the 
lungs, where it is purified and changed by contact with the 
air, and becomes again fitted for its life-bestowing mission. 
3. The Glands.—The glands or filters are the organs which 
secrete or deposit not only the various substances of which the 
different organs are composed, but the fat, milk, hair, and other 
animal products. They are composed of two sets of capillary 
vessels, the one for the circulation of arterial blood, and the 
other for secreting their proper materials. The lungs, stomach, 
intestines, reproductive organs, and especially the liver, are 
mainly glandular in structure and function, and so far are in- 
cluded in this system. 
“ The lungs are two conical organs, situated one on each 
side of the chest, embracing the heart, and separated from each 
other by a membranous partition, the mediastinum. On the Plate lIL 
A. Heart. B. Lungs. C. Liver. D. Stomach, below which are seen 
the large and small intestines. S. Spleen, rn. Kidneys, g. Bladder. 
d. Diaphragm, which forms the partition between the thorax and the 
abdomen, h. Ovaries, i. Uterus. 
THE VITAL SYSTEM. Wonders of the Lungs. 
external or thoracic side they are convex, and correspond with 
the form of the cavity of the chest; internally they are con- 
cave, to receive the convexity of the heart. Superiorily they 
terminate in a tapering cone, which extends above the level of 
the first rib, and inferiorily they are broad and concave, and 
rest upon the convex surface of the diaphragm. Their posterior 
border is round and broad, the anterior sharp, and marked by 
one or two deep fissures, and the interior, which surrounds the 
base, is also sharp. Each lung is divided into two lobes by a 
long and deep fissure, which extends from the posterior surface 
of the upper part of the organ, downward and forward, to 
near the anterior angle of its base. The right lung is larger 
than the left, in consequence of the inclination of the heart to 
the left side. It is also shorter, from the great convexity of 
the liver, which presses the diaphragm upward upon the right 
side of the chest, considerably above the level of the left. It 
has three lobes. The left lung is smaller, has hut two lobes, 
but is longer than the right.”* 
The lungs present to the view a spongy mass, made up of 
air-tubes, air-cells, and blood-vessels, all bound together by a 
cellular tissue. Of the air-cells, there are many millions ;f and 
the internal surface presented by the combined air-cells and 
air-tubes is probably more than ten times the external surface 
of the body. Around each of these minute cells is woven a 
net-work of hair-like tubes, through which come and go the 
venous and arterial blood. It is through the coats of these that 
the air acts upon and vitalizes the blood, giving it oxygen and 
receiving carbonic acid in return. 
The liver, which is the largest gland in the body (weighing 
about four pounds), extends from the right to the left hypo- 
chondrium, and is situated obliquely in the abdomen, its convex 
surface looking upward and forward, and its concave down- 
t M. Rochoux has calculated that as many as 17,790 are grouped around each 
terminal br on elms; and that their total number amounts to not less than 6M 
millions! 
* Wilson. 28 
The Hum ah Body. 
ward and backward. It is attacked by strong ligaments to tli« 
diaphragm and other adjacent parts. Its office is to secrete 
bile from the blood, which is poured from the gall-bladder into 
the duodenum, a few inches below the stomach. 
The stomach is a musculo-membranous reservoir, continu- 
ous on the one side with the esophagus, and on the other with 
the duodenum. It is situated beneath the diaphram, liver, and 
spleen, and occupies the epigastrium and a part of the hypo- 
chondrium. Its office is to convert the food into chyme. 
The intestines, or bowels, comprise the duodenum, or second 
stomach, the jejunum, and ileum, which collectively are called 
the small intestine; the ccecum, the colon, and the rectum. 
The duodenum, or second stomach, leads from the pyloric ori- 
fice of the stomach to the jejunum. Its length is about twelve 
fingers’ breadth, and hence its name. The jejunum, so called 
from being generally found empty, forms the upper two fifths 
of the small intestine, leading from the duodenum to the ileum. 
The ileum, which signifies to twist or convolute, forms the re- 
maining three fifths of the small intestine, ending in the colon. 
It is smaller, paler, and thinner than the jejunum. 
The kidneys are hard, glandular bodies, lying on each side 
of the spine, near the last ribs. The office of the kidneys is 
to separate the urine from the blood and convey it into the 
bladder, by means of its long tubes called ureters. 
The spleen is also a glandular body, and is situated at the 
left of the stomach. Its function is not well known. 
The intimate relation and sympathy between the glands and 
the brain give rise to some singular phenomena, as will be seen 
further on. 
lII.—THE MENTAL SYSTEM. 
It is by means of this system that sense, thought, and impulse 
to action, and consequently all connection between the soul and 
the external world, takes place. It consists of a series of 
globules, bound by membranous investments into fibers of 
various forms, the motion of which is invisible. The chief Plate IV. 
Fig. I.—VIEW OF THE HEART AND LUNGS. 
Fig. 2.—THE NERVES CONNECTED WITH THE BRAIN. The Ahakatub ok Thought. 
of this system is the head. It admits, like the other sys 
terns, of a division into three orders of organs: 
1. The Organs of Sense, 
2. The Cerebrum, and— 
3. The Cerebellum. 
1. The Organs of Sense.—The organs through which we re 
eeive impressions from external objects—the eye, the ear, etc 
—need not be described. They communicate their impressions 
to the brain by means of special nerves, some of which are 
represented in Plate IY., fig. 2. They all seem to center in 
the base of the brain. 
2. The Cerebrum.—The human brain, speaking of it as a 
whole, is an oval mass filling and fitting the interior of the 
skull, and consisting of two substances—a gray, ash-colored, or 
cineritious portion, and a white, fibrous, or medullary portion. 
It is divided, both in form and in function, into two principal 
masses, called the cerebrum and the cerebellum. At its base 
there are two other portions, called the annular protuberance 
and the medulla oblongata. 
The cerebrum is divided longitudinally by the falx, or scythe- 
shaped process, into two equal hemispheres, and each of these, 
in its under surface, into three lobes. But the most remark- 
able feature in the structure of the cerebral globe is its compli- 
cated convolutions, the furrows between which dip down into 
the brain and are covered by the pia mater, a delicate fibro- 
vascular membrane, which lies upon the immediate surface of 
the brain and spinal marrow, bending down into all their fur- 
rows or other depressions. By means of these foldings the sur- 
face of the brain is greatly increased, and power gained with 
the utmost economy of space; for it is a well-ascertained fact, 
that in proportion to the number and depth of these convolu- 
tions, is the power of the brain. “ The mind’s revolvings,” aa 
Wilkinson beautifully expresses it, “are here represented in 
moving spirals, and the subtile insinuations of thought, whoso 
path lies through all things, issues with power from the form 
of cerebral screws. They print their shape and make them- 30 
The Human Body. 
selves room on the inside of the skull, and are the most irre- 
sistible things in the human world.”* 
The cerebrum is the organ of perception, reflection, and all 
the other essentially human faculties and sentiments. 
3. The Cerebellum.—The cerebellum is the organ of perma- 
nent action and of physical life. It lies behind and immediately 
underneath the cerebrum, and is about one eighth the size of 
the latter organ. It is divided into lobes and lobules, and con- 
sists of a gray and a white substance, like the cerebrum, but 
differently disposed, the white portion being internal in the lat- 
ter, and external in the former; in which also both substances 
are disposed in thin plates instead of convolutions. There is 
said to be no direct communication between the lobes of the 
cerebrum and the cerebellum. 
Extending from the base of the brain to the atlas or bony 
pivot on which the head rests, is the medulla oblongata. It is 
conical in shape, and may be considered as merely the head or 
beginning of the spinal cord, which continues it, and, in fact, 
the brain down the vertebral canal, and by means of 
the nerves which it gives off and which pass through notches 
between the vertebrae, connects it with every part of the 
body. There are generally reckoned eleven pairs of nerves 
arising from the brain and thirty-one from the spinal marrow, 
It is thus seen that the whole nervous apparatus is included in 
the mental system, as we have defined it, and that the brain is 
omnipresent in the human body. 
With these briefly stated facts, which form the outlines of the 
system of anatomy on which this work is based, the reader 
will be measurably prepared to read with profit what is to fol- 
low. Those who have access to anatomical and physiological 
works, and leisure for their study, will do well to pursue the 
subject further. 
* The lluma.l Body and its Connection with Man. 11. 
THE PERFECT lAN AND WOMAN. 
A form, indeed, 
Where every god did seem to set his seal, 
To give the world assurance of a man.—Shakspeare. 
A perfect woman, nobly planned, 
To warn, to comfort, and command.— Wordsworth. 
UR highest con- 
fcKSj F coptions of 
what should be, 
\ are’ is said, 
I '' merely obscure 
prophecies of what will 
he. So the ideal man 
and woman of to-day 
are but foreshadowinga 
of the actual man and 
woman of the future. 
The injunction, u Be ye 
perfect,” was not pro- 
nounced in mockery ; 
and if moral perfection 
be within the range of 
human capability, phys- 
ical perfection, surely, 
must also he attainable. But in what does this perfection con- 
sist ? and by what signs may the perfect man and woman he 
known, when they shall have made their advent upon the earth ? 
These questions would hardly be asked in reference to one 
»f the lower animals, and if they were, our answer would be The Peefect Man and Wom&n. 
ready and brief. Perfection in a horse, for instance, consists 
in the entire fitness or adaptation of the animal, as a whole, 
to all the functions or uses of the horse, and of each member 
in particular to its special function; and the external sign of 
this complete fitness is perfect equestrian beauty. Adaptation 
of form to function in different animals gives us widely differing 
lines, and we admire in one what would displease us in another; 
but, in all cases, it is fitness to the design of the species which 
seems beautiful to us. 
Beauty, then, whether in plants and animals or in men and 
women, is the grand external sign of goodness of organization 
and integrity of function; and the highest possible beauty can 
indicate nothing less than perfection in these particulars. In the 
proportion, therefore, that we approach physical perfection, we 
become beautiful, “the idea of beauty” being, as the learned Di 
Pritchard truly says, “ synonymous with health and a perfect 
organization.” Physical goodness (or health) and beauty will 
always be found to bear a strict relation to each other, the latter 
being every where the sign or symbol of the former, A lack of 
beauty in any member or system of the body indicates a lack 
of goodness or health in that member or system. A deformity 
of limbs shows clearly enough a want of goodness in the loco- 
motive system; a bad complexion not less certainly indicates 
something wrong in the vital system; and a malformation of 
the brain, made manifest by the shape of the cranium, is a sure 
sign of want of balance or symmetry in the mental system. 
This relation was well understood by the ancient Greeks, who 
placed beauty next to virtue and made it an object of worship; 
and a French writer (a zealous son of the Church, too), declares 
that the true object of all religions is the progressive develop- 
ment of beauty, since that tends to unite man with God by 
making them like Him.* 
But it is from external forms and colors, and their arrange- 
* Plus on s’approche de la di vinite, plus on refldte, son 6ternelle beautS. La 
but de toutes les religions est done le developpement progressif de la bc-aute, 
puisque toutes elles tendent a rcunir Pbomme <1 Dieu.—Delaaffe. PljA-TE V 
RKPOSINa AFMB 1 HE CHABB. The Sexes Contrasted. 
33 
meat, merely, it may be said, that beauty results, while physical 
perfection includes the complete performance of all the internal 
functions as well. This is true; but, as we shall show in the 
proper place, the former are always imperfect where the latter 
is wanting. Any functional defect or derangement manifests 
itself at once externally. A dyspeptic stomach or a diseased 
liver records its condition on face and form in characters which 
can not be misunderstood. Beauty, the sign of health, has no 
fellowship with disease. 
Looking at the subject more in detail, let us ascertain, if 
possible, what are the forms, proportions, and combinations 
which the law of perfect adaptation and, consequently, of per- 
fect beauty, requires in the human body. 
As the law just referred to demands in the female form what 
would be ugliness, if not absolute deformity, in the male figure, 
and vice versa, we shall best describe both by contrasting the 
one with the other. 
The male and female figures, viewed together, present several 
striking differences, and show that the distinction of sex is 
plainly marked upon the organization in its ensemble, as well as 
upon particular parts. First, we note that man is several inches 
taller than woman. The ancients made the Apollo a little 
more than half a head taller than the Yenus, and proportionally 
stout. Man has a more massive head, and the outlines of his 
form are more angular. The next thing that strikes us is, that, 
while his shoulders are broader than his hips, and he tapers 
downward from his shoulders, woman’s hips are broader than 
her shoulders, and she tapers both ways from the hips. Cam- 
per showed that, in tracing the forms of the male and female 
within two elliptical areas of equal size, the female pelvis ex- 
tended beyond the lines, while the shoulders were within, and 
that the male shoulders reached beyond the lines, while the 
pelvis was within them.* The neck of woman is proportionally 
shorter than that of man; her arms and legs are also shorter 
* Memoire sur le Beau Physique. 34 
The Perfect Man and Woman. 
and her trunk longer, her back more hollow, her bust smaller 
but more rounded, and her bosom greater in volume and more 
elegant in form. He is characterized by compact muscular de 
velopments and a strongly-hinged frame, indicative of power ; 
she, by bending and varied lines, gracefully rounded limbs, 
smooth surfaces, and elasticity, indicative of delicacy and grace. 
As Milton say: 
For contemplation, he, and valor formed; 
For softness, she, and sweet attractive grace. 
Plates Y. and YI. will illustrate the principal differences be- 
tween the male and female figures, as well as the beauty which 
results from fitness for their respective 
functions in each; but we offer them, 
beautiful as they really are, as we do 
these chapters, simply as hints toward 
perfection. 
For embodiments of ideal beauty, in 
its completeness, we may at present, 
perhaps, look in vain to forms of flesh 
and blood; but we may find it in frag- 
ments all around us. In one person we 
may observe a perfect forehead; in 
another, a perfect nose or mouth; and 
in a third, a limb or a bust, which no 
artist could improve. 
“Heavens! what an arm!” Powers 
is said to have exclaimed one day, as the 
mantle of one of the fair visitors of his 
studio—a young American girl—falling 
from her shoulders, disclosed the deli- 
cate beauty of a perfect arm and hand, 
which, in an ecstasy of enthusiasm, she 
was extending toward some work of art—“ Heavens! what an 
arm! Oh, for the art to petrify it !”* 
* American Gentleman’s Guide. Plate Yl. 
Preparing eor the Bath Goethe and St. Elizabeth. 
35 
This is not an isolated example. These fragmentary illustra- 
tions of physical perfection are not rare. Who will dare to say 
that they may not all be yet combined in one individual? 
According to the descriptions we have of him, Goethe must 
have approached closely to perfection, physically as well as 
mentally. Lewes says: “ Long before he was celebrated, he was 
likened to an Apollo; when he entered the restaurant, the peo- 
ple laid down their knives and forks to stare at him. Pictures 
and busts give a very feeble indication of that which was most 
striking in his appearance; they only give the cut, not the play 
of features; nor are they very accurate even in mere form. The 
features were large, as in fine, sweeping lines of Greek art. The 
brow lofty and massive, from beneath which shone large, lus- 
trous brown eyes of marvelous beauty, their pupils being of al- 
most unexampled size ; the slightly aquiline nose was large and 
finely cut; the mouth full, with a short arched upper lip, very 
expressive; the chin and jaw boldly proportioned, and the head 
resting on a fine muscular neck—details which are, after all, but 
the inventory of his appearance, and gave no clear image of it.” 
Of the saintly Elizabeth of Hungary, the most beautiful 
woman of her time, Montalembert says: “ Her beauty was 
regular and perfect; her entire figure left no improvement to 
be desired in it. Her complexion was dark and clear (brun et 
pur); her hair black; her figure of unrivaled elegance and 
grace; her walk full of nobleness and majesty.” 
It was by selecting the most beautiful parts of various indi- 
viduals, and combining them in one harmonious figure, that the 
ancient Greek artists succeeded in creating those models of 
ideal beauty which are to this day the admiration of the world. 
Thus the parts are truly copies of real beauty, once enshrined 
in flesh and blood, though the ensemble is ideal. The artists 
have forerun rather than outdone Nature, whose intentions and 
tendencies, which are always toward perfection, are constantly 
thwarted bv human ignorance and stupidity. They have 
created, in periods of social incoherence and physical and men- 
tal imperfection, models of the perfect forms which will be the The Perfect Man and Woman. 
necessary result of the true life of the coining ages of socia, 
harmony and perfect obedience to law. 
Following out the tendencies of Nature, instead of merely 
copying her actual forms, great artists have demonstrated, ic 
such works as the Yenus de Medici, the Apollo Belvidere, and 
the Greek Slave, that there are possibilities for the human 
form which it has not yet reached—at least in these latter ages 
of the world. The perfect fitness of each part to its place and 
function, and the complete symmetry and harmony of the 
whole of each of these figures, show that the artists who con- 
ceived and executed them must have been close students of 
Nature, and understood clearly in what manner physical integ- 
rity and well-being, and a perfect organization, are expressed 
in external forms. 
Now, may we not, taking a hint from the artists, and co- 
operating with Nature, instead of contravening her tendencies, 
aid her to embody in real, living forms our ideals of beauty ? 
May we not select, modify, combine, and harmonize the beauti- 
ful members already often produced singly, in spite of us, as it 
were, and thus obtain all the symmetry and grace of the mar- 
ble Yenus or Apollo in the soft, warm, sentient flesh and blood 
of living humanity ? 
The purpose we have in view in this chapter does not require 
a minute description of the typical man and woman, but a few 
of the more important details of the figure and features, as re- 
quired by the law of fitness, which is also the law of beauty, 
will prepare the reader for the closer analysis which will be 
necessary when we come to speak of the various kinds of 
beauty as modified by temperament. 
The proportions of the perfect human figure are strictly 
mathematical. The whole figure is six times the length of the 
foot. Whether the form be slender or plump, this rule holds 
good. Any deviation from it is a departure from the highest 
beauty of proportion. The Greeks made all their statues ac- 
cording to this rule. The face, from the highest point of the 
forehead, where the hair begins, to the end of the chin, is one Plate VII. 
ISAHELLU—TH3 EkUSHXTB The "Venus be Medici. 
37 
tenth of the whole stature. The hand, from the wrist to the 
end of the middle finger, is the same. The chest is a fourth, 
and from the nipples to the top of the head is the same. From 
the top of the Chest to the highest point of the forehead is a 
seventh. If the length of the face, from the roots of the hair 
to the chin, be divided into three equal parts, the first division 
determines the point where the eyebrows meet, and the second 
the place of the nostrils. The navel is the central point of the 
human body; and if a man should lie on his back with his 
arms and legs extended, the periphery of the circle which 
might be described around him, with the navel for its center, 
would touch the extremities of his hands and feet. The height 
from the feet to the top of the head is the same as the distance 
from the extremity of one hand to the extremity of the other 
when the arms are extended. 
These are general measures of the species. We shall see, in 
future chapter, that there is also a rule of proportion of an 
individual in regard to him- 
self, which in nature is dif- 
ferent in all the individuals 
of the species. 
The Yenus de Medici is 
considered the most perfect 
existing model of the female 
form, and has been the ad- 
miration of the world for 
ages. Alexander Walker, 
after minutely describing 
this celebrated statue, says: 
“ All these admirable cha- 
racteristics of the female 
form, the mere existence of 
which in woman must, one 
is tempted to imagine, be, 
even to herself, a source of 
ineffable pleasure—these constitute a being worthy, as the per- 
The Venus db Medioi. 38 
The fbkfect Man and Woman. 
Bonification of beauty, of occupying the temples of Greece; 
present an object finer, alas! than Nature even seems capable 
of producing; and offer to all nations and ages a theme of 
admiration and delight. Well might Thomson say: 
So stands the statue that enchants the world, 
So, bending, tries to vail the matchless boast— 
The mingled beauties of exulting Greece. 
And Byron, in yet higher strain 
There, too, the goddess loves in stone, and fills 
The air around with beauty; 
Within the pale 
We stand, and in that form and face behold 
What mind can make when Nature’s self would fail; 
And to the fond idolaters of old 
Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mold. 
We gaze and turn away, and know not where, 
Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart 
Eeels with its fullness; there—forever there— 
Chained to the chariot of triumphal Art, 
We stand as captives, and would not depart. 
We beg our fair readers to observe the form of the waist 
(evidently innocent of corsets 
and tight dresses) of this mod- 
el woman, and also that of 
the Greek Slave, in the accom - 
panying outlines. These forms 
are such as unperverted na- 
ture and the highest art alike 
require. To compress the 
waist, and thereby change its 
form, pushing the ribs inward, 
displacing the vital organs, 
and preventing the due ex- 
pansion of the lungs, is as 
destructive to beauty as it is 
to health. If the shape of an 
hour-glass had been the best 
shape for a woman—if her 
The Greek Slave. 
functions had been such that their perfect performance would Plate VIII. 
Blanche—The Blonds II eads and Faces, 
39 
require this form—she would doubtless have been so created 
in the beginning. 
The perfect heal in man, as we have already remarked, is 
larger than in woman, less smoothly rounded, and more undu- 
lating. It is also more prominent in the superior frontal re- 
gion, indicating stronger reflective faculties. In woman it is 
characterized by greater delicacy of structure, diminished 
capacity, finer proportions, and a greater extent backward 
from the occipital bone. 
In both sexes there must be such a development of the upper 
part of the head as will give the whole, including the face, a 
pyriform appearance, in which, in every aspect, it is larger at 
the superior portion, and diminishes gradually as it descends, 
till it terminates in the delicate outline of the chin. Great 
artists have always been guided by this rule, and in every fig- 
ure designed to embody ideal beauty, the lower part of the 
face diminishes, while the upper part is more fully developed. 
Venus, Apollo, Diana, Juno, Psyche, and the Graces furnish 
mythological illustrations of this principle. 
Camper’s lines for determining the cerebral mass, and con- 
sequently the intellectual capacity of races and individuals, 
though exceedingly fallacious in the extended application which 
he and his followers have given to them, serve admirably to 
illustrate the facial angle. The base line is drawn from the 
roots of the upper incisors to the external auditory passage; 
and another line from the upper incisors to the most elevated 
point of the forehead. The angle thus formed is, in the most 
beautiful races of men, about eighty-five degrees. - The Greek 
artists imparted an air of majesty to the heads of their gods 
by giving them an opening of ninety degrees. 
The beauty of the face depends much upon the profile, which, 
in its perfect form, approaches a straight line. Perfection in 
the nose requires that it should be so placed as to divide the 
face into two equal parts, and that it should be on nearly the 
same line with the forehead, with but a slight inflection at its 
junction In woman, the nose itself should be perfectly straight The Perfect Man and Woman. 
as shown in Plates YII. and IX. In man, a small degree of 
convexity, making it slightly aquiline, indicates the strength 
and energy of character which should characterize the masculine 
element. In both sexes it must he fine, smooth, and delicately 
chiseled. Our initial cut furnishes good illustrations of the 
male and female faces in profile. 
The law of perfect beauty requires that the mouth—that 
most expressive and eloquent feature of the human face divine 
—should be of medium size, but smaller in woman than in 
man. The curve of the upper lip is said to have furnished the 
ancient artists with a model for the how of Cupid. It must 
extend beyond the lower lip, which must, however, be more 
fully developed and rounded, turning outward so as to leave 
between it and the chin a gracefully curved hollow. The 
teeth must be small, slightly rounded, and perfectly even and 
white. 
The chin should be of moderate size, but larger in man than 
in woman, in whom it must be white, soft, and gracefully 
rounded. 
Perfect beauty in the eye requires a long rather than a short 
high opening between the eyelids, and immaculate clearness 
of both the white and the iris. Dark blue, black, and brown 
eyes are most beautiful in woman, and light blue, gray, or 
hazel, in man, since the latter indicate hardihood and mascu- 
line vigor. The eyes should be large rather than small, espe- 
cially in woman. 
Eyes loving large, 
as Gerald Massey has it, have been admired in all ages and by 
all nations. They find a place in almost every description of 
beauty, real or imaginary, from Helen of Troy to Xinon de 
L’Enclos. Plates YII. and YIII. illustrate the beauty of the 
eye. The former also shows an exceedingly beautiful face in 
profile. 
The cheeks should be moderately plump, and delicately tinged 
with the hues of thriving health. 
The most beautiful hair is fine and soft, especially in women. Platk IX 
Margarita—Thd Fbaki. Beauty of the Hair. 
41 
and either wavy or curling.* Brown, auburn, and golden 
are generally thought to be the most beautiful colors. The 
ancients were great admirers of golden hair, which they be- 
lieved to symbolize the highest mental beauty and excellence. 
Many of the historic characters of antiquity are described as 
having hair of this color. Of Milto, the beautiful lonian, we 
are told; “Her hair was yellow, the locks a little curled.” 
Helen of Troy, Poppaea Sabina, and Lucrezia Borgia are de- 
scribed as having beautiful golden hair. Among the great 
men of whose hair history has taken note, Alexander the 
Great, Demetrius of Macedonia, Sylla the dictator, Oommodus, 
Camoens, Tasso, and Alfieri had yellow or golden locks. Cer- 
vantes had brown hair and a yellow beard. Of Oommodus, 
the historian tells us, that when he walked in the sun his locks 
glittered like fire, so that some believed that they had been 
sprinkled with gold dust. 
Hair dividing in a line extending from the crown to the 
forehead and falling over the temples, as it generally does in 
women and sometimes in men, indicates symmetry and beauty 
of soul; hence the ancient sculptors never omitted this in their 
highest characters. In pictures of Christ, also, we always see 
this peculiarity. 
The most beautiful neck in woman is white, smooth, straight, 
and flexible; less above, and increasing gently toward the 
shoulders. The masculine neck should be more muscular and 
less rounded, but easy and pliant. 
The shoulders should be whiter, narrower, and more softly 
rounded in woman than in man, but firm and elastic. 
* There are many allusions in the poets to what the Romans were wont to 
call “ the smiling locks” (crimes ridentes). The hair of the Beatrice of Dante 
was of this description. 
the poet says in one of his eanzoni ; and in another he speaks of the fair locks 
which love, to consume him, had gilded and curled: 
lo miro i crespi e gli biondi capelli, 
Ch’ amor per consumarmi incrospa e dora. 
Biondi capelli The Perfect Man and Woman. 
The whiteness, firmness, and elasticity of the neck and 
shoulders should extend to the bosom, which, in woman, must 
be well developed, but not so large as to be at all out'of pro- 
portion with the rest of the figure. The breasts must be grace- 
fully rounded, smooth, equal in 
size, and distinctly separated. 
The arms and hands are sus- 
ceptible of a degree of beauty 
of which we see few examples. 
In woman, the arm is plumper 
and more rounded, and has soft- 
er forms and purer and more 
flowing outlines, than in man. 
The hand in woman is softer, 
whiter, and fuller. The fingers, 
in their perfect form, are long, 
round, tapering, and delicate. 
Beautiful ankles are not rare, 
but the feet of the moderns, 
and especially the women, are 
almost universally deformed 
by tight boots and shoes. The 
second toe, which naturally 
projects most, as we see in the 
antique, is arrested in its development, and the foot, which in 
the outline of its extremity, ought to approach the elegant 
form of the ellipsis, is rounded without beauty, and disfigured 
by our ridiculous compressions. The ancients attached much 
importance to the form of the feet, and the historians, as well 
as the poets, make mention of their beauty in speaking of 
Polysene, Aspasia, and others.* 
Can ova’s Hebe. 
Conjoined with perfection of form in figure and face, we 
shall not fail to find that index of perfect functional integrity, 
a soft, smooth, transparent, and delicately tinted skin. This 
* "Walker. The Babometee of Health. 
43 
is “the barometer of health and soundness of the individual, 
and the most indubitable sign of beauty.”* The cheeks 
must have the true blending of the rose and the lily. Too 
much redness is as far removed from the highest beauty as a 
deficiency of color. 
These outlines will suffice for the present. In future chapters 
we shall enter upon more minute descriptions of the forms 
which the law of perfect human development requires, and 
show by what means they may be acquired and retained. 
* Sir James Clark. 111. 
THE TEMPERAMENTS. 
The comparative standing of individual man, as relates to his race, is graai> 
a ted by the predominance of his leading organs.—Caldwell. 
hT order to prepare the read- 
/ \ er fully to comprehend and 
J ( appreciate the important 
practical details which fol- 
low, it is necessary for ns to set 
clearly before him the doctrine 
of the temperaments, as we un- 
derstand and purpose to apply it. 
It will he seen to have an import- 
ant bearing on tbe lead- 
ing topics of our work. 
When we compare man 
with the other animals, 
we observe that he is 
distinguished by charac- 
teristic features which do 
not permit us, for a mo- 
ment, to confound him with any of them; and when we compare 
man with man, we are struck by the no less obvious feet, that 
there exists between individuals differences analogous to those 
svhich mark the different species. One is tall and muscular, 
another short and plump, a third small and slendei. We obseive, 
also, that the functions of life are not performed in all with the 
same degree of force or rapidity, and that their likes and dislikes 
have neither the same direction nor the same intensity.* 
* Cabanis’ Rapports Physique et du Moral de I’Homme.” Pul-tb X. 
Thb Motive Tjcmperambnt, D EFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION. 
These differences are the result and indication of what we 
tall temperament, which is defined as “a particular state of the 
constitution, depending upon the relative proportion of its dif- 
ferent masses and the relative energy of its different func- 
tions.” 
In their last analysis, the temperaments are as numerous and 
varied as the individuals of the race, no two persons being found 
with precisely the same physical constitution. Tracing them 
back to their simpler forms, however, we shall find them all to 
result from the almost infinite combinations of a few simple 
elements. 
In the outlines of a natural system of anatomy, which we 
have given in a previous chapter, it is shown that the human 
body is composed of three grand classes or systems of organs, 
each of which has its special function in the general economy. 
We have denominated them— 
1. The Motive or Mechanical System, 
2. The Vital or Nutritive System, and— 
3. The Mental or Nervous System. 
On this basis rests the true doctrine of the temperaments, of 
which there are primarily three, corresponding with the three 
systems of organs just named. We shall call them— 
1. The Motive Temperament, 
2. The Vital Temperament, and— 
3. The Mental Temperament. 
It is the predominance of the class of organs from which it 
takes its name that determines each of these temperaments. 
Thus the first is marked by the superior development of the 
osseous and muscular systems, forming the locomotive appara- 
tus ; in the second, the vital organs, the principal seat of which 
is in the trunk, give the tone to the organization; and in the 
third, the brain and nervous system exert the controlling power. 
The simple or primary temperaments are, however, practi- 
cally, little better than abstractions; hut they serve as points 
of departure from which to arrive at their various combina- 
tions. 46 
The Temperaments. 
I.—THE MOTIVE TEMPERAMENT. 
The bony framework of the human body determines its gem 
eral configuration, which is modified in its details by the mus- 
cular fibers and cellular tissues which overlay them. In the 
motive temperament the bones are proportionally large, and 
generally long rather than broad, and the outlines of the form 
manifest a tendency to angularity. The muscles are well de- 
veloped, but only moderately rounded, and correspond in form 
with the bones. The figure is commonly tall, elegant, and strik- 
ing; the face oblong; the neck rather long; the shoulders broad 
and definite; the chest moderate in size and fullness; the ab- 
domen proportional; and the limbs long and tapering. The 
complexion and eyes are generally, but not always, dark, and 
the hair dark, strong, and abundant. Firmness of texture char- 
acterizes all the organs, imparting great strength and endurance. 
Men of this temperament are naturally vigorous, active, en- 
ergetic, and impassioned, and possess strongly marked, if not 
idiosyncratic, characters. They manifest great capacity for 
conception, receiving and combining rapidly many and varied 
impressions, and are constantly carried away, bearing others 
with them, by the torrent of their imagination and passions. 
They are leaders, rulers, and conquerors in the sphere in which 
they move. This is the temperament for rare talents, great 
works, great errors, great faults, and great crimes.* 
The motive temperament was the prevailing one, apparently, 
among the ancient Eomans. An aquiline nose, great ambition, 
and an insatiable love of power and conquest, very frequently 
accompany it. It is pre-eminently the American temperament. 
In a woman of this temperament, the bosom is only moder- 
ately developed, the waist remarkable for its fine proportions, 
the haunches not very broad, the thighs elegantly formed, and 
the arms and legs indicative of agility and lightness. “The 
whole figure,” Walker remarks, “seems almost aerial; and we 
should imagine that if our hands were placed under the lateral 
* Cabania. Plate XI 
A Keax, Hebe. Helen of Teoy. 
parts of the tapering waist of a woman thus characterized, the 
slightest pressure would suffice to throw her into the air.” 
47 
Plates X. and XL, also the accompanying portrait of Mary 
Wortley Montague, 
happily illustrate 
the beauty of form 
and face character- 
istic of women of 
this temperament. 
The Diana of Gre- 
cian sculpture fur- 
nishes a fine classic 
representation of 
the same species of 
beauty. 
Helen of Troy, 
according to the de- 
scriptions we have 
of her, must have 
been of this tem- 
perament ; for we 
are told that she 
was tall, and that 
she had “ a very long and white neck, whence she was said to 
be the daughter of a swan.” 
Mabt Woutlet Montague;. 
The motive temperament, in its typical form, is less proper to 
woman than to man; but we may note two or three modifica- 
tions of it which constitute its more feminine phases : 
The first is that in which the bones, except those of the pel- 
vis are proportionally small, which gives the figure additional 
delicacy and grace. This conformation, while it adds to the 
beauty of the female figure, detracts from the strength and, 
consequently, from the beauty of the masculine form. 
The second is that in which the development of the ligaments 
and the articulations which they form are proportionally small, 
which adds to the beauty of the female figure by correcting tl> The Temperaments. 
48 
tendency to angularity and abrupt bendings which, as we have 
seen, is characteristic of this temperament, and rounding and 
softening the contour of the joints. This will be particularly 
apparent in the wrists and ankles. 
The third is that which presents proportionally shorter bones, 
and. except around the pelvis, smaller and more rounded mus- 
cles, affording less strongly marked reliefs and more of that 
rounded plumpness essential to the highest beauty in woman. 
An abnormal development of the motive temperament, in 
which both the vital and the mental systems are sacrificed to 
mere animal strength, forms what the ancients called the ath- 
letic temperament. It is marked by a head proportionately 
small, especially in the coronal region; a thick neck; broad 
shoulders; expanded chest; and strongly-marked muscles, the 
tendons of which are apparent through the skin. The Farnese 
Hercules furnishes a model of the physical attributes of this 
abnormal constitution, in which brute force usurps the energies 
necessary to the production of thought, and leaves its possessor 
decidedly deficient in all the higher mental manifestations. 
This temperament does not occur in woman. 
lI.—THE VITAL TEMPERAMENT. 
As this temperament depends upon the predominance of the 
vital or nutritive organs which occupy the great cavities of the 
trunk, it is necessarily marked by a breadth and thickness of 
body proportionately greater, and a stature and size of limbs 
proportionately less than in the motive temperament. Its most 
striking physical characteristic is rotundity or plumpness. 
The face inclines to roundness; the neck is rather short; the 
shoulders broad and round; the chest full; the abdomen well 
developed; the arms and legs plump, but tapering and delicate, 
and terminating in hands and feet relatively small. The com- 
plexion is generally rather florid; the countenance smiling; 
the eyes blue; and the hair soft, light, and abundant. 
In a woman of tins temperament (which seems peculiarly 
the temperament of woman), “the shoulders are softly rounded. PIATE XII. 
The Vital Temper-aMeS* The Beauty of Plumpness. 
and owe any breadth they may possess rather to the expanded 
chest, containing these organs, than to the bony or muscular 
size of the shoulders themselves; the bosom, a vital organ, in 
its luxuriance seems laterally to protrude on the space occupied 
by the arms; the waist, though sufficiently marked, is, as it 
were, encroached on by that plumpness of all the contiguous 
parts which the powerful nutritive system affords; the haunches 
are greatly expanded for the vital purposes of gestation and 
parturition; the thighs are large in proportion; but the loco- 
motive organs, the limbs and arms, tapering and becoming 
delicate, terminate in feet and hands which, compared with 
the ample trunk, are peculiarly small; the complexion, de- 
pending upon nutrition, has the rose and lily so exquisitely 
blended, that we are surprised it should defy the usual opera- 
tion of the elements; and there is a luxuriant profusion of soft 
and fine flaxen or auburn hair. The whole figure is soft and 
voluptuous in the extreme.”* 
Such forms and faces have had more numerous admirers 
than those of any other style, and enter into almost every de- 
scription of beauty in the works of both Asiatic and European 
writers. Americans are said to be the only people who mani- 
fest a decided passion for slenderness. The arts which women 
have practiced in order to acquire the desired embonpoint are 
detailed at length by various writers. Camus tells us that 
the women of Egypt are wont to “ bathe themselves several 
days in lukewarm water, eating and drinking while in the 
bath. During the time they are in the hath, they take every 
half hour some broth made of a fat pullet. After taking this 
sort of bath four times, they eat a fat pullet, all but the head!” 
The Empress Theodora also “made abundant use of the bath, 
remaining in it long, and leaving it only to eat and rest in bed, 
during the greater part of the day and night,” to increase her 
plumpness and heighten her charms. 
* Walker. Beauty: Illustrated chiefly by an Analysis and Classification 
of Beauty in Woman. 50 
The Temperaments. 
Plates XII. and XIII. furnish good illustrations of the species 
of beauty founded on this temperament. See also the initial 
cut, at the head of this chapter (a portrait of Anna Cora 
M owatt Eitchie), for another example. 
Persons of this temperament are characterized mentally by 
activity, ardor, impulsiveness, enthusiasm, versatility, and 
sometimes by fickleness. They have more elasticity than firm- 
ness, more diligence than persistence, more brilliancy than 
depth. They are frequently violent and passionate, hut are as 
easily calmed as excited; are generally cheerful and amiable, 
and almost always very companionable and fond of good living. 
An undue and abnormal preponderance of the absorbent 
system and a sluggish action of the circulatory organs give rise 
to what has been called the lymphatic temperament, which pre- 
sents forms even more rounded and softer than those we have 
been describing, but lacking their well-defined and graceful out- 
lines. A feeble color of the skin, a lack of expression in the 
countenance, insurmountable sloth, and a general weakness and 
apathy, both of body and mind, characterize this state of the 
system, which is so evidently the result of disease that we see 
no propriety in setting it down as one of the natural temper- 
aments. When perfect health shall have become universal, 
we shall have no lymphatic people, and no lazy ones. 
lII.—THE MENTAL TEMPERAMENT. 
The mental temperament, depending upon the predominance 
of the brain and nervous system, is characterized by a slight 
frame, and a head relatively large and of a pyriform appearance. 
The face is generally oval; the forehead high and pale; the 
features delicate and finely chiseled; the eye bright and ex- 
pressive ; the hair fine, soft, not abundant, and commonly of 
a light color; the neck slender; the chest rather narrow; the 
limbs small; and the whole figure delicate and graceful rather 
than striking or elegant. In woman, the bosom and pelvis are 
only moderately expanded, and there is a decided lack of that 
embonpoint which characterizes the vital temperament. PIATA XIII. 
La Bkllb Ahglaisk. Plate XIV. 
The Mental Temperament, Rachel la Tragedienne. 
51 
Illustrations of this temperament are furnished by Plates 
XIY. and XY. The face of Rachel is particularly fine, and 
no ideal can express, in general contours, more intellectuality. 
The following brief but graphic description of the great Queen 
of Tragedy, as she appeared on the stage in New York, in 1856, 
will complete the picture. 
“ Pale, with jet-black hair, a small regular nose, a mouth 
mobile enough, but rather sweet in its expression and tender 
in its lines of the heroine of tragedy, and a large forehead 
quite protruding itself over the straight, black brows that shad- 
ow her wondrous eyes, she is the very embodiment of feminine 
intellect. Her figure is slight, and her mental entirely domin- 
ates her vital system; but her limbs, with all their delicacy, 
have a firm look, and she is rather lithe than fragile. The fall 
of her drapery would make any sculptor despair, did he not 
see that itself is but the reproduction in tissue of lines into 
which the Grecian 
sculptors wrought 
their marble.” 
In persons of 
the mental tempe- 
rament, the brain 
and the nervous 
system are act- 
ive, the thoughts 
quick, the senses 
acute, and the im- 
agination lively 
and brilliant. It 
is the literary and 
artistic, and espe- 
cially the poetic, 
temperament, of 
which Byron, 
Shelley, Keats, and Poe furnished good examples, 
Keats. 
There is at the present day, and in this country, an excess- Tiie Tempee aments. 
ive and morbid development of tlis temperament, especially 
among women (to whom, even in its normal predominance, it 
is less proper than the preceding), which is most inimical to 
health, longevity, and happiness. It answers to the nervous 
temperament of the old classification, and is characterized by 
the smallness and emaciation of the muscles, the quickness and 
intensity of the sensations, the suddenness and fickleness of the 
determinations, and a morbid impressibility. It is caused by 
sedentary habits; lack of exercise; a false system of education, 
inducing a premature and disproportionate development of the 
brain; the immoderate use of tea, coffee, and tobacco; and 
habits of sensual indulgence. We shall show farther on how 
this state of the system may be prevented, or, if already exist- 
ing, remedied, in a measure-, at least. 
The three primary temperaments combining with each other 
in different proportions, and being modified by various causes, 
form sub-temperaments innumerable, presenting differences and 
resemblances depending upon the relative proportions of the 
primitive elements. The simplest combinations of which the 
three primary temperaments are susceptible, give us six sub- 
temperaments, which may be designated as— 
1. The Motive-Yital Temperament, 
2. The Motive-Mental Temperament, 
3. The Vital-Motive Temperament, 
4. The Vital-Mental Temperament, 
5. The Mental-Motive Temperament, and— 
6. The Mental-Vital Temperament. 
The names of these compound temperaments sufficiently in- 
dicate their character. The motive-vital and the vital-motive 
differ but slightly, the name placed first in either case indica- 
ting the element which exists in the larger proportion. The 
same remark applies to the motive-mental and the mental-mo- 
tive, and to the vital-mental and the mental-vital. 
It is evident that perfection of constitution must consist in a 
proper balance of temperaments. If any one of them exists in 
great excess, the result is necessarily a departure from symme- Plate XV. 
Baoijtbi,. Change of Temperament. 
53 
try and harmony both of form and character. "Whatever, 
therefore, has a tendency to promote the disproportionate de- 
velopment of either of them should be carefully avoided. 
Each person is horn with a particular temperament, in 
which there is an inherent tendency to maintain and increase 
itself, since it gives rise to habits which exercise and develop 
it; but this tendency may be counteracted and changed entirely 
by external circumstances—by education, occupation, superin- 
duced habits, climate, etc., and more particularly by special 
training instituted for that purpose. George Oombe, in one 
of his valuable works, points out the important changes pro- 
duced in the temperament by a continued course of training. 
“ It is common,” he says, “ for the bilious [motive] to be changed 
into the nervous [mental] temperament by habits of mental 
activity and close study; and, on the other hand, we often see 
the nervous or bilious changed into the lymphatic [vital] about 
the age of forty, when the nutritive system seems to acquire 
the preponderance.” Spurzheim was accustomed to say that 
he had originally a large portion of the lymphatic temperament, 
as had all his family; but that in himself the lymphatic had 
gradually diminished, and the nervous increased; whereas, in 
his sisters, owing to mental inactivity, the reverse had happeend, 
and when he visited them, after being absent many years, he 
found them, to use his own expression, “ as large as tuns.” 
Let these facts be borne in mind when we come to give 
practical rules and directions for physical improvement. IV. 
THE LAWS OF HUMAN CONFIGURATION. 
It is the law of formation, that the development of any part of the body 1* In 
direct proportion to the vital currents which, by means of exercise, are brought 
to bear upon it.— Thdophile Gautier. 
Quand on sonde la nature humaine a une certaine profondeur, on trouve 
I’ame.—Anonyme. 
0 be a good gar- 
dener, one must 
Lave a practical 
knowledge of 
the laws of veg- 
etable life—must 
understand the 
effects of cli- 
mate, soil, ma- 
nures, grafting 
crossing, and 
cultivation, on 
the character, 
growth, and 
forms of plants. 
A clear compre- 
hension of the laws of animal life, on which human develop- 
ment and configuration and, consequently, human health and 
beauty, depend, is certainly not less important to him wrho 
would attempt his own physical culture, undertake the training 
of children, or assume the office of public teacher or reformer; 
and we shall, we believe, best promote the practical ends we 
have in view by devoting a few pages to an exposition and 
illustration of these laws. Foem Adapted to Function. 
55 
It is everywhere the indwelling life which determines the 
external forms of things. The soul shapes the body and not 
the body the soul. This principle (which runs quite through 
nature) we take as our point of departure. 
Among all created things, in strict accordance with the law 
just stated, differences of form are found to be commensurate 
with differences of character and use. Things which resemble 
each other in quality and function resemble each other in shape; 
and wherever there is nnlikeness of quality and function there 
is unlikeness of configuration. It may be observed, further, 
that whenever a change of vital character takes place in any- 
thing, whether mineral, plant, or animal, there is a tendency to 
a corresponding change of form. We are hardly permitted to 
doubt, therefore, that there is, in all cases, a determinate relation 
between the constitution and the appearance of things, though 
we may not always be able clearly to trace it out. The dif- 
ferences we observe among species, and among individuals of 
the same species, are not accidental, nor are they mere arbitrary 
marks. There is a cause in the nature of things why each in- 
dividual, plant, or animal should assume its own precise figure 
rather than any other, and this cause may be found in the ne- 
cessity of adapting form to character. 
The outer or physical man, then, is but an image or material 
representation of the inner or spiritual man. The soul, mod- 
ified in its manifestations by external conditions, and subject to 
constant impressions from the vax-ious objects by which it is 
surrounded, builds up the body and changes it at will, to meet 
its own changing character and wants; every alteration in a 
man’s style of being necessarily tending to express itself in 
every fiber, fluid, and movement. 
V 7 , 7 
It w'ould carry us too far from the practical work we have 
undertaken, to discuss the abstract question of the soul’s con- 
nection with the body or to investigate the mode of its action 
upon it. It is better, in cases like this, to dogmatize, if nec- 
essary, than to theorize. There exists then in man, we will as- 
sume, circulating through every nerve, a very subtile fluid. We Laws of Human Configuration. 
do not see it; it can hardly he said that we feel it; but we rec- 
ognize it as an influence running along the nervous fibers from 
the limbs or body to the head in sensation, and from the head 
to the limbs or body in voluntary motion. This fluid seems to 
form the connecting link between soul and body, and to be the 
instrument by means of which the former builds, rebuilds, and 
shapes the latter. It is generally supposed to be electric or 
magnetic in its nature. The ancient Magians called it the living 
Jire. Delaage, our French thaumaturge, gives it the name of 
Vesprit de vie, and says that “it has the color of fire or the 
electric spark, and is generative and plastic, inducing formation, 
and bending everything it touches into the forms prescribed by 
the directing intelligence.” 
“Soul of the world,” he continues, “spirit diffused through 
all nature, it is the vital essence of all the bodies which it ani- 
mates and of all the species in which it is incarnate; and is it- 
self profoundly modified by all the mediums which it traverses. 
It is flesh when it traverses the flesh, and bone when it traverses 
the bones; and so truly is it the essence of each man, that if 
you present to a lucid somnambulist a lock of hair impregnated 
with this fluid, he will, in his super-normal condition, describe 
physically and morally the person from whose head it was taken. 
“As another illustration of the fact that this fluid develops 
and animates specifically each body which it traverses, take a 
branch of the plum-tree and graft it upon an apricot-tree. The 
spirit or sap, which is the life of the latter, penetrates the for- 
mer, where it is changed into the sap of the plum-tree, and, by 
virtue of its generative power, develops the branch and covers 
it, at the proper season, with leaves and flowers, and in due 
time with matured and ripened fruit, having the proper form, 
color, and flavor of plums.” 
Virgil proclaims very clearly, through the lips of Anchises, 
she same great truth. The passage is a magnificent one: 
Know first, a spirit with an active flame, 
Fills, feeds, and animates this mighty frame; 
Buns through the watery worlds and fills the air, Yiegil and Ctjviee. 
The ponderous earth, the depths of heaven afar, 
Glows in the sun and moon, and burns in every star.* 
jN «w, the reader may accept the theory (which our quotations 
show to be not a new one) thus briefly stated and illustrated, 
or he may supply its place by one that may suit him better. 
In either case our facts retain their full value, and the real 
foundation of all our practical teachings remains unmoved. 
Constantly but unconsciously 
We build and unbuild our echoing clay, 
changing, particle by particle, fluid, muscle, and bone. Cuvier, 
in developing this grand idea, remarks: 
“In living bodies no molecule remains in its place; all enter 
and leave it successively; life is a continual whirlpool, the di- 
rection of which, complicated as it is, remains always constant, 
as well as the species of molecules which are drawn into it, 
but not the individual molecules themselves; on the contrary, 
the actual material of the human body will soon be no longer 
in it; and yet it is the depository of the force which will con- 
strain the future material in the same direction as itself; so 
that the form of these bodies is more essential to them than the 
material, since the latter changes unceasingly, while the other 
is maintained.” 
Cuvier refers to the general form, characteristic of species. 
Molecular changes do not effect this. Individuals change, but 
species are permanent. The “force” of which he speaks con- 
strains new material to follow the direction marked out by the 
old, which it displaces, so far only as character and function re- 
quire the same configuration. Any change in life and habits 
changes correspondingly the direction of the vital currents; so 
that, while the perpetual process of building and rebuilding our 
physical frames leaves us all the marks which distinguish the 
race to which we belong, individual peculiarities may be 
* ASneid, Book YI. In these sublime and exalted verses Yirgil follows the 
refined sentiments of Plato concerning the anima mtmdi, or soul of the world, 
pervading and vivifying all created things. Laws of Human Configueation. 
greatly modified, or even wholly lost, by means of the changed 
direction of the vital forces. The volume of the vital organa 
contained in the chest and abdomen, for instance, may, by means 
of a mode of life favorable to such a result, be largely increased, 
while that of the brain and nervous tissues may meet with a 
corresponding decrease. The oval face may become round; the 
long, thin bones and muscles broad and thick; the slender, an- 
gular frame plump and rotund, through the simple action of 
this grand law of formation.* 
Within certain limits, the nervous fluid or vital force strength- 
ens and develops any part of the body or brain in proportion 
as it is brought to bear upon it. Its currents are controlled in 
two ways—directly by a mere act of the mind, and indirectly 
by the exercise, whether voluntary or involuntary, of the part 
to be developed. Study and reflection summon it to the fore- 
head, the lobes of which gradually protrude; the exercise of the 
moral sentiments calls it to the coronal region, where it elevates 
insensibly, but certainly, the cranial arch; the lower faculties 
make use of it to feed and develop the basilar organs and to 
enlarge the jaws and abdomen. The special exercise of the 
arm induces a stronger tendency of the vital currents to that 
organ; the process of waste and renovation is quickened; and 
if the exercise be regular and not excessive, more particles are 
deposited than are carried off, and the arm is strengthened and 
increased in size. It is for this reason that the right arm and 
hand are larger and stronger than the left. By allowing the 
right arm and hand to fall into comparative disuse and trans- 
ferring their functions to the left arm and hand, the latter may 
be increased and strengthened while the former will shrink and 
grow weaker, till the relative size and strength of the two op- 
posite sides are reversed. Eiofrey mentions a pianist who, by 
* Under different mental and vital influences, there must be a change in the 
make and structure of the body. The skin, the muscles, the adipose tissue, 
the internal organs, the brain, and, in the end, the ligaments and bones, be 
come molded to a new type—from the gross to the refined, or the opposite.— 
Prof. Levi Reuben. N AEVI Matekki. 
playing for a number of months with a weight on the left hand 
(which, of course, called for additional exertion and created a 
tendency of the vital fluid and blood to the part to give it the 
requisite motion), gave it equal strength to the right hand, so 
that their touch could not be distinguished. On the same princi- 
ple, any part of the body or brain can be developed and strength- 
ened. The application of the law we have unfolded to fetal 
life will set its importance before us in a very strong light. 
The impregnated human ovum, or egg, infolds the germ of a 
new human being. The first direction has already been given 
to the vital forces, creating a tendency to a specific character 
and form. Direct paternal influence ceased with the generative 
act. Whatever the father does henceforth to impress his own 
image, or that of some ideal form, upon his unborn child, must 
be done through the mother. Her soul is the governing principle 
which determines its final character and configuration. Every 
thought which passes through her mind; every emotion, no 
matter how transitory; every impression from external objects 
affects, in a greater or less degree, the fetal being. Intense grief, 
violent anger, or uncontrolled terror may cause its destruction 
or mar irretrievably its symmetry, both of character and form. 
Those curious phenomena called nmi materni, or mother’s 
marks, illustrate very strikingly the influence of the mother’s 
mental impressions upon the organism of the fetus. They are 
marks or blemishes, extending sometimes to absolute deformity, 
produced upon the body of the child by some strong impression 
made upon the mind of the mother during gestation. For in- 
stance, a lady is mentioned by some medical writer, on whose 
back, between the shoulders, is the perfect impression of a 
mouse, hair and all, flattened down to the surface of the skin. 
Several months before her birth her mother was frightened by 
a mouse which got between her clothes and her person at that 
particular part. In accordance with the same law, all impres- 
sions, emotions, passions, and mental states of which the mother 
is the subject, are inwoven with the very texture of the unborn 
being. Anxietv. moroseness, jealousy, or any other morbid 60 
Laws of Human Configuration. 
state of mind, as well as the constant sight of ugly or disagree- 
able objects, mar and deform, in proportion to the impressiou 
they make upon the mother, the figure and features of the child. 
Love, hope, happiness, and the contemplation of beautiful ob- 
jects in nature and art, impress upon it the lines of grace and 
beauty, and tend to produce symmetry of form. The sensitive 
paper in the camera of the photographist repeats not more cer- 
tainly the lines thrown upon it by the graphic pencils of light, 
than the unconscious embryo does the images, whether of beauty 
or deformity, reflected from the maternal soul. But more of 
this in the next chapter. 
With birth, the direct psychical influence of the mother ceases. 
Impressions made upon her soul no longer affect directly the 
character or configuration of the child. It is now an independ- 
ent being, subject only to the laws of its own organization. 
Its inherent tendency is to develop itself according to the model 
existing in the primitive germ. If it could now be placed be- 
yond the reach of all external influences, a temperament and 
configuration already determined would result from the simple 
action of the indwelling life-principle. 
But impressions, acting now directly upon the mind of the 
child, are scarcely less potent in molding its soft and pliant fea- 
tures and form than they were before birth. It is now that 
climate, society, material surroundings, food, and clothing, as 
well as direct culture, begin to exert an influence in modifying 
configuration, and determining the direction and degree of de- 
parture from the primitive type. 
While in the womb of the mothex*, the child is, as it were, 
a part of herself—a branch growing upon the parent stem. 
The vital fluid which circulates through her body, in obedience 
to her intelligence and the law of her organization, permeates 
its body also, developing it in the likeness of the model set up 
in her soul. Out off from her—transplanted, to commence an 
independent existence—the life-spirit obeys the directings of 
the new intelligence, as influenced by the conditions undex 
which it exists. Effects of Education. 
All parts of the infant being now require development, and 
by perpetual movement he causes the nervo-vital fluid to cir- 
culate in every part. The parent may direct, in a measure, 
the distribution of this fluid, and consequently control to the 
same extent his proportional development. If the limbs are 
weak, he may encourage their exercise and thus promote their 
growth and strength, by directing upon them the creative forces 
—exercise (within certain limits) always promoting develop- 
ment. But too often the physical system is neglected, de- 
frauded of its share of the elements of life, and deformed, by 
compression and constrained postures; while the attention of 
parents and teachers is directed wholly to the intellect. This 
being spurred up to an unnatural and feverish activity, with- 
draws the vital forces from the stomach, the lungs, and the 
limbs, and throws them upon the various parts of the brain, 
which are disproportionately expanded. Symmetry and beauty, 
as well as health of body and brain, are thus sacrificed to a 
narrow and mistaken notion of education. An opposite course 
dwarfs the intellectual organs of the brain, withholds from the 
features all those varied and delicate lines, softened contours, 
and elegant phases of expression which are the signs of mental 
culture, and confers mere brute strength and animal vigor. 
The laws of configuration which we are endeavoring to explain 
are equally exemplified in either case. The organs exercised—, 
the parts to which attention and culture have drawn the crea- 
tive forces in a disproportionate degree are disproportionately 
developed, while those which are robbed of a portion of the 
nutriment which belongs to them are starved and dwarfed. 
Education has an all-powerful influence, as is well known, 
upon the configuration of the cranium.* It just as certainly 
and necessarily modifies the features of the face and the form 
of the body. 
Impressions, as we have seen, play an important part in hu- 
* Mr. E. Beamish, F.E.S., stated, at a meeting of the Edinburgh Phrenolog- 
ical Society, that a bust taken from his head could not be recognized as hii 
own, after he had spent two years in severe study.—Amer. Phren. Jour 62 
Laws of Human Configueatic n. 
man physical configuration, particularly during youth. Thej 
affect it by means of one of the simplest mechanisms of the or- 
ganization. They exert an influence upon the vital fluid con- 
tained in tie nerves, causing it to flow toward a determined 
point. This fluid or life-spirit, being eminently creative, de- 
velops, by making use, of course, of the nutritive elements fur- 
nished by the blood, the parts upon which it is thrown. Now 
all the mystery of the production of beauty consists in giving 
such a direction to the fluid currents as to develop the differ • 
ent parts of the body in the proportions determined by the 
rules of art, which will, after all, be but co-operating with 
Nature and following out her tendencies, which we, instead, so 
constantly thwart. It is a primary law governing mental im- 
pressions, and consequently human configuration, that man 'be- 
comes insensibly transformed into a resemblance of an object at- 
tentively contemplated. 
History shows us that the great geniuses who instituted the 
practice of ceremonies, under the name of worship, for the im- 
provement of man, always applied to the pencil of the painter 
and the chisel of the sculptor, in order to place before the eyes 
of the faithful, statues and pictures of ideal beauty, the sight 
of which, constantly repeated, should in the end impress their 
beauty upon humanity; for the face of man, like a daguerre- 
otype plate, reproduces the features constantly contemplated.* 
On this principle must be explained the striking resemblance 
so often observed between husbands and wives, who have 
lived long and in true love relations with each other. Each 
has insensibly approached the other, till each is the other’s 
alter ego in face and form as well as in soul. This is the key, 
too, to other mysteries, as we shall see further on. 
The fundamental laws of human configuration, then, to sum 
them up or re-state them in a more compact form, seem to us 
to be these: 
1. The active and plastic principle is the soul—the true man 
• Delaage. Summary of Principles. 
63 
•—of which the body is hut the external expression and instru- 
ment. 
2. The soul forms, changes, and controls the body through 
the instrumentality of a nervo-vital fluid, which forms the con- 
necting link between mind and matter. 
3. This vital fluid strengthens and develops any part of the 
brain or body in proportion as it is brought to hear upon it. 
4. The vital fluid, or creative life-spirit, may he thrown upon 
any organ or part by the exercise of that organ or part, or by 
a simple act of the mind directing the attention intently upon it. 
5. Impressions made upon the mind by external objects affect 
the configuration of the body by acting specifically upon par- 
ticular parts or organs, through the nerve-spirit or vital fluid. 
6. Impressions made upon the mind of the mother affect 
the configuration of her unborn child; and they are far more 
striking in this case, because the fetal being is in process of 
formation, and is more pliant and impressible than after birth. 
We might illustrate each of these points by numerous facts, 
but as such facts may be more advantageously cited in future 
chapters, in which we shall set forth and explain the influence 
of parentage, education, mental states, occupation, amusements, 
climate, social institutions, government, natural scenery, works 
of art, etc., upon configuration, we shall leave these principles 
for the present with this simple statement. V. 
EMBRYOLOGY. 
Like produces like, no. in generalities (for generalization is an act of the 
mind), but in details, modified only by the necessity of adaptation between 
two beings uniting for the production of a third one, and by subordinate cir- 
cumstances affecting them.—Alexander Walker. 
H order to se- 
cure the highest 
possible excel- 
lence in the qual- 
ity of his grain, 
the wise and 
skillful agricul- 
turist carefully 
selects the best 
seed and sows 
it, in a suitable 
soil, at the pro- 
per season to in- 
sure the neces- 
sary warmth, 
moisture, and 
other conditions 
essential to its germination and growth. The scientific cattle- 
breeder is equally heedful in reference to similar conditions, in 
taking measures for the increase of his herd. Both have a living 
faith in the grand truth that like peodxjoes like. Is it not 
time that those who aspire to generate men should act as wisely, 
at least, as the cultivator of corn and the breeder of oxeiif 
Perfection in the human being is to be reached by the same 
path which leads to a similar result on the lower planes of life. Like Produces Like. 
65 
It is hardly necessary to stop here to prove, or even to illus- 
trate, the great law hinted at, in obedience to which, in every 
department of organic nature, genera, species, and varieties 
propagate themselves “each after its kind.” It is made clear 
enough by the every-day observation of the least curious. If 
vve sow a field with wheat, and it spring up and grow and ma- 
ture, we can rely with absolute certainty upon a crop of wheat. 
It never proves to be oats or barley. Nor do our cows ever 
astonish us by bringing forth colts, or our sheep by producing 
pigs. So in the human species, the offspring of a Caucasian 
father and a Caucasian mother is invariably a Caucasian, and 
not a Negro or Malay. 
The fact that particular forms and qualities, characteristic of 
families or individuals, are equally transmissible from parents to 
children, though less striking, is equally subject to verification 
by common observation. We once knew a gentleman who had 
a supernumerary finger on each hand, and an extra toe on each 
foot. He had several brothers and sisters marked by the same 
peculiarity, which had been a characteristic of the family for 
many generations. The transmission of peculiar and striking 
features, from generation to generation, is particularly observ- 
able in royal and noble families, in which alliances with persons 
of a different rank are seldom formed. The Bourbons and the 
reigning house of Austria furnish cases in point. The thick 
lips introduced into the latter by the marriage of the Emperor 
Maximilian with Mary of Burgundy is visible in their descend- 
ants to this day, after the lapse of three centuries. But almost 
every neighborhood furnishes examples equally conclusive. The 
reader has but to make a few observations and inquiries to con- 
vince himself of the fact. The general resemblance of persons 
of the same blood to each other is a subject of common remark. 
We can in general readily trace similar lines of countenance in 
them all. 
Like produces like everywhere and always—in general forma 
and in particular features—in mental qualities and in bodily 
conditions—in tendencies of thought and in habits of action- 66 
Embryology. 
Let this grand truth he deeply impressed upon the hearts of ah 
who desire or expect to become parents. 
The first step toward human physical perfection must be 
pre-natal. “ A corrupt tree can not bring forth good fruit.” 
It is only from properly developed and ripened seed, sowed in 
good soil, that we can expect strong and healthy plants. The 
intelligent and well-informed farmer is aware that if he should 
plant the small and imperfectly matured corn from the “ nub- 
bins,” which he is accustomed to appropriate to the sustenance 
of his cattle, that his grain would deteriorate, in spite of the 
best cultivation, and, if this course were persisted in, would 
finally become valueless. In the cultivation of the potato, 
strangely enough, this unwise policy has been pursued to a con- 
siderable extent in many localities, with the natural result— 
continued deterioration. Unfortunately, we have experimental 
demonstration that a similar cause always leads to a similar re- 
sult in the human species. 
“ But if like always produces like,” it may be asked, “ How 
is perfection in offspring to be attained without the agency of 
perfect parents? and how does it happen that children are 
often born more beautiful or more homely, more healthy or 
more diseased, more intellectual or more imbecile, than those 
to whom they owe their existence ? How, too, are we to ac- 
count for the fact that, while there are generally marked 
resemblances among those of the same blood, there are also 
striking differences ? and for the no less evident circumstance, 
that although a child may resemble one parent in some features 
or parts of his organization, and the other in other features 
and parts, he may also possess individual peculiarities which 
can not be traced to either, or to any combination of the traits 
of both ?” 
These questions are important and pertinent, and indicate 
the necessity of something more than a general statement of 
the law of parentage. The difficulties suggested will vanish, 
if we mistake not, on a more careful and minute examination 
of the subject. Important Facts. 
Both the maternal germ and the vitalizing fluid which is 
destined to impregnate it, in common with the other secretions, 
must necessarily be modified by every condition of body 01 
mind to which the individuals in whom they are prepared 
may be subjected during the process. They must represent 
not only permanent traits of character and configuration, but 
also whatever is temporary and accidental in physical and 
mental states; and especially must the condition of tody and 
soul existing at the moment in which the generative act is con- 
summated impress itself upon the germ thereby vitalised. Thus, 
a fit of petulance or ill-humor existing at the time of concep- 
tion, in a mother ordinarily amiable and sweet-tempered, will 
be transmitted to her child, marring irretrievably its disposition 
and character. In the same way a transient derangement of 
the digestive organs, a bilious attack, or a temporary torpidity 
of the liver, as well as the more chronic conditions superinduced 
by cancerous, scrofulous, or rheumatic humors, must inevitably 
affect offspring generated during its existence, imparting a pre- 
disposition to disease of the corresponding organs. And, for- 
tunately, gentle and loving moods, beautifying and ennobling 
passions, earnest thoughtfulness, and conditions of health and 
vigor in the physical system, however temporary, are equally 
subject to transmission. 
These facts indicate the means by which physical perfection 
may gradually be reached. Parents who understand this law, 
and act with a conscientious regard to the well-being of their 
posterity, will transmit only their highest conditions of body 
and mind, thus producing children superior to themselves, 
who, in their turn, will impart a still higher tone of organiza- 
tion to their offspring. O. S. Fowler, in one of his excellent 
physiological works, mentions the case of a gentleman who 
chose an occasion of festivity and uncommon social enjoyment, 
in which his wife had also fully participated, on which to give 
existence to his youngest child. That child proved to be a 
child of joy in every sense, being the very embodiment of 
good-nature and quiet happiness. In the light of such facts we 68 
Embryology., 
can readily comprehend how parents may generate children 
far more beautiful than they, in their permanent traits of coun- 
tenance, could ever claim to he, and how a reverse of these 
conditions may exaggerate homeliness into ugliness; leaving out 
of view entirely other modifying causes hereafter to be men- 
tioned, Thus, what is temporary in the parent becomes perma- 
nent in the child, and what may often seem a complete depart- 
ure from the parental types, is merely such a modification of 
the features of one or both the parents as they could and did 
assume and communicate, though differing widely from their 
ordinary expression. 
It follows from the principles and facts already stated, that 
habits and tendencies of thought and action, developing and 
rendering active the organs which they employ, are communi- 
cated from parents to offspring. Facts confirm this deduction. 
It is known that the whelps of well-trained dogs are, almost 
at birth, more fitted for sporting purposes than others, and 
that the communicated powers are not of a vague or general 
kind, but that any particular trick or art acquired by these 
animals is readily practiced by their progeny without instruc- 
tion. Teachers have observed, too, a remarkable difference in 
the capacities of children for learning, connected with the apt- 
itudes of their parents. Children of people accustomed to 
arithmetic learn figures more readily than those of differently 
educated persons; while the children of classic scholars acquire 
a knowledge of Latin and Greek with a facility unknown to 
others. With some striking exceptions, which a knowledge 
of all the'circumstances of their case would explain, the natu- 
ral dullness of the children of uneducated parents is proverbial. 
But in the case of the mother, it is not enough that we con- 
sider merely the conditions existing at the time of conception 
and previously thereto. In endeavoring to account for the 
mental or physical peculiarities of her child, we must bear in 
mind that, during the whole period of gestation, every influence 
which affects the maternal organism makes a corresponding im- 
pression upon the fetus. The same blood which sustains her. Mateknal Impressions. 
69 
nourishes and develops it; the same nervo-vital fluid which cir- 
culates through her system, conveying the mandates of the 
soul to every part, and executing everywhere its behests, per- 
meates the soft and impressible form of the unborn child, modi- 
fying continually its character and configuration. If her blood 
he pure and highly vitalized, the fetal being will he built up 
in purity and strength ; and if the nervous fluid through which 
she calls its organs, one by one, into existence, be the messen- 
ger of pleasant impressions, happy thoughts, and beautifying 
emotions only, the unborn being will be molded into harmony 
and beauty. So, on the other hand, every disorder of the 
mother’s physical system, and every disturbing passion of her 
soul, must inevitably corrupt, weaken, and deform her offspring. 
The Margravine of Anspach observes, that “ when a female 
is likely to become a mother, she ought to be doubly careful 
of her temper; and in particular, to indulge no ideas that are 
not cheerful, and no sentiments that are not kind. Such is the 
connection between the mind and body, that the features of the 
face are molded commonly into an expression of the internal 
disposition; and is it not natural to think that an infant, before 
it is born, may he affected by the temper of its mother ?”* 
The facts illustrative of this truth, collected by various physi- 
ological writers, would fill volumes. The reader who is curious 
in this matter, may find a large number of them in 0. S. Fow- 
ler’s works on “Love and Parentage,” “Maternity,” and 
“ Hereditary Descent.” Two or three must suffice here. 
Mrs. D. traces minutely in the diversities of character and 
disposition of her numerous children, her own life-history 
during her long maternal career. 'While pregnant with her 
first child she was happy and in the exercise of her most 
amiable traits, and it is peculiarly beautiful and sweet-tempered. 
After this her husband began to drink, which naturally dark- 
ened the sky of her happiness, and brought into actior some 
of the less lovely attributes of her character. Her next child 
* Memoirs. Embryology. 
faithfully represents, in disposition and temper, the state of 
mind thus induced. Then came poverty and the consequent 
struggle with adversity, which, while they called out all the 
latent energies of her nature, developed also still further the 
unamiable traits already too active; and the character and 
disposition of the children born during this period correspond; 
and so on through still other changes of a somewhat eventful life. 
A lady of Boston who had become intensely interested in 
Napoleon and his exploits, and was accustomed to read every- 
thing she could procure relating to him, bore a son during that 
great conqueror’s triumphal career. He inherits the most de- 
cided martial tastes, and is so enthusiastic an admirer of Na- 
poleon that he has covered the walls of his house with pictures 
of him and his battles. 
The case of Napoleon himself furnishes a capital illustration 
of the point under consideration. His mother while pregnant 
with him, shared with her husband, and frequently on horse- 
back, the dangers of a military campaign. 
A lady writes: “From the age of two I foresaw that my 
eldest son’s restlessness would ruin him; and it has been even 
so. Yet he was kind, brave, and affectionate. I read the Iliad 
for six months before he saw the light, and have often wondered 
if that could have had any influence on him. He was actually 
an Achilles.” 
It has been observed that children born during a period of 
great intellectual excitement and heroic exertion, inherit great 
natural energy and genius, and are far superior to those who 
receive their being under circumstances which do not call out 
so fully the powers of their parents. 
A lady possessing a large brain and active temperament was 
employed professionally as a teacher of music. Her husband 
had a fine temperament and a well-constituted brain, but his 
talents for music were only moderate. They had several chil- 
dren, all of whom were produced while the mother was in the 
full practice of her profession, and the whole now indicate su- 
perior musical abilities They have learned to play or. several Conditions Transmissible. 
71 
instruments as if by instinct, and highly excel. In this case 
the original endowments of the mother, and her actual exercise 
of them, conspired to transmit them to her children.* 
That the physical configuration of the fetal human being is, 
in an equal degree with the mental character, subject to modi* 
fication by the physical and mental states of the mother, might 
be left to be inferred from the facts already adduced, but illus 
trative examples are readily furnished, as they abound on the 
pages of physiological and medical works. 
Eoussel remarks, that “ children have been subject all their 
lives to convulsions, in consequence of their mothers having, 
during pregnancy, been struck with terror or some other pow- 
erful emotion.”! 
“A man residing in Clarendon, Yt., while crossing the North 
River, near Albany, in a boat, some years since, was assaulted 
by another man with a broken oar, and a deep gash was cut 
through his scalp. In this wounded condition he returned 
home to his pregnant wife, who, of course, was deeply horrified 
at the spectacle. Some seven or eight months afterward she 
gave birth to a child, upon whose scalp was a wound corre- 
sponding in shape and position with that made upon her hus- 
band’s head. By means of adhesive straps the wound was 
made to heal, and the child lived. 
There is a child now living in Boston whose countenance 
bears such a striking resemblance to a monkey, as to be at once 
observed. The mother visited a menagerie during her preg- 
nancy, where a monkey jumped upon her.§ 
It is not necessary to multiply examples. These are extreme 
cases; but if any physical condition or any mental state of the 
prospective mother affects her unborn offpring, then all such 
conditions and states, each in its degree, must do so; and we 
now readily comprehend how, independently of the explanation 
already given, a child may be very unlike both his parents in 
* Combe. Constitution of Man. t Systdme Physique de la Femitm 
} Scalpel. § Maternity 72 
Embryology . 
form or features, and yet furnish a confirmation, and not a ref. 
utation, of the doctrine we have advanced. The impression in 
the soul of the mother to which the child owes its individual 
characteristics was to her a reality—an integral part of herself 
—a something inwoven into her very being, and transmissible, 
like her own features or her own mental character. It is still 
only like producing like. 
That the sages of ancient Greece understood the doctrine of 
fetal impressions, and saw clearly that the work of perfecting 
the physical man should begin before his birth, is evident from 
their teachings. They directed that women, and especially 
those in the condition of child-bearing, should devoutly worship 
Apollo, Narcissus, Hyacinthus, Castor and Pollux, deified per- 
sonifications of masculine beauty; and the fair and pious daugh- 
ters of Attica placed the statues of these gods in their bed- 
chambers, and, fixing their eyes upon their seducing forms and 
their features of ideal purity, adored them with loving fervor. 
Is it strange that these marble deities, grateful for such worship 
and radiating grace and inspiration, gave to their children a 
beauty equal to their own ? 
As a circumstance liable to modify, in appearance at least, 
the law of transmission, we may observe here that children 
sometimes resemble their grandfather or their grandmother, 
instead of their father or their mother, peculiarities reappear- 
ing in a subsequent generation, after having failed, from the 
operation of causes not easily explained, to show themselves in 
the immediate progeny. This phenomenon, which prevails 
throughout the animal races, and probably among plants, has 
been called atavism. 
Another apparently well-established principle, and an im- 
portant one in its practical bearings, should be mentioned here ; 
namely, that during the first four or five months of gestation, 
the physical system and the organs lying at the base of the 
brain are the subjects of more special development, and that 
the reasoning and moral organs are developed and their pro- 
portional size adjusted after the fifth month. An Appeal. 
73 
The practical value of the grand truths enunciated in this 
chapter can hardly he over-estimated. A thorough knowledge 
of them in all their hearings puts it within the power of pa- 
rents to predetermine, to an almost unlimited extent, not only 
the mental and moral qualities of their offspring, but also, and 
through these, their physical conditions and configuration. 
Children may he brought into the world intelligent or stupid, 
amiable or ill-tempered, beautiful or ugly, at will; nor need 
we stop with this general statement. It is equally true that 
any particular quality of organization, contour of fgure, or 
cast of features, even though feebly or not at all developed in 
the parents, may, through the instrumentality of the means 
already indicated, be imparted to children. In making this 
statement we would not be understood as underrating health 
and beauty as parental qualifications. All other things being 
equal, the healthiest and most beautiful parents will produce 
the healthiest and most beautiful children; but plain and com- 
paratively sickly parents, by acting in strict accordance with 
the principles set forth in this chapter, may give existence to 
healthier and more beautiful offspring than the most favored 
in these particulars who shall live in ignorance or in willful 
violation of physiological laws. 
Prospective parents, can a more moving appeal be made to 
your hearts and consciences than we have placed before you in 
these simple but overwhelmingly important statements ? Can 
you shut your eyes to them, or in their clear light sin against 
Heaven and your own posterity by propagating imbecility, ill- 
nature, disease, or deformity? You have no right to usher 
either physically or mentally deformed emldren into a life of 
bodily pain or mental suffering. The means of perfecting your 
offspring are in your own hands, and you are responsible for 
their use. hTo child should be the offspring of weakness, or 
apathy, or indifference, or of any accidental combination of 
conditions, much less of organic disorder, perverted passions, 
or brutal lusts; but of health, activity, thoughtfulness, earnest- 
ness, sincerity, purity, sweetness, harmony, and beauty. Embryology. 
From the principles laid down and illustrated on the foregoing 
pages it follows 
1. That the highest possible conditions of health, physical 
vigor, mental activity, and moral goodness on the part of both 
parents, should be secured and uniformly enjoyed for a con- 
siderable time previous to the conjugal union, and the greatest 
care taken that these conditions be all combined at the mo- 
ment of conception. 
2. That if any particular faculty or organ be weak in one or 
both of the parents, it should, at such times, by a special determ- 
ination of the vital fluid to the proper part, be stimulated to 
unusual activity, that it may be transmitted in greater strength 
to the child. 
8. That in case any disproportionate or perverted develop- 
ments exist in either parent, manifested in marked faults or 
defects of character, they should be held in strict subjection at 
this period, in order that only a normal development may be 
communicated. 
4. That if special qualities or talents be desired in off- 
spring, the organs in the parents through which these qual- 
ities or talents are naturally manifested should be specially 
exercised. 
5. That after conception the mother should continue to enjoy 
all the healthy conditions already insisted upon ; be adequately 
nourished; take sufficient exercise in the open air; obey all 
the laws of her being; and be watched over with the most 
tender, loving, and thoughtful care. 
6. That during the first four or five months of her pregnancy 
special attention should be paid to the condition of her physi- 
cal system, and during the remainder of the period to the state 
of her intellectual and affectional nature; 
Y. That during the whole term of gestation no efforts should 
be spared to strengthen and fortify the nervous system in ordei 
to preclude the liability to dangerous shocks from fright ox 
other violent emotions. 
S. That nothing that would promote her happiness should Important Rules. 
75 
be withheld, and every cause of grief, anxiety, or ill-temper he, 
so far as possible, at once removed. 
9. That she should be constantly surrounded by beautiful 
objects, in nature and art, and especially that she should con- 
stantly contemplate images of ideal, physical, and moral beauty, 
earnestly desiring and willing that her child shall resemble 
them. 
10. That all ugly, and particularly all deformed and mon- 
strous, objects should be carefully shunned, and only those ex- 
ternal impressions which are favorable to harmony and beauty 
be received. 
More extended practical rules for the guidance of those who 
may desire (as who does not ?) to become the fathers or mothers 
of healthy and beautiful children, will be given in the last part 
of this work. VI 
CHILDHOOD. 
Old trees are not trained, but saplings, which readily take any given diieo 
bon.—lliofrey. 
N" infant may come 
(QA into the world healthy 
or diseased, vigorous 
or feeble, beautiful or 
ugly; and we have shown 
in the last chapter how 
parents may predeterm- 
ine these physical condi- 
tions. But we will sup- 
pose that the candidate 
for the rose-crown of 
Beauty has already been 
ushered upon the arena 
of life. It is not too late 
to make or mar the future 
man or woman. Past 
errors may yet, in a great 
measure, be remedied. If 
sickness, or disease, or deformity exist, we shall labor under 
a disadvantage, but need not despair. The infant is yet but 
as soft clay for our molding. Its physical as well as its moral 
destiny is still in our hands. 
Comparatively few children are born with irretrievably bad 
organizations. Even a delicate, puny infant, the offspring of 
weak or scrofulous parents may, by means of careful, judicious, 
and persevering physical training, become healthy, robust, and A Spaetan Custom. 
77 
beautiful. The reverse of this is also, unfortunately, true. 
Beale remarks that “ a long-continued course of injudicious 
feeding, want of air and exercise, indulgence of various kinds, 
and neglect of mental activity, will effect such a change, that 
an infant born of healthy parents, with all its organs well 
formed, may become a miserable, rickety, scrofulous child.”* 
This fact is too evident to require proof; and the principle 
involved can not he too deeply impressed upon the minds of 
parents. Even those who have secured for their offspring all 
the pre-natal conditions insisted upon in the last chapter, and 
proudly exult in the possession of a healthy and beautiful 
child, can not safely leave the rest to chance. It is natural, no 
doubt, for the healthy and beautiful child to continue to be 
healthy and beautiful; but it requires natural and healthful 
conditions, and these it can not control. It is for you to see 
that nature has fair play. 
Fortunately, it is not natural for the weak, diseased, or de- 
formed child to remain weak, diseased, and deformed. These 
are not natural conditions, and there is a constant effort on the 
part of hiature to substitute for them health, strength, and beauty. 
Let this most encouraging circumstance be borne in mind. 
In inducing disease or deformity we necessarily fight against 
Nature, while in promoting health and cultivating beauty we 
co-operate with her, throwing ourselves, as it were, into the 
current of her tendencies. 
In Sparta, Plutarch says, immediately after the birth of a 
child, it was taken from its mother and carried to a place 
called Lesche, where the heads of the family then assembled 
and examined the infant. If well-formed and robust, and all 
its limbs properly shaped, it was decided that it should be 
brought up; but if it was deformed, ugly, or feeble, it was 
condemned to be thrown into a place vulgarly called apothetis, 
as it was considered inexpedient that any child should live un- 
less likely to become a vigorous and useful citizen. We would 
* Laws of Healt 78 
Childhood. 
not restore this barbarous tribunal, but in order to secure to 
the State the most vigorous and beautiful citizens possible 
(as important a matter now as in the days of ancient Sparta), 
a wiser and more humane court should hold its session around 
the crib of every new-born infant, to deliberate upon the best 
manner of correcting any deformity or ugliness that may ex- 
ist, and of promoting its health and beauty. 
In the nurture and training of infancy, it must be borne in 
mind, in the first place, that the subject of our parental care 
and solicitude is a very tender and pliable being, just emerg- 
ing into a new phase of life, and in the highest degree suscept- 
ible to external influences, whether hostile or friendly; but 
possessing an inherent tendency toward the highest forms of 
manhood or womanhood. It is not natural for it to be deformed 
or diseased, or to suffer pain. If these conditions exist, they 
have been forced upon it; and whether they are the result of 
some imperfection in the germ from which it sprung, or of 
some unfavorable pre-natal impression, there is a constant effort 
on the part of its vital forces to correct them ; and by a wise 
co-operation we may assist Nature to restore the system to its 
normal state. If, on the contrary, it has come into the world 
with no defect of constitution—if it be already in a healthy or 
normal state, it is left for us simply to supply natural conditions 
—the elements essential to the growth of its body and the de- 
velopment of its mind. 
The chief business of childhood is to grow. This grand ob- 
ject must not be lost sight of for a single moment. Nature 
never loses sight of it; and if the conditions be favorable, the 
growth of the child will be healthy and beautiful. Health and 
disease are, neither in this case or any other, matters of chance, 
or the effect of any special dispensation of Providence, but 
subject to law, and each resulting from its own legitimate cause. 
The rapid growth of childhood gives us the command of a 
most efficient means of physical improvement; but, at the same 
time, it increases the liability to deterioration and the ultimate 
destruction of the organism. The particles of which the child’s Aie and Food. 
79 
body is composed are subject to constant mutation. It is never 
wholly the same for two successive minutes. Old matter be- 
comes effete and passes off, giving place to new. Healthy 
bones and muscles may thus gradually be substituted for dis- 
eased ones ; or reversing the conditions, health may be driven 
out and disease take possession of the domain of life. We are 
constantly building and rebuilding the human edifice, and the 
structure will be strong and beautiful, or weak and ugly, ac- 
cordingly as we use good or bad materials, and manipulate them 
wisely or unwisely. 
How, what are the conditions essential to the healthy and 
beautiful development of the well-born child ? 
1. Pure air is a prime necessity. First of all, the infant must 
breathe. Its mother can no longer breathe for it. It has 
commenced life on its own account. See to it that the new- 
comer has enough pure air. Bad air—air deprived of its 
proper proportion of oxygen and surcharged with carbonic 
acid and other poisonous gases—has killed thousands of strong 
men. Do you think the tender infant can withstand its dele- 
terious influences ? Air, the vitality of which has been con- 
sumed by combustion or by previous breathing, is entirely un- 
fit for the respiration of any human being, and most of all for 
that of the new-born child, whose delicate tissues are so readily 
poisoned. The copious breathing of pure air is absolutely es- 
sential to beauty, whether in the child or the adult. That alone 
can vitalize the tides of life and give the roseate tinge to the 
fair cheek. Give your child, then, as the first condition of a 
healthy growth, a plenty of puee aie. Attend scrupulously to 
the ventilation of the nursery and the bedroom. You neglect 
it at the peril of your child’s life and the certain marring of 
its beauty. 
2. The second requirement of the young child is pure food 
of the proper kind and in sufficient quantity. Nature indicates 
what this food should be, up to the time when she shall have 
furnished the means to masticate solid aliments, and enables 
the well-developed mother to supply it in the proper quantity. 80 
Childhood. 
For the first year the child needs little if any food except milk, 
and this should he drawn, fresh and full of vitality and magnetic 
virtue, directly from the opulent hosom of a healthy and loving 
mother. That this is according to the ordinance of Nature is 
too evident to require proof or argument. The mother’s holiest 
feelings sanction and confirm it. No true woman, we think, 
can willingly permit her offspring to draw its very life-blood, as 
it were, from the hosom of a stranger and a hireling. But sup- 
pose the mother be sickly or deficient in mammary development? 
Then we have a choice of evils. We may procure a wet nurse, or 
fall hack upon the friendly cow. Circumstances must deter- 
mine which may he the least dangerous alternative. The milk 
of a healthy cow is certainly preferable to that of a diseased 
woman ; but the slop-fed cows of the city never are healthy. 
Good cow’s milk can be manufactured by none but the grass- 
eating cows of the country. If a nurse is to be procured, the 
greatest possible care should he exercised in the selection. 
She must be healthy, and of not too coarse an organization. 
Her habits, temper, and morals must also be good. 
Hone and muscle are formed from materials furnished by the 
blood; the blood is manufactured from the chyle; the chyle 
is a product of digested food. If the food, then, be impure, or 
poisoned by an admixture of the elements of disease, can the 
blood he sound and healthy ? 
Now, in order that the child may imbibe only pure and 
healthy nutriment from her hosom, the diet of the mother or 
nurse must be strictly attended to. Her food should be pure, 
nutritious, and easy of digestion. Graham or other coarse 
bread, cracked wheat, rice, ripe sweet fruits, milk, and cream 
are all excellent. If flesh-meat be made use of, it should he of 
the best quality, and sparingly eaten. 
The milk secreted by her mammary glands will represent 
faithfully the changing states of the mother’s body and mind. 
The passions affect it as inevitably as food and drink do. Al- 
binos gives an account of an infant which was thrown into con- 
vulsions of which it died, by being suckled by its mother inn Candy and Cradles. 
81 
mediately after a violent fit of anger. Be careful, then, that 
your child do not draw acrid poison from your bosom instead 
of milk. 
When it has been furnished with the means of masticating 
solid food, it seems natural that the child should be furnished 
with it; but it must be gradually accustomed to a kind of nutri- 
ment so different fr m that to which it has become habituated ; 
and milk should for a long time, and perhaps during life, form 
an important part of its diet. For the rest, bread and fruit 
should be its staples. Ther grosser kinds of animal food, and 
particularly pork, should be entirely excluded from its dietary. 
Our own opinion is, that young children should never taste 
flesh-meat of any kind, whatever adults may find it necessary 
or expedient to do. At any rate, we need not be in haste 
to create an artificial appetite for it. Give a healthy child 
sufficient bread, milk, and sweet fruits, and it will have no de- 
sire to poison its stomach with pork. Candies, rich cake, pas- 
try, and sweetmeats should be utterly ignored. It should not 
know that such things exist. 
Regularity is a very important point in diet, and is particu- 
larly necessary in childhood. Regularity in meals promotes 
regularity in growth, which is essential to symmetry and beauty. 
After the first year a child requires but three or, at most, 
four meals a day. Continual eating is destructive to the digestive 
organs, and the cause of an untold amount of disease, both in 
children and in adults. Without purity, simplicity, and regu- 
larity of diet in childhood, there can l>e no such thing as perfect 
health, beauty, and regular development. 
Children should drink pure water only. Spring water is 
best Water in which soap does not dissolve and which is un- 
fit for washing, is not wholesome. 
B. Young children require a great deal of sleep, and the 
younger they are the more they require. Be careful that they 
sleep in well-ventilated rooms of the proper temperature; that 
they lie in the proper position; and that the chest be free and 
the face vncovei sd. Never put a child to sleep by rocking in a 82 
Childhood. 
cradle. If you have such a piece of furniture in use, we entreat 
you to banish it at once to the darkest corner of your attic. 
4. Warmth is another essential. Young children, in com- 
mon with all other young animals, are very susceptible to cold. 
The exposure of their bare legs and arms to a temperature 
which would cause positive discomfort to the healthiest adult, 
is therefore not likely to promote their physical well-being. 
It is, in fact, a most foolish and mischievous piece of cruelty, 
whatever fashion, which evidently ignores physiology, may say 
to the contrary. 
5. Light is just as essential to a child as to a plant. When 
the latter is kept in the dark it soon loses its shape, flavor, and 
color—becomes etiolated or blanched, slender and weak. De- 
privation of light has a similar effect on the human frame, and 
is naturally more marked and more disastrous in childhood than 
in maturity. Light evidently aids the development of the dif- 
ferent parts of the body, and the occasional exposure of its 
whole surface to the action of the solar ray is very favorable 
to its regular conformation. 
6. Perfect cleanliness can hardly be too strenuously insisted 
upon. Young children require at least two full baths every day 
—one in the morning, and the other at night. At first the 
water should he at the temperature of from 85° to 92°, which 
may be gradually lowered after the first three months; but 
we can not recommend cold water to be used on young chil- 
dren, except occasionally in the treatment of disease. After it 
is a year old, the evening bath may be omitted, except in warm 
weather. The morning bath should be kept up during life. 
7. Exercise is as essential as breathing itself. Without it 
there can be no healthy and beautiful growth. After a child 
is a month old, it should (the weather permitting) have its 
daily exercise in the open air. In the house the largest liberty 
consistent with its safety should be allowed. Its clothes must 
not be tight, its crib narrow, or its perpetual motions in any 
way restrained. As it grows older it will naturally require 
otill more exercise. It should then be much out of doors, and Education. 
83 
should play, dance, sing, and shout as Nature dictates. Still, 
quiet, noiseless, “ good little children” die young. Give us 
rather those who are “full of mischief,” and “ drive around and 
break things,” It is worse than murder to compel children 
to stay quietly in the house, to say nothing of sending them to 
school to be shut up six hours a day in an ill-ventilated room, 
and confined to a hard, uncomfortable bench; or of putting a 
book into their hands at home. We say in all seriousness, 
with a writer in Blackwood's Magazine, that “ a child three 
years old with a book in its hands is a fearful sight. It is too 
often the death-warrant, such as the condemned criminal stu- 
pidly looks at—fatal, yet beyond his comprehension.” The child 
three years of age, or even six, should know little of books, 
except that they sometimes contain pretty pictures. 
The distinguished Dr. Spurzheim says: “Experience has 
demonstrated that of any number of children of equal intellect- 
ual power, those who receive no particular care in childhood, 
and who do not learn to read and write until the constitution 
begins to be consolidated, but who enjoy the benefit of a good 
physical education, very soon surpass in their studies those 
who commence earlier, and read numerous books when very 
young. The mind ought never to be cultivated at the expense 
of the body ; and physical education ought to precede that of 
the intellect, and then proceed simultaneously with it, without 
cultivating one faculty to the neglect of others; for health is 
the base, and instruction the ornament of education. * * * 
Napoleon, when in the school of Brienne, was noted in the 
quarterly reports of that institution as enjoying good health; 
no mention was ever made of his possessing any mental supe- 
riority ; but in physical exercises he was always foremost. 
Sir Isaac Newton, according to his own statement, was inat- 
tentive, and ranked very low in the school, which he had not 
entered until after the age of twelve. The mother of Sheridan 
long regarded him as one of the dullest of her children. 
Adam Clarke was called a “grievous dunce” by his first 
teacher: and young Liebig a “booby” by his employer. 84 
Childhood. 
Shakspeare, Moliere, Gibbon, Niebuhr, Byron, Humphrey 
Davy, Person, and many others, were in like manner undis- 
tinguished for early application to study, and, for the most 
part, indulged in those wholesome bodily exercises and that 
freedom of mind which contributed so much to their future 
excellence.* 
Hufeland, a learned German physician, observes: “ Intellect- 
ual effort in the first years of life is very injurious. All labor of 
the mind which is required of children before their seventh 
year is in opposition to the laws of Nature, and will prove in- 
jurious to the organization, and prevent its proper development. 
* * * * It jg necessary that we should not begin to 
exercise the faculties of the mind too early; it is a great mis- 
take that we can not commence their cultivation too soon; 
we ought not to think of attempting this while Nature is 
wholly occupied with the development of organs, and has 
want of all the vigor of the system to effect this object. If 
children are made to study before this age, the most noble 
part of the vital force is withdrawn from perfecting the organi- 
zation, and is consumed by the act of thought; from which it 
necessarily results, that the bodily development is arrested or 
disturbed, digestion is deranged, the humors deteriorated, 
and scrofula is produced.”! 
8. But intellectual culture must not be neglected. It is not 
less essential than physical training, to any high order of beauty. 
The mother commences this culture with almost the first hour 
of her child’s life. Looks and intonations speak to it before it 
is at all capable of comprehending the value of words. It is not 
long, however, before it recognizes something more than the 
tone in its mother’s expressions of tenderness. It finds that 
words have a significance (that is, if the mother have the good 
sense to speak English or some other rational language, and 
not “baby talk”), and soon it makes an effort to repeat what 
it hears. Now, if its mother speak them, or it can have the 
* Education. 
t Art of Prolonging Life. The Affections. 
85 
companionship of persons to whom they are native, a child 
may learn two or three languages besides its mother tongue, 
before it is old enough to open a grammar—that is, before it is 
seven years old—and that, too, without any excess of mental 
exertion. Then, by means of nursery tales and rhymes, songs, 
games, pictures, and judicious answers to its constant questions, 
its mind may be kept in healthy activity, and regularly and 
harmoniously developed. This kind of education, without in- 
juring the health, checking physical growth, or detracting 
from the simplicity and grace of the infantile features, gives 
to face and form those expressive and beautiful lines and shades 
which culture alone can impart. A different course of Intel 
lectual training—a course adapted to men and women, and 
not to children—prematurely and disproportionately develops 
the reflective organs of the brain, and gives an expression of 
age and maturity to the childish face, and as unpleasing to the 
eye of correct taste as it is physiologically and psychologically 
unnatural. Avoid, as you value your child’s physical well-be- 
ing, the precocious intellectual development now so common 
in this country. We have already well-nigh abolished the 
institution of infancy altogether, and filled the world with 
miniature men and women. Let us, before it is too late, make 
an effort to bring hack to the earth the reign of childhood. 
9. And with the rest the affections must be cultivated. A 
sweet temper and loving moods are in the highest degree 
friendly to health and beauty. A cross, ill-natured, unloving 
child can not be beautiful. That temper and disposition make 
their characteristic marks upon face and form is especially ob- 
servable in childhood, when the features and configuration are 
so readily modified. As the crowning excellence, then, culti- 
vate a gentle, tender, loving spirit in your children; for good- 
ness and beauty ever go hand in hand. 
If any deformity, mal-formation, deficient or excessive de- 
velopment, or any morbid action exist, advantage should be 
taken of the earliest childhood to correct it. The change of 
matter to which the physical system is constantly subject ia 86 
Childhood. 
now rapid, the muscles are soft, the hones are pliant, and the 
patient entirely under an easy control. Almost any modifica- 
tion of form or change of action is now possible. The princi- 
ples on which all physical training, whether general or special, 
should he based, have already been set forth. In a future 
chapter, devoted to direct physical culture, an efficient code of 
practical rules and directions will he given. 
The parent should carefully watch over every organ of his 
child’s body, to see that each is brought into play, and has its 
proper degree of activity. But to do this without interfering 
with the order of Nature, which is always the true order, the 
law of periodicity must be studied. Now, Nature develops 
particular portions of the body and brain at particular periods. 
We should take counsel with her, and endeavor, by education, 
to help her complete the part she may have on hand at given 
periods. If we find Nature to develop a particular function, 
or class of functions, from one to seven, another from seven 
to fourteen, still another from fourteen to twenty-one, and 
another subsequently, shall we not try to develop, at these 
specific ages, those particular functions which she is endeavor- 
ing especially to mature ? Thus, from the first to the seventh 
year, the perfectly healthy child is very fleshy, which signifies 
great activity in the vital functions. This period is devoted 
particularly to food and sleep, yet sufficient exercise is required 
to carry forward these two functions ; whereas from seven to 
fourteen a greater amount of muscular exertion, as compared 
with the vital functions, obviously accords with Nature’s con- 
structing economy.* 
To sum up, if you would lay deeply and firmly in your child’s 
constitution the foundations of a vigorous and beautiful man- 
hood or womanhood, endeavor to secure to it all the essentials 
of a healthy growth, and carefully guard it against all deleterious 
influences. Give it pure air, wholesome food, warmth, light, 
sleep, exercise, and regularity in the action of all its functions. 
* American Phrenological Journal. Beware! 
87 
Let it live much in the open air, play, sing, shout, and laugh. 
Beware of tight dresses, constrained postures, involuntary 
quiet, “doctor’s stuff,” school-books, enforced study, confine- 
ment, and ill-temper! Remember that growth is now the 
principal thing. Tou may direct, but you must not compress 
or fetter. Study Nature, learn her tendencies, and aid her to 
reach the Perfection at which she aims. VII. 
EFFECTS UF MENTAL CULTURE. 
L’dn;c, en effet, suivant son caprice, porte dans I’cnterieur du crdne I’espril 
cutritif de la vie sur les parties du cerveau qu’elle desire vivifler; en rassem- 
blant par la pensee le fluide do vie sur certaines bosses eerebrales determmee, 
elle les devcloppc et en fait des faeultes d'oil il resulto que la configuration 
primitive pent toujours etre modiflee par i’education.—Delaage. 
ST is related of that 
singular psychological 
phenomenon, Caspar 
Hauser, that when he 
was first brought to Hu- 
remburg, in a state of 
complete intellectual in- 
anition, his brutal and 
stupid countenance filled 
the mind of the beholder 
with pity and disgust; 
“■ but that as his intellectu- 
al faculties were brought 
into action and developed 
by culture, his features 
gradually became more 
regular and expressive. 
Similar, though perhaps 
•ess striking, illustrations of the influence of education in mod- 
ifying the features may be observed every day and in every 
neighborhood. 
The general statement, that intellectual culture modifies con- 
figuration, will hardly call out an expression of dissent. The Body and Brain. 
89 
differences observable between a highly educated person and 
one whose intellect has received no special culture are too 
striking to admit a doubt on that point. But the modifications 
induced by intellectual culture are not, as is popularly sup- 
posed, of a vague and merely general character. They are 
specific and predetermined, though in their details perhaps not 
easily defined. 
We have seen that the body is controlled and molded by 
the mind, which gives it a configuration adapted to its own 
proper manifestations. The phrenologists have shown clearly 
enough, not only that wherever there is intellectual improve- 
ment the head grows, getting larger and better shaped, but that 
the special cultivation of any particular faculty or class of facul- 
ties modifies its form by developing the organs of those faculties 
in the brain, and that, too, even in the case of adults in whom 
the ossification of the cranium is complete. Broussais states, 
that within two or three years in which he was closely engaged 
in deep reflection and argumentative study, the organ of caus- 
ality in his head increased to a degree easily perceptible by 
measurement. O. S. Fowler makes similar statements in ref- 
erence to his own head and those of others whom he has ex- 
amined at different times. 
Now, not only is a direct nervous influence (the nervous sys- 
tem being but an extension of the brain) brought to bear upon 
the features and general configuration, for the purpose of keep- 
ing unimpaired the harmony between them and the cerebral 
organs, but there is constant special action under cerebral con- 
trol directed to the same end. The lines of the face and the 
form of the body are therefore just as inevitably changed by 
intellectual cultivation, whether general or special, as the shape 
of the head; though accurate observations and measurements 
have not been applied to the same extent in the former as in 
the latter case. “ There is a continual relation,” Riofrey truly 
observes, “between the body and the mind; slavery, vice, and 
ignorance brutalize the features; virtue, independence, and 
knowledge ennoble them. How hideous is the countenance 90 
Mental Culture. 
of an ignorant, vicious man! how admirable is that of an 
honest man, enlightened by knowledge and science !” 
One of the most striking effects of intellectual culture on 
configuration may he observed in the gradual change which 
takes place in the outlines presented in a front view of the 
head and face. The expansion of the forehead and the supe- 
rior and more intellectual portions of the face, and the relative 
if not absolute diminution of the lower parts, produce a marked 
departure from the circular, which is a low order of form, and 
an approach, more or less near, to the perfect pyriform outline. 
This alone is a great gain in the direction of beauty ; for nothing 
is more repugnant to correct taste than rotundity of form and 
bullet-headedness in a man or a woman, significant as such a 
conformation is of predominant animality, A writer in House- 
hold Words, speaking of the English face of the debased times 
of the Georges, says: “The swinishness of our manners fixed 
its mark upon our features. The shape of the head was an 
irregular round, larger at the bottom than at the top; the 
brow thick, low, and sloping backward; 
the nose coarse and big; the mouth 
lax, ponderous, and earthy,” The accom- 
panying diagram will illustrate in a rude 
way the character of the change of outline 
we have indicated. 
Now, if we look at the face more in de- 
tail, we shall observe that there takes place 
during the process of culture, an evident 
change in the expression of the eye, a softening of the lines of 
the eyebrows, and a lateral expansion of the nose from the 
bridge downward; that the lips become more gracefully arched 
and firmer; the chin more delicate and clearly defined, and 
the lines of the face, as a whole, more diversified and beautiful. 
The higher the culture the more varied will be the expression 
of the countenance, and the more capable of the highest beauty ; 
organization and forms growing more complicated as we rise 
in the scale of being. Any face, however, no matter how Change of Temperament. 
91 
highly the intellect which informs it may have been cultivated, 
will, as we shall show farther on, fall far short of perfect 
oeauty unless the moral feelings and the affections shall also 
have received due development. 
It must be evident that whatever has power to change the 
shape 01 the head and the permanent expression of the face 
may be capable of modifying, in the same degree, the temper- 
ament, and consequently the contours of the body. The culti- 
vation and continual activity of the intellectual faculties have 
a tendency to diminish the action of the motive aud vital sys- 
tems, and while they impart expression and refinement to the 
features, render the body more delicate and, within the limits 
of physical health, more beautiful. Excess here, as well as in 
any other direction, produces disproportion and deformity. 
The effects of an opposite course will further illustrate our 
position, and show that beauty may be lost as well as gained. 
Let a well-educated person of an intellectual organization, 
and, to make the example as striking as possible, of mature 
age, be deprived of his books and intellectual companionship, 
thrown into the society of coarse, uneducated people; subjected 
to rude labor or exercise, to the almost entire exclusion of con- 
secutive thinking; and made to adopt the gross diet which 
usually accompanies the other conditions we have named, and 
mark the result. Another set of faculties are now brought 
into action. The base of the brain expands; the lower features 
grow broader, the neck thicker, the eyes duller, the mouth 
coarser, and the face, as a whole, rounder and less expressive. 
The whole frame shares in the degeneracy. The muscles be- 
come thicker, the joints larger, the limbs less graceful, and the 
body stouter and grosser. If, further, the privation of accus- 
tomed mental stimuli shall lead, as it likely is to do, to the 
undue gratification of alimentiveness, by means of intemperate 
eating and drinking, an additional measure of grossness both of 
face and form will be the result. Observation will furnish the 
reader with examples enough of the transformations thus briefly 
indicated, and convince him that those who would acquire or 92 
M ental Culture. 
retain &, high order of beauty must keep the intellectual powers 
in healthy activity.* 
It follows, from the principles already laid down and illus- 
trated, that the cultivation of particular faculties or classes of 
faculties must lead to the development of distinctive physi- 
ognomical traits; and as each organ of the brain has undoubt- 
edly a corresponding portion of the body with which it main- 
tains a special relation of sympathy, we need but to fully 
understand this connection to readily control, to a great extent, 
the conformation of the latter and the more permanent expres- 
sion of the features, inducing elevations and depressions of sur- 
face at will. We know, for instance, that the cultivation of 
alimentiveness has a tendency to impart a fullness and give a 
florid appearance to the face just below the location of that 
organ, and that studious, industrious, and energetic habits, 
determining the vital forces to other parts and tending to de- 
press alimentiveness, produce a corresponding depression in 
the cheek. The general influence of the basilar and coronal 
regions of the brain on corresponding portions of the face and 
body has already been noticed. 
On this principle, too, we may account, in part at least, for 
the particular caste of countenance characteristic of nations, 
ages, classes, and professions, so evident to the careful and 
thoughtful observer. The writer in Household Words, already 
quoted, observes, that “the Greeks and Italians, who in former 
* While engaged in preparing this chapter for the press, the following para- 
graph fell under our eye in the columns of the Home Journal. It furnishes a 
good illustration of the text: 
“ We were speaking of handsome men the other evening, and I was won- 
dering why K had lost the beauty, for which five years ago he was famous. 
‘ Oh, it's because he never did anything,’ said B ; ‘he never worked, 
thought, suffered. You must have the mind chiseling away at the features, 
if you want handsome middle-aged men.’ Since hearing that remark, I have 
been on the watch at the theater, opera, and other places, to see whether it is 
generally true, and it is. A handsome man who does nothing but eat and 
drink, grows flabby, and the fine lines of his features are lost; but the hard 
thinker lias an admirable sculptor at work, keeping his lines in repair, and 
ionstantly going over his face, to improve the original design.” Physiognomy of Epochs. 
times were the most artistic people in the world, possess to 
this day the most ideal heads and faces that are anywhere to 
be met with,” and that one may see in “ the melancholy, 
meditative eyes” of the poor Hindoos, who sweep the crossings, 
“ the essential characteristics of that ancient race from whom 
all mythology and mystical philosophy are derived.” The 
writer also remarks on the fact that, though national physiog- 
nomy always preserves certain broad and general distinctions, 
it varies in different ages in accordance with the prevailing 
moral or intellectual tendency of the time. He says : 
“ Most men have observed, in looking over any collection 
of portraits of the great men of successive eras, a change in 
the shape of the head, in the outlines of the features, and 
in the general expression; and this in the case of individuals 
belonging to the same nation. The effect is commonly attrib- 
uted to difference of costume, to a change in the method of 
arranging the hair, or to the fact of the beard and mustache 
being worn in some instances and not in others; all of which 
may be admitted to have an influence in modifying the coun- 
tenance. But this is not everything; the main distinctions 
lie deeper. Shave the face of Shakspeare, clapping a powdered 
wig upon his head, and he would no more look like the men 
of the Georgian era—even the most intellectual of them—than 
an Englishman could be made to look like a native of China by 
being dressed in the costume of that country. It is not merely 
that there is no man of an equal degree of intellect with 
Shakspeare; the distinction is in kind still more than in amount. 
The architecture of the palace of the soul has changed, and the 
soul itself looks through its windows with a different glance.” 
He contrasts the faces of Chaucer and the great men of the 
Elizabethan age with those of later and more debased periods 
of English history, particularly the Georgian era. 
“In the portrait of Chaucer,” he says, “we see a face of the 
noblest kind—a head beautifully built and proportioned, and 
therefore in perfect harmony with itself in all its component 
parts; oval, greater in length than breadth, and with the broad- 94 
Mental Culture. 
est part at the top—that is to say, in the region of the brain; 
the forehead broad, smooth, and high; the nose straight and 
sensitive, and the mouth and lower part of the face neither 
brutalized into an animal-like thickness, nor starved into an 
ascetic rigidity which denies its own humanity as completely 
as it refuses to 
sympathize with 
that of others. 
We have here, 
in short, the face 
of a poet and a 
humanist, which 
Chaucer em- 
phatically was.” 
“ The Eliza- 
bethan age was 
an age of awak- 
ening intellect, 
of aroused secu- 
lar life, shaking 
itself free from 
the long sleep of 
priestly domina- 
tion—an age of healthy physical existence and of large brain ; 
of intense, warm, sensuous perception of all shades of charac- 
ter and all moods of the rich heart of man—an age, emphati- 
cally, of deep human sympathy (we speak of its intellect, not 
its actions), yet of a sympathy which did not end with man, 
but mounted, flame-like, toward the heavens—an age that was 
like a new birth to the world ; proud with its young strength, 
exultant in its great future, yet flushed and gorgeous with the 
sunset splendor of the past. And all this is reflected in the 
faces of its poets, philosophers, and statesmen. The oval form 
of the skull remains; the broad, grand forehead keeping the 
lower parts of the face in subjection, yet not insolently domi 
neering over them, is still found,” 
Chaucer. Chaucer and Franklin. 
95 
With the civil wars of the reign of Charles I. anothei 
modification of the English national face occurred. A glance 
at the portrait of the chief republican and religious innovators 
of that magnificent and glorious period, shows them to be 
“either overshadowed with the melancholy which generally 
attends on the leaders of any great movement in a new direc- 
tion, or roughened with that bluntness, both of features and ex- 
pression, which indicates a firm resolution to abide, at all haz- 
ards, by a principle; the difference being, of course, determined 
by individual temperament. 
“After the Revolution of 1688 commenced the era of cool, 
sober sense ;of newly acquired constitutionalism; of the mod- 
ern spirit of energetic, practical life, and of the preponderance 
of the mercantile or shop interest. Poetry, enthusiasm, de- 
votedness to grand abstract principles, at whatever cost, reli- 
gious mysticism, and pervading spirituality had departed from 
the faces of all 
men, great or lit- 
tle; and instead 
thereof was a 
calm, shrewd 
cleverness, or a 
comfortable do- 
mesticity. The 
shape of the 
head, too, had 
greatly deterio- 
rated. It was 
beginning to get 
round, and its 
outline was often 
blurred by the 
overlapping of 
flabby integu- 
ment.” 
Franklin. 
The face of Franklin, though belonging to a somewhat later 96 
Mental Culture. 
period and to another continent, admirably illustrates the char- 
acter and physiognomy of this age of practical common sense 
and shrewd commercialism. Contrast the face of this philoso- 
pher of the eighteenth century with that of the poet and dreamer 
of the fourteenth, to whose portrait we have already called at- 
tention. Do not their faces differ as widely as their respective 
intellectual characters and the tendencies of their times? The 
face of this period wras, however, a tine one, upon the whole, 
and infinitely superior to that of the next age; hut we begin to 
see the animalizing effects of habits of intemperance creeping 
slowly upward, from the enlarging jaw. 
With the perverted alimentiveness and active animality of the 
next age came the round head, with a general basilar predom- 
inance ; the gross, heavy face, larger at the bottom than at the 
top; the thick, low, sloping brow; the coarse nose; and the 
fleshy, lax, and ponderous mouth, already described. 
Our journalist sees evidence that the English face is now im- 
proving—that is, reverting to the fine Elizabethan standard. 
We perceive the same tendency in the American face, wherever 
studious leisure and a judicious culture of literature and the fine 
arts have been permitted to supersede the general restless ac- 
tivity of our too utilitarian life; but the spirit of the age in this 
country is far from friendly to a high order of manly beauty. 
The spiritual, atfectional, esthetic elements in our nature are 
kept in subordination to a lower order of faculties, and debarred 
from their proper influence upon character and configuration. 
Our excessive love of gain, our selfish ambition, and our cease- 
less and energetic activity tend, in connection with our dry, 
stimulating climate, to render our physiognomy hard, angular, 
sharp, and mean. A better style of face will prevail when a 
higher degree of intellectual culture shall be reached, and a 
proper development of the spiritual and atfectional parts of our 
nature attained. 
Intellectual culture is equally essential to feminine as to mas- 
culine beauty. Shining tresses, rose-tinted cheeks, and a doll- 
like prettiness may be consistent with an inane or shallow mind. Woman’s Rights. 
97 
but no face through which active intelligence does not look forth 
can justly claim to be, in any strict sense, beautiful. Only 
persons of a low order of development can be permanently 
pleased with it. The would-be belle, therefore, who neglects 
the cultivation of her mind for the mere adornment of her 
person, will learn, sooner or later, that the most magnificently 
embellished shrine, without the manifest presence of a presiding 
divinity, will attract few real worshipers. There can be no 
true or satisfactory beauty in the human face without cultivated 
intelligence. 
But as woman differs essentially from man, mentally as well 
as physically, she evidently requires an education differing 
widely in kind, if not in amount, from that demanded for his 
harmonious development. Some modern reformers, therefore, 
in demanding for woman precisely the same culture as is re- 
ceived by man, have placed themselves in direct opposition to 
Nature. Exceptional women, we are well aware, may success- 
fully pursue, to the utmost extent to which they are taught in 
our universities, the highest and most abstruse studies, and af- 
terward compete with man in almost any of the avocations of 
practical life; hut such women do not give the law to their sex, 
or abolish the differences which Nature has established between 
man and woman; and, in every case, it is evident enough that 
masculine culture must be acquired and masculine functions 
exercised at the expense of feminine beauty and womanly at- 
tractiveness. 
What the intrinsic differences between the sexes really are, 
we have indicated in our second chapter. Physically, woman 
has a relatively larger development of the vital system than 
man, and a relatively smaller development of the muscular 
system; mentally, the feelings predominate in her and the in- 
tellect in him. She has naturally stronger domestic instincts 
and more active moral sentiments, but less reflective intellect 
and less executive ability than he; and any kind or degree of 
education which has a tendency to destroy these fundamental 
and inherent differences must be radically wrong, and destruc* Mental Culture. 
tive to the harmony which Nature loves and health and beauty 
require. 
No one can insist more strenuously than we desire to do, 
upon the importance of the most liberal culture of the female 
mind; but we must, at the same time, protest against any and 
every system of education which ignores the existence of sex 
in mental manifestation. Culture adapted to each will give to 
each new charms—will make man more manly and woman 
more womanly; and it is through such culture only that we 
shall he able to improve the beauty, or the mental or physical 
character of either. Yin. 
MORAL AND EMOTIONAL INFLUENCES. 
The face being the outward index of the passions and sentiments within, the 
immortal dweller fashions and molds the plastic substance of his home, and 
helps to form and to alter the architecture of its house, like the bees and birds. 
In return, his mind is not seldom influenced by the house itself. Between the 
head of a Shakspeare or a Bacon, and that of a Newgate murderer, there is as 
much difference as between a stately palace standing apart and a rotten hovel 
In a blind alley. The spiritual principle writes his own character on its exte- 
rior walls, and chronicles from time to time its upward aspirations or its more 
complete abasement.—Household Words. 
ROUSSAIS and 
other phrenologists 
liave noted, with 
great care and ex- 
actness, the changes 
wrought in the 
shape of the crani- 
um by the action 
of moral as well as 
mental causes, and 
the facts they have given 
the world on the subject 
are interesting and val- 
uable ; but these cranial 
changes are necessarily 
effected with comparative slowness, 
and fail to indicate merely temporary 
mental states. The face reports much 
more rapidly, and with terrible fidelity, 
the progress of any inner struggle between 
Good and Evil, which may be going on. hTo 
one can fail to observe how, even 'n mature life, the face 100 
Emotional Influences. 
is often altered, for better or worse, through the agency of 
moral causes. The expression which any passion or emotion 
temporarily gives to the features tends, by constant repetition, 
to become permanent. A scowl or a frown recurring fre- 
quently, and for a considerable length of time, fixes its distinc- 
tive lines upon the face, perpetually overshadowing its beauty 
like a cloud. So care, sorrow, and remorse stamp their re- 
spective impresses upon the countenance and become perma- 
nent traits, which can be eradicated only by the action of 
opposite influences. 
The other day we met a former acquaintance whom we had 
not seen for several years. In the interval he had resided in a 
distant city and under moral and social influences radically dif- 
ferent from those to which he had previously been accustomed. 
We did not recognize him. The particular traits of countenance 
with which he was associated in our mind had given place to 
very different ones. We inferred, and, as we afterward learned, 
with entire correctness, that the moral and intellectual character 
of which they were the external expression had met with an 
equally radical change. As Prof. Eeuben beautifully expresses 
it, “ A man’s bone and muscle come to be as his thought; and 
the very ligaments that vibrate to form the voice, take their 
quality and tone from the sentiment that rules in his heart.” 
A religious journal speaking of the “ transfiguration of coun- 
tenance of the trance-speaking mediums” while under the con- 
trol of supposed super-mundane intelligences, argues that they 
must express “ a beauty and spirituality corresponding with the 
nature of the communicating intelligence;” and that if spirits 
out of the body can thus change the expression of the counte- 
nance of the medium, the spirit in the body, by a change of its 
condition from a low natural state to a high spiritual one, may 
effect a similar and permanent change in the features. 
“We see,” the writer adds, “the same phenomena take place 
in natural order every day. The countenance, and even the 
form and bearing, of a person measurably changes from a thick, 
heavy, and gross expression, and a downcast and stooped de- Transfigurations. 
101 
meaner, to one of refinement, beauty, and grace, just in the 
degree that the state of his affections and thoughts change from 
a low and gross state to one of spiritual purity and goodness. 
The habitual state of the soul enstamps itself upon the expression 
of the features. It is hardly possible for us to truly say that a 
person of rude and irregular features is homely, when he or she 
is pure, wise, and good. There is a spiritual beauty that gleams 
out from behind the features, and which transfigures them with 
a divine expression. This inner spiritual beauty molds the ex- 
pression of the features into correspondence with it. Yery 
true, it will not alter the hereditary form, it will not change a 
gray eye to blue, nor an irregular nose to a straight one, yet it 
will change their expression so as to put them, as it were, in the 
background, and make the inner beauty prominent and capti- 
vating. There is, we believe, a practical truth in this sugges- 
tion. Honesty, purity, and love have their lawful physiology 
and facial expression. Every love, impulse, affection, and in- 
deed every power of activity in the universe, is in the constant 
effort to express itself outwardly in the true and orderly form.”* 
The effects of vice in its extreme manifestations are marked 
and terrible. Ugliness and Satan are synonymous terms; while 
beauty is the robe of divinity itself—the privilege of angels.f 
The expression imparted varies of course with kind and degree, 
but in every kind and degree is repulsive. Its general tend- 
ency is to depress the upper part of the cheeks and give undue 
prominence to the regions around and below the mouth, the 
effect of which is to impart a coarse and vulgar if not sinister 
and fierce expression to the countenance. 
It follows from the propositions thus informally stated, that 
any departure from moral rectitude, or any indulgence in vi- 
cious habits or violent passions, must have an unfavorable efiect 
upon beauty; and that the cultivation of moral goodness and 
serenity of temper, and a life of obedience to the laws which 
govern our spiritual being, will promote in the same degree 
* Spiritual Telegraph. 
t Delaage. 102 
Emotional Influences, 
our physical beauty and well-being. It is this culture and 
this orderly life which imparts to the superior portions of the 
face those rounded outlines and that rich and softened expres- 
sion which render the countenance of a refined and amiable 
woman so lovely. In man, a similar development should he 
modified by a greater clegree of fullness below and outward 
from the alto of the nose.* 
Goodness of heart and purity of life co-operate with an ex - 
panded chest, wholesome air, copious breathing, and out-door 
exercise, in imparting to the fair cheek the coveted roseate 
tinge. Quiet happiness, ease, and freedom from care are essen- 
tial auxiliaries. Violent passions, mental or physical suffering, 
care and anxiety, depress and bleach the cheek, and give a 
peculiarly haggard expression to the countenance. Whatever, 
then, is favorable to goodness, happiness, and ease is, in the 
same degree, favorable to health and beauty. 
But beauty, called into being by the genial warmth of 
Goodness and invigorated by the soft radiance of Joy, expands 
into perfect flower only in the bland atmosphere of Love. 
This passion is Nature’s grand cosmetic. It has power to 
transfigure every form in which it is truly incarnate. Homely 
indeed must be the face which is not rendered pleasing by its 
influence. It gives roundness to the form, fullness to the bosom, 
grace to the movements, light to the eye, sweetness to the 
mouth, color to the cheek, and animation to the whole figure. 
Every organ of the body seems imbued by it with new life, 
and every function to be rendered more efficient. This fine 
spiritual stimulus is in the highest degree favorable to health, 
and thus indirectly, as well as by direct nervous influence, fa- 
voring the development of beauty. To the face of many a 
pale-cheeked girl have “ three sweet words” brought the rosy 
hue of health and beauty. “ Even in a few hours,” remarks a 
writer in one of our monthly journals, “we have all, probably, 
• These are not merely fanciful specifications, though our space does not 
permit us to develop the physiognomical principles on which they are founded. 
A little observation will confirm them. Religion and Beauty. 
103 
known the protean symptoms of organic asthenia, as well 
as physical depression, disappear, as if by the spell of an en- 
chanter, and all this from the mere assurance in the mind of 
a woman that she is beloved.”* The betrothed, in that beau- 
tiful Irish song, “ The Welcome,” says : 
Light is my heart since the day we were plighted 
Bed is my cheek that they told me was blighted. 
Hopeless and blighted love, in their inverse action, are as 
destructive to health and beauty as mutual and happy love are 
favorable. 
Love is not less promotive of manly than of womanly beauty. 
It makes one “ twice a man,” and equal to anything that man 
may do or dare. It makes him strong and brave as well as 
gentle and tender, gives firmness to his figure, grace to his 
carriage, and character to his face. 
The religious sentiments, which, when proportionately de- 
veloped and active, form the grand unitary and harmonizing 
passion of the soul, have undoubtedly a powerful influence in 
modifying physical configuration. Veneration, while it gives 
a sublime altitude to the coronal arch of the cranium, has a 
similarly elevating influence upon the features. Wherever the 
spiritual nature of man has been harmoniously developed, 
there will be found a higher tone of organization and a purer 
type of face, together with a sweet radiation of life—a subtile, 
penetrating, and indescribable charm which attracts all hearts. 
We have spoken simply of the religious element in man, 
irrespective of theological dogmas and forms of worship; hut 
these, too, have their influence, and it would be interesting and 
instructive, if spaee would allow, to trace out, in the heads, faces, 
and figures of their disciples, the physical effects of the doctrines 
and ceremonies of the various religions—Pagan, Mohammedan, 
and Christian, and assign to each its proper place on the list of 
God-appointed instrumentalities for perfecting humanity. 
Delaage has contrasted in a very striking and beautiful man- 
* American Phrenological Journal, Emotional Influences. 
ner the refined and elegant but materialistic Paganism of the 
Greeks, with the simpler hut more sublime and spiritual doc- 
trines of Christianity, in their effects upon human beauty. lie 
has shown that, although in the worship of the former, tra- 
ditional truths were concealed under the most gracious myths 
ever invented for unfolding to a people the profound mysteries 
of Divinity, and charming, meanwhile, their ears, seducing 
their eyes, and enchanting their imagination, the people con- 
tented themselves with the symbols and took little thought 
about the truths they concealed. They saw no more in their 
gods than fine men, and in their goddesses no more than beau- 
tiful women ; and were satisfied to sleep under the grand portico 
of the temple of Truth without caring to enter. They saw 
only the magnificent vail with which their sages and poets had 
concealed truths too dazzling for their weak vision. How the 
beauty of a people being always modified very greatly by its 
idea of the Divinity, it is evident that the beauty of the Greeks 
must have fallen far short of the highest reaches of intellectual 
and moral character. In painting and sculpture, they appre- 
ciated and attained to only that which is external and within 
the sphere of the senses. Here, modern art has never rivaled 
them. Their poets never speak of a moral sentiment as being 
reflected from the face or impressing its lines upon the features. 
What they boast of in their heroes and goddesses is the agility 
of their feet, the beauty of their limbs, the whiteness of their 
shoulders, and the firmness of their flesh. It is not the beauty 
which springs from the soul. In irreproachable purity of lines, 
admirable contours, and happy proportions of parts, Grecian 
beauty was no doubt nearly perfect, but it was external, ma- 
terial, and immobile, and lacked the animation and spiritual 
radiance essential to a complete realization of the highest ideal. 
Their art necessarily lacks the same elements. 
Alexander Dumas has remarked that “there is a singular 
analogy between the heads of a people and their monuments.” 
The Greek forehead was flat and low, like the front of one of 
their own temples. One of the first and most striking effects Influences of Catholicism. 
105 
of the more spiritualistic religion of Jesus of Nazareth was to 
raise it to the arched or pointed form, in analogy with the ele- 
vated vaults and pointed arcades of cathedral architecture, and 
to correspondingly change the whole face and its permanent 
expression. 
As Christian heads and faces reached an order of Beauty 
beyond what the most favored of the Greeks ever knew, so did 
Christian art rise far above Grecian art in reproducing them. 
Greece furnished no models for the heads of Jesus and the Ma- 
donna. In the first, Christian art succeeded in combining the 
meekness and enlightened benevolence of the philanthropist 
with the rapturous love and high moral elevation of the martyr; 
and in the second, the modesty of the maid with the ripe affec- 
tion of the mother.* In both there is evidence of that spiritual 
transfiguration which the artist of ancient Attica had never 
witnessed or conceived, and could not therefore represent. If 
Christian artists have failed in every other department to rival 
the ancient Pagans, they have surpassed them here; not because 
their genius has been greater, but because a new measure of 
spiritual life and light had been infused into the souls of men. 
Delaage, a zealous Catholic, claims for the Church that, “by 
the sublime and ravishing harmony of her chants, the bluish 
wreaths of her ascending incense (Vencens qui s'envole enfumee 
Neudtre), the pictures and statues with which she adorns her 
cathedrals and churches, and the magnificent and impressive 
ceremonies of her worship,” she brings to bear upon mankind 
the most powerful objective as well as intellective forces friendly 
to the highest order of beauty, and is thus pre-eminently the 
promoter of physical well-being; and, whatever we may think 
of the dogmas associated with these instrumentalities, we must 
admit that, so far, he is right, and that Protestantism has un- 
wisely discarded some of the most potent agencies which might 
have been made available for the spiritual and physical culture 
of man. 
* T. P. Healey. 106 
Emotional Influences. 
Each of the religious denominations has its distinctive phreno- 
logical and physiognomical traits strongly marked and easily 
recognized in those adherents in whom their theological views 
form an influential element in their characters. A Methodist is 
readily distinguished from an Episcopalian, a Eniversalist from a 
Presbyterian, or a Swedenborgian from either. We must leave 
our readers to judge, in the light of the principles we have ex- 
plained and illustrated, what theological tenets are most favor- 
able to intellectual and moral, and consequently to physical 
perfection; simply remarking that those creeds which imbue 
their adherents with the highest conceptions of God and the 
spiritual life must, all other things being equal, have the most 
elevating and ennobling influence upon configuration and ex- 
pression. IX 
INFLUENCE OF THE FINE ARTS. 
The Beautiful is higher than the Good ; for the Beautiful includes the Good 
within it as a part.—Goethe. 
TTv)) config- 
vl uration, as we 
\ have shown in 
Chapter IY., is 
the result of two 
forces —an in- 
ternal, intellect- 
ive, or subjective 
force, the seat of 
which is in the 
brain, and an 
external or ob- 
jective force, re- 
siding in what- 
ever is capable 
of making an 
impression upon 
our senses. The 
character and 
influence of the 
first have been 
sufficiently exemplified in the last two chapters; the fine arts, 
tableaux vivants, spectacles, and imposing ceremonies, in their 
elevating and beautifying effects on the face and figure, furnish 
striking illustrations of the latter 
It is impossible to doubt that ifie law which constrains like 
to beget like, is capable of a unmh wider application than has 108 
lnfluence of the Fine Aets. 
hitherto been given to it. Forms habitually contemplated tend 
to repeat themselves in our features or in the contours of our 
bodies. The permanent effect produced upon one’s face and 
figure by a single visit to a gallery of paintings or sculpture is 
doubtless too small to be readily appreciable; but we are by 
no means justified in affirming that no effect is produced. Let 
the visit be repeated daily for a few months, or, what is better, 
let the subject of the experiment be constantly surrounded by 
fine works of art, and habituated to their contemplation, and 
their effect will be marked and evident. The wonderful art- 
loving Greeks well understood this; and there can be no doubt 
but that the worship of gods and goddesses of ideal beauty had 
an immense influence in perfecting their configuration. 
It will be readily conceived that the influence of external ob- 
jects (received through the senses of the mother) must be most 
effective in molding the plastic form of the unborn child while 
yet in the process of formation. It was for this reason, as we 
have seen, that the Grecian women placed the statues of the 
gods in their bed-chambers, and made them the objects of con- 
stant, loving, and reverent contemplation. In childhood 
this modifying influence, no longer indirect, is still marvel- 
ously efficacious; and even in mature life it is not inconsid- 
erable. 
In the light of this fact, the fine arts assume a new degree 
of importance and utility. They not only minister immedi- 
ately and directly to our inherent love of the beautiful, but 
serve us still more effectually by increasing continually the 
available fund of beauty in ourselves and our children. The 
beauty of the pictures and statues which adorn the homes of 
wealth and taste, reflected upon the faces of their inmates, 
gradually transfigures them. Loving wife and mother, if you 
would be beautiful, and see beautiful children grow up around 
you, adorn your rooms with beautiful objects. If you can not 
get paintings and statutes, you may at least have engravings, 
statuettes, and medallions, as they are within the reach of every 
one above the grade of absolute poverty. Ho sitting-room, The Grecian Festivals. 
109 
parlor, or bedroom should be destitute of them. Imitate the fair 
and pious daughters of Athens in all but their superstition. 
An engraving of one of Raphael’s Madonnas, a head of Christ 
by De’aroche, and a plaster copy of the Greek Slave will serve 
you in place of Apollo, Hyacinthus, and Castor and Pollux. 
It will be enough that you appreciate and admire their beauty, 
and love and reverence the physical, intellectual, and moral 
attributes of which they are the symbols. Impressions, whether 
physical or mental, are constantly deepened by repetition, and 
it is impossible for you to be long surrounded by beautiful 
forms, without a portion of their beauty being transferred to 
yourself and your offspring. Depend upon it, this is no mere 
fancy of ours. Beauty begets beauty always and inevitably. 
Music acting upon another sense and co-operating with 
beautiful objects of sight, is a most effective auxiliary in the 
grand work of enhancing human beauty. It acts powerfully 
upon the best elements of our nature, and tends to elevate and 
harmonize at the same time the character and the configuration. 
Who has not seen the most wonderful changes in the expression 
of a face wrought by an impressive piece of music ? This ex- 
pression, in its full extent, is very temporary of course, but it 
tends, by repetition, to permanency, and the effect of a single 
performance can never be wholly lost. We can not dispense 
with the lyre in the physical culture of man. 
A similar, but, in proportion to the duration of their direct 
action, a more powerful influence, is exerted by tableaux vivants, 
spectacles, and impressive ceremonies, as exhibited in the the- 
ater, the opera, public shows, and the rites of religion. The 
efficacy of these instrumentalities was well understood by the 
ancient Greeks,' whose fetes in honor of the gods were days of 
festivity for the whole nation, and made a deep impression upon 
all. Their plays and spectacles, while they sanctified, as it were, 
the exercises of the gymnasium, and fired with a noble ambition 
the hearts of those who engaged in them, gladdened also the 
eyes, inspired the souls, and animated the features of every be- 
holder. We car not, an 1 would not, restore the Olympic 110 
lnfluence of the Fine Aets. 
Games, but festivals recurring still more frequently, and adapted 
to the civilization of to-day, should take their place. Our me- 
chanics’ exhibitions, our cattle shows, and our agricultural fairs 
are excellent things in their way, and should be encouraged 
and multiplied; but we need, in addition to them, a series of 
more esthetic festivals—exhibitions of art, music, and gymnas 
tics. We may take a hint from the Sangerbunds and Turnve- 
reins of our German fellow-citizens, the good influence of which 
he must be a barbarian indeed who doubts. They would aid in 
the development of our taste, promote joyousness, which, as a 
nation, we so sadly lack, and conduce in every way to public 
well-being and physical and moral development. 
The theater and the opera unite the objective force of art 
and intellective force of ideas, and thus act with a double power 
upon configuration, affecting it through both the senses and the 
intellect, and modifying it profoundly in both ways. So great, 
in fact, is the power of the drama in its highest manifestations 
and in its unperverted state, that a dramatic writer of genius, 
understanding the profound truths of anthropology, might 
change at will the configuration of a nation, the physiognomy 
of an age. 
The theater as it should be, might become one of the most 
effective instrumentalities for the culture and elevation of man. 
The plays which the highest genius has created, translated into 
action by a genius equally complete in its way, and supported 
on either hand by the sister arts of music and painting, might 
leave all other instrumentalities far behind in their civilizing and 
beautifying influence upon the mass of mankind. But the 
theater as it is, too often panders to low and degrading tastes, 
if not to open licentiousness, instead of elevating, refining, and 
purifying the popular mind. If with one hand it elevates us, 
with the other it drags us down. Whether evil or good pre- 
dominates in its influence, may be considered an open question. 
The few who have the skill to extract the honey, rejecting the 
impiirities and the poison so intimately mixed with it, may be 
nourished and strengthened by its ministrations, but the no* Tendency of Religious Rites. 
ekillful many doubtless find what is sweet in the mouth very 
bitter in the stomach. It is not then the actual, but the pos- 
sible, theater that we commend. 
The opera is open to fewer objections than the theater, and 
with all its imperfections and incongruities is one of the most 
elevating influences brought to bear upon the public mind and 
heart in our great cities; but it is far above the present low 
standard of taste and cultivation among the masses. 
The rites of religion, so far as they are, to those witnessing 
or taking part in them, expressive of grand spiritual truths— 
and thus elevate their thoughts, purify their affections, and 
chasten their senses—tend to make men and women beautiful 
in the same proportion that they make them good. Thoughts 
of the supermundane and supersensuous spheres, of the angels 
—beings of more than earthly loveliness—and of God himself 
-the type and source of all beauty—must inevitably refine, 
elevate, and spiritualize the expression of the features in those 
who habitually have these thoughts awakened by the ceremo- 
nies of any worship in which their faith is engaged and their 
feelings enlisted. Mere unmeaning forms (or what seem such 
to us, however expressive to others) can do us little good; but 
whatever enlists the highest sentiments of our nature, and lifts 
us, even temporarily, above the grossness of the mere life of 
the senses, will impress the signs of that elevation on our fea- 
tures. X. 
SOCIAL CONDITIONS AND OCCUPATIONS. 
The face and figure of each man indicate more or less clearly the place which 
cc occupies in the social scale.—Constant, 
HE differences, in form and features, be- 
tween the civilized man and the savage, are 
striking and significant; and fully confirm 
the statements already made with reference 
to the physical effects of mental and moral 
states. M. Alphonse Esquiros says: 
“ One of the forms in which the improve- 
ment effected by civilization manifests it- 
self is variety. In the savage state, the 
females all resemble each other—that is, 
have the same form while in a higher 
social condition, the shades of difference 
are innumerable. The uniformity of the 
women in the state of nature, and their 
variety under the regime of civilization is 
due, in a great measure, to the fact that the 
physical laws act upon the first equally and 
universally, whereas upon the second, their 
own volitions and the influence of man, in connection with 
their manner of living, constitute the source of illimitable dif 
ferences. As the regime of castes disappears, and human indi- 
viduality is more and more clearly manifested, the countenance 
also becomes individualized.” 
In the savage state, we find the nose depressed, the eyes dull, 
the face flat, the skin rough, and the limbs gross; but in pro- 
portion as civilization acts upon them, both features and figure Akistogkaoy and Revolution. 
113 
acquire distinctness and beauty of contour. The eyes light up, 
the nose projects, the skin becomes soft and smooth, the limbs 
acquire elegance, and the whole person gains refinement and 
delicacy.* 
But leaving the savage entirely out of view, we shall not 
lack illustrations of our position. A little close and careful 
observation will convince the most skeptical that face and figure 
are everywhere and always modified by social condition. The 
different classes of society (and we can not, if we would, ignore 
them, even in this land of political equality) may be as readily 
distinguished from each other by their features and forms, as 
by their language, manners, or dress. A late French writer 
brings a well-known historical fact to bear upon this point, in 
the following graphic statement: 
“Within the last fifty years numerous revolutions have been 
effected in the name of equality, and the cannon have vomited 
their balls against the barriers which separate the different 
classes of society ; but these balls have all harmlessly rebounded, 
and the barriers remain as before. No human power can de- 
stroy the aristocratic principle, which, with its invisible but 
powerful hand, has imprinted the seal of his condition upon the 
forehead of each man, in characters visible to all eyes. It was 
easy for the people, in the day of their wrath, to tear the parch- 
ments, break the escutcheons, suppress titles and armorial 
bearings, and impose upon all men clothes of one uniform color; 
but by one of the most mysterious laws of human progress, 
each class preserved the sign of its condition, the head bearing 
a living blazon, sculptured by the chisel of one of those fan- 
tastic genii who inhabit the resplendent domains of the occult 
sciences,” 
In this country, the lines which separate the different classes 
are less clearly defined than in Europe, and individuals and 
* “La civilisation,” Delaage says, “ est la montagne de Tliabor; il est difficile 
i’anlver au sommet et de s’y transfigurer, mais il est plus difficile encore d’y 
efejourner et d’y dresser une tente respecttie par I’orage des passions et I’oura* 
gan t'ougueux de Page ” 114 
Conditions and Occupations. 
families are constantly rising from lower to higher social 
grades; acquiring at the same time, measurably at least, the 
physical traits of the rank which they assume. What the 
cannon balls and republican edicts of the French revolutionists 
failed to accomplish, the peaceful workings of free institutions 
and the general diffusion of knowledge are here gradually ef- 
fecting. Instead of putting down any real aristocracy which 
may exist among us, we have labored, with some indications of 
ultimate success, to raise the lower classes to the aristocratic, 
level. Leaving untouched the blazonry which thought and cul- 
ture has been engaged for centuries in sculpturing upon the 
foreheads of a real nobility, the genius of our political system, 
removing every disability, permits all individuals and families 
to assume the same armorial hearings, as they may, in the sight 
of Nature prove themselves worthy. 
The reader is already prepared for the statement, that the 
highest order of beauty, and especially of female beauty, is 
found only among civilized people. The savage may be mus- 
cular, lithe, erect in bearing, and even symmetrical in form; 
hut he is always deficient in those elegant details of face and 
figure which are essential to physical perfection. The finishing 
touches of the Great Artist seem to have been withheld. 
But the possession of a nominal civilization is not, of course, 
sufficient to secure physical beauty to a people. A degree of 
freedom, ease, mental and moral culture, and social enjoyment 
are essential. Lacking these to a great extent, the European 
peasant is often less elegant in form and more homely in features 
than the savage himself. Constant toil, intellectual torpor, and 
social debasement are in the highest degree inimical to physical 
well-being. “ There is no fact in physiology better established,” 
a late writer says, “than that hard labor, followed from day to 
day and from year to year, absorbing every thought and every 
physical energy, has the direct tendency to depress the intellect, 
blunt the sensibilities, and animalize the man.” As an illustra- 
tion of this fact, a contrast is drawn between the Irish gentle- 
man and the Irish ueasant. The former is “large, handsome. City and Country. 
115 
courageous, courtly in manners, and full of vital force;” wink 
the latter, descending from the same original stock, and growing 
by his side for centuries, is “stunted, ugly, and pugnacious.”* 
Here, freedom from compulsory toil, liberal intellectual culture, 
and high social advantages on the one hand, and constant hard 
labor—the drudgery of a beast of burden—and the mental and 
social deprivations which are the necessary concomitants of 
such industrial slavery, on the other, have been, directly and 
indirectly, instrumental in separating these two classes by a 
barrier which it would require centuries of political equality to 
break down. A similar contrast might be drawn between the 
cultivated, courtly, and handsome South Carolina planter, one 
of the finest specimens of manhood among us, and the semi- 
barbarous “ sand-lappers” of the piney woods, who are no less 
ugly than ignorant and degraded; although it must be confessed 
that in this case hard labor can be held responsible for neither 
the ignorance nor the ugliness. 
The same causes are in operation in this country as in 
Europe, modified in their action, as we have seen, by the coun- 
teracting influences of education and political enfranchisement. 
Saying nothing of the day laborers on our railways, canals, and 
farms, most of whom are foreigners, the effects of these causes 
will be made evident by a comparison between our native ag- 
ricultural population (the most favored on the globe), and the 
inhabitants of our cities and-towns, whose labors are generally 
lighter and whose intellectual and social privileges are greater. 
The writer last quoted, speaking of the farming population of 
New England, which will probably compare favorably Avith 
that of any other part of the country, says: 
“The forms of both men and women are angular, their 
features are not particularly intellectual, their movements are 
not graceful, and their calling is evident by indubitable signs. 
The fact that the city assemblage is composed of a finer and 
higher grade of men, women, and children is of particular mo- 
♦ Atlantia Monthly, August, 185 S. 116 
Conditions and Occupations. 
ment to our argument, because it is composed of people who 
are only one, two, or three removes from a rural origin. The 
city comes from the country; the street is replenished by the 
farm; but the city children, going back to the farm, show that a 
new element has been introduced into their blood. The angles 
are rounded, the face is brighter, the movements are more 
graceful, there is in every way a finer development.” 
Widely as this picture differs from the generally received 
views of this subject, it is but too correctly drawn. The al- 
most constant, exhausting, and (as generally conducted) unat- 
tractive toil which fills up the greater part of the farmer’s 
existence, and leaves no time for mental culture or social 
enjoyment, is no less unfriendly to physical than to spiritual 
symmetry. It robs heart and brain to feed bone and muscle, 
destroying the harmony which should exist between body and 
mind, and assimilating the man to the oxen he drives. 
Cities are not, in themselves, favorable to health and beauty. 
The country has greatly the advantage of them in natural hygie- 
nic influences ; but the higher ideas of life, the quickened intel- 
ligence, and the social amenities which they encourage, and for 
which their less laborious pursuits afford room, place their in- 
habitants, in spite of the physical and moral impurities, to the 
influence of which they are exposed, far above those of a sim- 
ilar social rank in the country. We leave out of view in this 
remark the dregs of a city population—the denizens of such 
localities as the Five Points—whom so many adverse influ- 
ences, material and spiritual, seem combined to debase and 
brutify; as there is no class in the rural districts with which 
they can properly be compared. 
The intelligent reader will not misapply these facts. They 
by no means prove that labor is necessarily a curse, and a 
cause of human deterioration and degradation. It is its excess, 
and the consequent deficiency in the other essential elements 
of a true life, which constitute the evil. Nothing is clearer than 
that a proper degree of bodily exercise is not only consistent 
with health and a beautiful physical development, but is abso- Physiognomy of Classes. 
117 
lately essential to it. It is a law of Nature, which we can not 
violate with impunity, that we shall exercise, and thereby de- 
velop and strengthen every organ and faculty with which we 
are endowed. If we allow an arm or a leg.to fall into disuse, 
it soon withers and loses its strength and beauty. It is the 
same with any part of the body, or any faculty of the mind. 
Some persons require more labor, or bodily exercise in some 
form, than others; but in no case, we believe, is the amount 
of hard work generally performed by farmers (and by mechan- 
ics in the exercise of the more laborious trades) by any means 
favorable to the highest physical development. If labor is es- 
sential, so is leisure. The activity of heart and brain can no 
more be dispensed with than that of body and limbs. 
Pushing our observations a little further in the direction 
already indicated, we shall discover that each profession and 
occupation has a tendency to impress its peculiar lines upon 
the physical system of those habitually exercising it; so that 
we may generally know a man’s trade by the cut of his features. 
An assemblage of lawyers, disguise themselves as they might, 
would never be mistaken for a conclave of bishops and priests, 
or the latter (even with the help of gold-headed canes) for so 
many disciples of JEsculapius in council. The merchant and 
the mechanic are as unlike in face and figure as in occupation 
and general habits; and the farmer, in spite of his Sunday coat 
and a stove-pipe hat, is recognized at a glance, however far he 
may have wandered from his barnyard. It would be interest- 
ing and profitable to take up and examine in detail each of the 
professions and occupations with reference to its effects upon 
health and configuration ; but our space will allow little more 
than a mere general view; nor is more than this essential to 
the end we have in view. 
We may divide society, in reference to occupation, into 
seven, grand classes: 
1. Agriculturists and other Out-of-door-Laborers ; 
2. Operative Mechanics and Manufacturers; 
3. Shopkeepers ; 118 
Conditions and Occupations. 
4. Merchants and Master Manufacturers; 
5. Professional Men; 
6. Women employed in Housekeeping and Domestic Labors; 
and— 
7. Persons of Leisure, 
1. In theory, agriculture is the noblest and most ennobling 
of all human employments. In no other occupation can the 
conditions of health and perfect physical development be so 
readily secured, and the causes of disease and deformity so 
completely avoided. The farmer’s vocation supplies him with 
the most varied and salutary bodily exercise in the open air, 
where his lungs are constantly expanded by the pure breath 
of heaven; an abundance of wholesome food is almost always 
within his reach; he is seldom necessarily exposed, to an inju- 
rious extent, to the inclemencies of the season ; his brain is not 
overtasked by his business; and he is comparatively free from 
the harassing cares and anxieties which, in some callings, make 
men prematurely old. 
Ideal farm life is a life of healthful activity, rational enjoy- 
ment, and constant development—a continuous and beautiful 
growth. Whenever the real approaches the ideal, as it some- 
times does, the most eloquent tongue or pen can not too highly 
extol it. But real farm life, as it exists in the actual experience 
of a majority of American farmers, is, alas ! quite another 
thing—a mere round of working, eating, and sleeping, with 
no higher end in view than the accumulation of material wealth 
—the increase of acres and crops, or the multiplication of cattle. 
We have alluded to the effects of the exhausting labor which 
is commonly, but not necessarily, one of the conditions of farm 
life. Connected with this circumstance, and growing out of 
it, is the intellectual and social stagnation which generally ex- 
ists in farming communities. There is too little reading, study, 
and thinking, and too little social recreation. The farmer’s 
life is too monotonous, too dull, too selfish, too low and mean 
in its aims. The results we have already indicated. 
Now, we beg our readers of the farming communities of The Tree Ends of Life. 
119 
America to look these facts, which no sane man will attempt 
to call in question, boldly in the face. If we have placed them 
in a strong light, it is because we have the elevation of farm 
life and the welfare of the farmer and his family at heart, and 
not through an unfriendly or hypercritical spirit. Although 
we can not shut our eyes to the evils to which we have alluded, 
and will not attempt to conceal them from the eyes of others, 
we are by no means discouraged by the contemplation. They 
are not inherent in the employment, but are the outgrowth of 
circumstances connected with the settlement and subjugation 
of a new country, many of which no longer exist, at least in 
the older States. Effects often remain long after the causes 
which produced them have ceased to operate. It has been so 
in this case. If unremitting labor was necessary before the 
wilderness had been subdued and the forces of nature enlisted 
in the service of man, it is not so now; if a sparse population, 
infrequent opportunities for neighborly intercourse, and a con- 
stant warfare with savage Nature rendered our rural ancestors 
somewhat unsocial and selfish, there is no cause, except the 
the habit inherited from them, for the existence of the same 
state of things at the present day ; and if low and unworthy 
notions of life were engendered by the imperious material ne- 
cessities of earlier times, there is no reason why higher and 
better ones may not now take their place. In short, there is 
an available remedy for the evils we have depicted. Our re- 
marks have already suggested it. The first thing to be done 
is to impress upon the minds of our farmers, so far as we can 
reach them, the great fact—a fact that should be impressed 
upon all minds—that neither work nor its mere material re- 
sults constitute the true end of life; but only a means of reach- 
ing something higher—individual development and social pro- 
gress and happiness. It is a matter of small moment, and 
scarcely a subject for congratulation, that our crops of corn 
are growing heavier, from year to year, under improved methodr 
of cultivation while the crops of men and women left withou 
cultivation are rapidly deteriorating. Conditions and Occupations. 
Witt, correct ideas of what it is to truly live, the farmer Avill 
see the necessity of mental culture, social recreation, and the 
elevating and refining influences of books and the plastic arts; 
and depend upon it, he will find means to secure these elements 
of development and progress. He will discover that it is his 
own fault that his life is a mere round of drudgery—that his 
slavery is voluntary, and the result of his false notions of the 
real meaning of life. The improved implements, the labor- 
saving machinery, and the more scientific methods of culture 
of the present day enable all who choose to avail themselves 
of them, to greatly reduce the amount of manual labor required 
to produce a given result. Taking science and machinery into 
his service; working a little more with his brain, and a little 
less with his hands; and conducting the whole business of the 
farm more systematically, the agriculturist will soon overcome 
the unfavorable conditions under which he now labors, elevate 
his noble calling above the mere mechanical drudgery which 
now debases him, and in his own person and those of his sons 
and daughters show us finer specimens of vigorous, symmet- 
rical, and beautiful manhood and womanhood than the world 
has yet seen. 
What we have said of the farmer will apply, with modifica- 
tions which will naturally suggest themselves to the reader, to 
workers in the open air generally, and we will dismiss them 
all with a single remark in reference to the butchers, whom we 
place in this class. They are generally robust, fresh-looking, 
and apparently healthy; but at the same time they are not, as 
a class, long-lived. Thackrah says, “Butchers, in fact, live too 
highly—not too highly for temporary health [perhaps], but too 
highly for long life. * * * * Does not high living produce that 
plethoric state which gradually leads to disease ? I believe so. 
Congestion of blood, afiecting chiefly the vessels of the abdo- 
men and head, shortens the lives of numbers who are plump, 
rosy, and apparently strong. The preventive is obvious.”* 
* The Effects of the Arts, Trades, and Professions, and of Civic States ant 
Habits of Living, on Health and Longevity. By C. T. Thackrah. London. 1838 Ist-Door Laborers. 
121 
2. "fhe occupations of the second class, embracing operative 
mechanics and manufactures, are generally lighter, and afford 
advantages for mental improvement and social intercourse su- 
perior to those enjoyed by the majority of out-door laborers; 
but, in themselves, these occupations are, with few exceptions, 
•ess favorable to health and physical well-being than those of 
the first class. 
Many artisans, like the brass-founders and copper-smiths, for 
instance, are subject to injury from the poisonous gases engen- 
dered by the processes of their trades; others, like the ma- 
chinists, the printers, the house painters, the plasterers, the 
hatters, and the bakers, suffer from the minute particles of for- 
eign matter inhaled or otherwise received into the system from 
the materials on which they work; while a third class, of which 
the tailors and the shoemakers are noteworthy examples, be- 
come diseased and almost deformed from the effects of the 
constrained and unnatural postures which their employments 
require. The tailor’s employment is a particularly unfavor- 
able one. A proper and efficient performance of the import- 
ant functions of respiration, circulation, and digestion are im- 
possible where the habitual positions of the body are such 
as his labor seems to require; so that a fresh, rosy, or truly 
healthy tailor can hardly he found. The shoemaker is only a 
little more favorably situated. We trust that the sewing-ma- 
chine and other labor-saving inventions will soon abolish these 
trades, as at present exercised, together with that of the seam- 
stress, which is almost equally fatal to health and beauty. 
The sedentary character of some of the mechanical and 
manufacturing employments constitutes their most unfavorable 
feature, the persons engaged in them suffering quite as much 
from the lack of bodily exercise as the farmer or the stone-cutter 
does from an excess of it. 
But no other single cause probably is doing so much to de- 
preciate the vital stamina of in-door workers as the vitiated 
and poisonous atmosphere of the ill-ventilated rooms in which 
they are generally compelled to labor. Carbonic acid is not 122 
Conditions and Occupations. 
wholesome. The effete matter thrown off the body in the form 
of vapor and mixed with the surrounding stagnant air, was 
never intended to be received again unchanged into the circu- 
lation. We have said, and we shall repeat the statement in one 
form or another on every suitable occasion, that the copious 
breathing of pure air is absolutely essential to health and physi- 
cal beauty. We may just as safely eat poisoned food as breathe 
poisoned air. Unfortunate, indeed, are those who are forced 
to imbibe poison daily in both these ways. 
A thorough ventilation of all work-rooms, which only the 
most deplorable ignorance of natural laws or the most culpable 
disregard of human life prevents ; the greatest possible cleanli- 
ness; out-door recreations; and special gymnastic exercises, 
would counteract, in a great measure, the unfavorable influ- 
ences of which we have spoken. Labor-saving machinery and 
improved processes will ultimately do the rest. 
3. Retail dealers, clerks, and book-keepers (Avho form our 
third class) are affected unfavorably by confinement, bad air, 
and deprivation of sunlight. Those conducting business on 
their own account also suffer, physically as well as mentally, 
from the cares and anxieties consequent upon the uncertainties 
of trade. Book-keepers, confined all day to the desk, are less 
favorably situated than salesmen. It is well for them to stand 
and sit alternately if possible; but standing is preferable to 
sitting, if one position only be practicable. Headache and dys- 
pepsia are very common complaints among this class. More 
exercise in the open air would do much to improve the health 
of shop-keepers; and to secure them time for this, earlier hours 
for closing should be adopted. 
4. Wholesale dealers and men of large business generally are 
able to secure many advantages and avoid some of the causes 
of disease to which the preceding class is subjected. They re- 
side either in the country or in the more healthful parts of the 
city, in large and comfortable houses; eat, as a general rule, 
food of a more wholesome character; are confined for com- 
paratively few hours to the counting-room; and occasionally Otik Geandmotheks. 
123 
give themselves a little recreation. Bnt the way in which most 
business men take their meals is highly injurious. At one or 
two o’clock they holt in hot haste, at an eating-house, what 
passes for a lunch, and then dine at five or six o’clock, taking 
a heavy meal at an hour when, according to the laws of health, 
only a very light one is admissible. 
But of the causes of ill-health and premature old age among 
merchants, anxiety of mind is the most frequent and powerful. 
They live in a state of unnatural excitement; and while their 
muscles waste for want of action, their nerves are worn out by 
excess of action. A hurried gait and care-worn features are 
among the signs of this over-stimulated life. With a favorable 
temperament and constant success in business, however, mer- 
chants are sometimes remarkably healthy and long-lived. 
“The physical evils of commercial life,” Thackrah says, 
“ would be considerably reduced if men reflected that the suc- 
cess of business may be prevented by the very means used to 
promote it. Excessive application or anxiety, by disordering 
the animal economy, weaken the mental powers. Our opinions 
are affected by the states of the body and our judgment often 
perverted. If a clear head be required in commercial transac- 
tions, a healthy state of the body is of the first importance, 
and a healthy body is incompatible with excessive application 
of mind—with the want of exercise and fresh air.” 
The proprietors and conductors of manufacturing establish- 
ments are exposed in a slight degree to the injurious agencies, 
if any, which affect their workmen, but their condition, though 
somewhat similar, is more favorable than that of the merchants. 
In common with the latter, they need more relaxation, less 
“making haste to become rich,” and more active, out-of door 
exercise. 
5. The time was, so at least our grandmothers have told us, 
when our farmers’ wives and daughters were models of healthy 
womanhood—fresh-cheeked, full-breasted, straight, lithe, act- 
ive, and vigorous—worthy to be the wives and capable of be- 
coming the mothers of strong, brave, large-hearted men. Such 124 
Conditions and Occupations. 
undoubtedly were the wives and mothers of the men of Colonial 
and Eevolutionary times, and such, perhaps, may be found now, 
but they are the exceptions to the prevailing pallor, debility, 
and disease. 
The country girl is a favorite theme with the poet, and 
when she is what he generally paints her, she is more than 
worthy of his verse. What a picture of fresh and charming 
beauty does the mere mention of her name call up before the 
mind’s eye! Those noble contours, that full and rounded 
bust, those sweet, frank, maidenly features; those deep, clear 
eyes, so full of sweet expression; those health-tinted cheeks, 
with their diffused and peachy bloom—all conspire to form a 
combination which no mortal man has either the power or the 
will to withstand. Such a being is a queen in her own right, 
and all men are her willing slaves. This is the ideal country 
girl—the country girl as she ought to be and might be. Seek 
her among the cornfields and orchards, and in the cottage- 
homes which hide themselves among the apple-trees! If you 
do not find her, you will find, in her place, the actual country 
girl of to-day, with perchance a crooked spine, a contracted 
chest, a diseased liver, and a dyspeptic stomach. Neuralgia, 
general debility, “decline,” chlorosis, prolapsus uteri-—the 
whole train of female diseases, in short—are now almost as 
common in the country as in the city. It is fashionable to be 
sentimentally pale; to have “delicate health;” and, alas! to 
be consumptive and die young. 
How has the sound health and vital stamina of our grand- 
mothers been lost ? The country air has not deteriorated; 
pure water and sunlight never fail, and have not lost their 
virtue; the household duties of women are not more but less 
severe; wholesome food, or, at least, the materials for making 
wholesome food, are more abundant. Where, then, shall we 
look for the causes of the decay of health and beauty (for the 
latter always goes with the former) among the women of the 
country ? 
The foundations for it were perhaps laid in the very times Causes of Deterioration. 
125 
of which our grandmothers hoast and in their own persons. 
They were full of vital stamina—vigorous and active; but 
they had little or no assistance from servants or “ hired help” 
in their household labors—too severe even for them—which 
were scarcely remitted during gestation and lactation. The 
result, through the action of immutable laws, was deteriora- 
tion in their offspring. Their daughters, less strong than 
themselves, grew up to the same round of drudgery; married 
in due time ; spent the months of maternal expectation in the 
kitchen, and in the performance of the rudest labors of the 
household; and gave birth to their children (the expression is 
scarcely figurative) in the midst of their pots and kettles! A 
still further decadence was inevitable. 
Is it not strange that intelligent men—men, at least, who 
have long ago learned that dismissal from labor and extra care 
are required by their domestic animals during the period of 
gestation—remain still ignorant or careless of the fact that the 
same physiological laws apply, still more imperatively, to the 
mothers of their children ? Shame on the stupidity or the bru- 
tality which fails to recognize and respect the sacred office of 
maternity, and to surround woman in the exercise of it with 
the profoundest reverence and the most devoted and tender 
care!—but we digress. 
To the inherited depreciation to which we have alluded, add 
grave errors of diet and unphysiological habits generally—hot 
biscuits, poisoned with cream of tartar and saleratus; smok- 
ing griddle cakes, saturated with melted butter; rich pies, 
cakes, and puddings; the immoderate use of tea and coffee; 
close, stove-heated parlors; unventilated bedrooms; lack of 
exercise in the open air; and insufficient mental and social 
stimulus, and we need hardly look further for the causes of 
the decay we deplore. To these causes, dismissed here with a 
mere mention, we shall revert in another chapter, as they affect 
more or less both sexes and all classes. 
In the city, women labor under many disadvantages from 
which their sisters in the country are exempt. The general at- 126 
Conditions and Occupations 
rnosphere, even in the most favored situations, is less pure than 
that of the country; their food, provided the cookery he the 
same in both cases, is less wholesome; and the prevailing cus- 
toms in reference to the hours of eating and sleeping are less 
favorable. But, on the other hand, they take more exercise in 
the open air, strange as it may seem, and live a life of compara- 
tive mental and social activity. In place of the debilitating 
stagnation and inertia of country life, they have the constant 
stimulus (natural and healthful if not in excess) of contact with 
the general movement of society. The danger in their case is 
too much excitement. Household cares, and the trouble grow- 
ing out of that great but unavoidable evil, domestic servitude, are 
their great burdens. 
Our domestics being almost always of European birth or 
parentage, are generally fresh-complexioned and robust, and 
enjoy a degree of animal vigor which their employers may 
envy; hut their employments and habits, especially in large 
families in the city, are far from being favorable to a high state 
of health. They are very liable to fevers and other acute dis- 
eases, and are not long-lived. 
6. The professions are, per se, favorable to health, physical 
development, and long life. They require and encourage men- 
tal activity, afford opportunities for social intercourse, and, as a 
general rule, allow ample time, if taken advantage of, for bodily 
exercise. If professional men, therefore, as a class, he not fine 
specimens of physical manhood, the cause must he sought in 
their own ignorant or willful disregard of the laws of their 
being. What is the testimony of general observation in refer- 
ence to them ? 
As a class, clergymen are sickly and physically inefficient. 
The exceptions are mainly found among those who have the 
unclerical habits of taking a good deal of exercise in the open 
air, and cultivating a somewhat jovial disposition.* While the 
* A correspondent of one of our religious journals gives his brethren the 
following timely hints, suggested by the conversion of a noted pugilist: 
“I dislike to see Satan’s body-guard though they are—six Clergymen and Pugilists. 
127 
ideas now generally entertained respecting the proprieties of the 
profession continue to prevail, we shall see few healthy, robust 
men in the pulpit, and the ministrations of our public teachers 
of religion will fall far short of the grand effects which they 
ought to produce. ¥e can not, oh course, estimate too highly 
the value of the soul, but we must not forget that, in this state 
of existence, the body is a very useful appendage, and can not 
be neglected and abused with impunity. 
The healers of the diseases of other people do not, by any 
means, always present us examples of perfect health in them- 
selves ; but we think them a much healthier body of men than 
the clergymen. Frequent night-calls no doubt injure the health 
of practitioners to some extent, and there is a liability to be- 
come infected by contagious diseases; but their profession is, 
on the whole (provided they do not swallow their own pills 
and powders), favorable to health. 
Persons engaged in literary pursuits are often pale, emaciated, 
and dyspeptic, but these conditions are seldom the effects of 
mental application in persons of mature mind. Confinement, 
impure air, and lack of exercise, conjoined with dietetic errors 
of the gravest character, are generally accountable for their lack 
of high health. Literary pursuits generally are, in themselves, 
favorable to health; and vital statistics show that literary men, 
as a class, are long-lived. 
What literary men most need is more exercise in the open air, 
feet high and forty-five inches about the chest; while the servants of God go 
creeping about—little shad-bellied fellows scarce able to walk under the 
Christian armor, much less able to fight in it! ***** We want more 
muscle, as well as more mind, in our pulpits. When Henry Ward Beecher 
went to be examined by a phrenologist, Eowler walked around him, and eyed 
him as a jockey would eye a fine horse, and said, ‘You’re a splendid animal /’ 
‘ That’s just it,’ he replied, ‘ that’s the secret of my success.’ 
“ Truth ! When a man’s body is vigorous, his mind is vigorous, and his 
thoughts are energetic, searching, and clear. I don’t know whether our 
Christian churches have grown weak because our ministers have grown lean, 
or whether the ministers have grown lean because the churches have become 
weak; but of this lam sure, that many of our ministers to-day weigh too little 
in the pulpit, because they weigh too little on the scales,” 128 
Conditions and Occupations. 
well-ventilated libraries and study-rooms, a plain, wholesome 
diet, and frequent social recreation. 
7. Persons in what are called independent circumstances—• 
that is, persons who are not under the necessity of exercising 
any trade or profession for livelihood—have health and hap- 
piness more in their power perhaps than any other class; but, 
as a general rule, they allow both to escape them. A person 
supplied with food and comforts without labor and care, is at 
full liberty to exercise body and mind in just the degree which 
the highest health of both require. He has nothing to do but 
to grow—to expand freely in symmetry and beauty. The con- 
ditions of health are all within his reach; the causes of disease 
may nearly all be avoided. A few, perhaps, are wise enough 
to use the advantages of their position and attain the grand 
objects of life—health and happiness; but the great majority 
make the grand mistake of seeking happiness in idleness and 
dissipation, or wasting their energies in desultory and aimless 
pursuits. In the professions and trades the muscular or the 
nervous system, as the case may be, is often exhausted by ex- 
cessive exertion; here it quite as frequently declines for want 
of exercise; and ennui, tedium mice, and hypochondriasis af- 
flict the idler not less deeply than the abdominal diseases of the 
shoemaker, the dyspepsia of the tailor, or the cephalic disorders 
of the anxious merchant. This ennui is a not infrequent cause 
of suicide. Dr. Darwin gives several cases: 
“Lord S. one day said to a friend, ‘I am tired of the insi- 
pidity of life, and intend to-morrow to leave it,’ He kept his 
word. The next evening the corpse was found leaning over the 
arm of a great chair, the pistol on the ground, and its contents 
lodged in the brain.” A gentleman of polished manners, and 
about fifty years of age, said to Dr. Darwin : “A ride out in 
the morning, a warm parlor, and a pack of cards in the after- 
noon, are all that life affords.’ He shot himself a few months 
afterward.” The misery of idleness is shown as much in men 
whom circumstances have transformed from active to useless 
life. Tradesmen and merchants who have accumulated fortune Tedium Vitjs. 
129 
and retired to enjoy it often find rest an intolerable load. The 
celebrated Dr. Gartshore, in whom the change from activity to 
confinement had induced tedium vita, said, when he knew that 
he was about to expire, “lam glad of it. lam tired of having 
my shoes pulled on and off.” XI. 
The whole physical and moral condition of man is modified by climate and 
locality.—Dunglison. 
EFFECTS OF CLIMATE AND LOCALITY. 
HE effects of climate and lo- 
cality upon the physical char- 
acter of man are too marked 
to be left out of the account 
in our investigations. All the 
other agencies to which at- 
tention has been drawn in the 
preceding chapters are modi- 
fied, more or less, by temper- 
ature, altitude, and atmos- 
pheric, electric, and solar con- 
ditions. The relations in 
which our bodies stand to the 
inorganic elements and forces 
of Nature is closer than we 
may at first be inclined to ad- 
mit. Each of us may appro- 
priately adopt the language 
which the poet puts into the 
mouth of Mithridates: 
From the earth-poles to the line, 
All between that works or grows, 
Everything is kin of mine. 
By understanding this relationship, which it would be very 
absurd to dispute, we may tur a it to our profit, as we shall 
presently see. Temperature and Beauty. 
131 
Heat, which, many ancient philosophers regarded as the soul 
of the world, is truly (as modern science admits) one of the 
principal agencies through which Nature calls forth and sustains 
vitality; and within certain limits it always promotes activity 
and development; while cold, contrary to the generally received 
opinion, is a sedative, depressing life, and retarding or preventing 
growth. It is for this reason that both animal and vegetable 
forms in tropical regions are characterized by luxuriance, if not 
excess, whereas those of the frigid zone are generally stunted, 
and marked by evident tardiness and want of development. 
Cold, it is true, has a stimulating and tonic eifect upon the 
animal system, so far as it tends to excite a reaction (which 
produces heat), and no further. Beyond this it debilitates the 
body, and finally destroys life, Dunglison asserts that two fifths 
of mankind, at least, die of acute diseases, a majority of which 
are occasioned by exposure to cold. Its effects upon children 
and old people are particularly marked, the mortality among 
them being very much greater in winter than in summer. Heat, 
too, it should be observed, like any other stimulant, if in excess 
and long continued, enervates the muscles, and in the end pro- 
duces that state of languor and inactivity which we are accus- 
tomed to associate with a Southern climate. 
The highest order of physical development and personal 
beauty, as we should naturally infer from what we know of the 
effects of the extremes of heat and cold, need be sought only 
in temperate climates. Alexander Walker says: 
“ The native country of beauty is not to be found either in 
regions where cold freezes up the living juices, or in those where 
the animal structure is withered by heat. A climate removed 
from the excessive influences of both these causes constitutes an 
essential condition in the production of beauty,” 
“In the finest climates of the globe,” Dr. Lazarus remarks, 
“ a more harmonious human life has generally been found indi- 
genous. They favor the life of the affections and natural in- 
stincts, The more permanent and genial influence of the solar 
ray refines the organism with an intense animation, till the dull 132 
Climate and Locality. 
clod becomes all sense, all heart. The serene weather and the 
beautiful earth call men and women forth from that domestic 
seclusion whose artificial routine stifles, in civilized countries, 
our natural instincts.” He instances some of the West India 
Islands, whose harmonious and affectionate natives are so well 
described in Irving’s “Life and Voyages of Columbus,” and 
such South Pacific isles as Typee, the Marquesas, and others, 
the physical beauty and perfection of whose natives the navi-1 
gator can not find words to express.* These regions are trop- 
ical in their situation, but their climates, being tempered by the 
surrounding ocean, are practically temperate. 
We have no recorded observations of the physical effects of 
the various climates of the United States, sufficiently extensive 
and accurate to warrant any positive generalizations. That 
there are striking differences between the inhabitants of the 
North and those of the South, and even between the people of 
contiguous States, is a matter of common remark; but the pre- 
cise nature of these differences has seldom been clearly defined, 
and it is difficult, where so many other conditions are also dis- 
similar, to determine to what extent the effects observed are due 
to climatic influences. 
According to our own observations, which have extended 
from New Hampshire and Vermont on the north to the borders 
of Florida on the south, the finest race of men, in physique, in 
this country are to be found between the parallels of 34° and 
40° north latitude, and particularly in the States of Maryland, 
Virginia, and Kentucky,f 
They are large, symmetrically formed, erect and graceful in 
carriage, and have generally fine, open, and pleasant counte- 
t A newspaper correspondent, writing from the interior of Kentucky, says •. 
“ I have been struck with the profusion of really great-looking men at the State 
Fair. You may single out any group of twenty, and in it you will be sure to 
find two or three who, in stature, physical development, or expression of coun- 
tenance, bear testimony to the manliness and royalty of their nature. It semis 
as if Kentucky were educating a race of kings, from which to supply tin 
world.” 
* “ Passional Hygiene ” North and South. 
133 
nances. Between these parallels also lie our finest climates; 
and, although the concurrence of these circumstances does not. 
prove that the relation of cause and effect exists between them, 
we are justified in considering some connection as at least prob- 
able. The more aristocratic origin of the early settlers of these 
States, their higher culture, less austere religious views, and 
stronger social tendencies; their abundant pleasurable exercise 
in the open air; and their freedom from severe labor, have no 
doubt conspired with the genial influences of a milder climate to 
produce the striking differences observable between their de- 
scendants and those of the New England Puritans. 
A comparison between the people of the North and those of 
the South, leaving out of view all smaller geographical divisions, 
will illustrate in a striking manner some of the most obvious 
effects of climate on the human physical system. 
The Northerner is characterized by a tendency, more or less 
marked, to angularity of form, sharply defined, if not prominent, 
features, a fresh complexion, density and firmness of muscle 
and bone, and rapid, hut often ungraceful, movements. These 
manifestations are of course modified by sex; and the women 
of the North, wherever there is a sufficient development of the 
vital system to give the necessary plumpness and roundness of 
contour, present a brilliant and attractive style of beauty; but 
even in them the tendency to hard and angular outlines is often 
apparent. 
In the South there is a predominance of more elegant and 
gracefully rounded contours, greater symmetry of body, more 
finely chiseled, but less prominent, nose and chin, somewhat 
fuller lips, a softer expression of the eye, less relative breadth 
in the lower part of the face, and, in general, an indication of 
more delicacy and refinement, and less force. In the move- 
ments of the Southerner there is an easy grace, to which the 
inhabitants of northern regions are strangers. This is particu- 
larly observable in the women, who seem to float along with a 
swan-like motion, which belongs only to the most harmoniously 
developed forms. 134 
Climate and Locality. 
But in discussing the effects of climate, other conditions be- 
sides temperature must be taken into the account. Prominent 
among these is altitude. This affects not only the temperature, 
but the weight and consequent density of the atmosphere, and 
through these all the functions of the animal economy. Both 
animals and plants require ui atmosphere rich in the vital prin- 
ciples which they are accustomed to draw from it, and there- 
fore can not thrive in the rarefied air of very elevated regions. 
A certain degree of atmospheric pressure seems also to be nec- 
essary to the preservation of their shapes. In a greatly rarefied 
atmosphere, such as is found on the summits of high mountains, 
the pores of the skin are relaxed, and the vessels and veins 
swell. If the monks of St. Bernard do not occasionally leave 
their mountains to breathe the denser and more strengthening 
air of the plains, they gradually waste away. Trees and plants 
grow more and more stunted as we ascend the mountains, till 
they finally disappear altogether. 
Riofrey says: “Elevated situations should be avoided by 
those who have short breath, or any complaints of the lungs or 
heart; bat where the mountains are not very high, lymphatic 
and scrofulous persons may derive immense benefit from a resi- 
dence near them, particularly if the chest be large, and the 
lungs expand without difficulty in the pectoral cavity, and the 
heart be sound.”* 
The active bodily exercise and hardships of mountain life 
favor the development of the motive temperament, and if not 
excessive, promote- masculine beauty; but they are not favor- 
able to the development most proper for women. In illustra- 
tion of this point, we may mention the fact noted by Walker, 
that in some parts of the Highlands of Scotland the men are as 
remarkable for beauty as the women for ugliness, while in 
some of the eastern counties of England precisely the re- 
verse is the case. The strong features, dark curled hair, and 
muscular forms of the Highlanders are as unsuitable to the 
♦ Treatise on Physical Education. The Englishman. 
135 
female sex, as the soft features, flaxen hair, and short, tapering 
limbs of the women of the eastern coast of Great Britian are 
to the male. 
The luxuriance of fertile plains, the abundance of nutritious 
food which they afford, and the comparative freedom from 
hardships and severe toil which they permit, are favorable to 
the development of the vital system and to human beauty, 
especially in women. The same law applies to the inferior 
animals, oxen and sheep becoming large-bodied, fat, and short- 
legged on low, rich soils, while in higher and drier situations 
the bulk of the body decreases, and the limbs grow longer and 
more muscular. 
The prevailing state of the atmosphere with reference to hu- 
midity has also a powerful influence upon human health, 
physical development, and beauty. 
The effects of excessive dryness of atmosphere are an in- 
crease of insensible perspiration, a drying and hardening of 
the skin, a gradual stoppage of the pores, and an obstructed 
and painful action of all the bodily functions. "With these di- 
rect physical changes are conjoined, in persons highly sensi- 
tive to atmospheric influences, a state of extreme discomfort, 
restlessness-, fretfulness, and vacillation. This state of the at- 
mosphere is in the highest degree unfavorable to beauty, de- 
stroying the embonpoint, smoothness, and freshness which are 
among its essentials, and imparting prematurely the wrinkles 
and roughness of age. The lack of plumpness, which has be- 
come a prominent American physiological characteristic, is 
doubtless, in part at least, owing to the comparative dryness 
of our atmosphere. 
“The air of England,” a writer in one of our literary jour- 
nals beautifully says, “ seems favorable to richness and abun- 
dance of blood; there the life-vessels sit deep, and bring opu- 
lent cargoes to the flesh-shores; and the rotund figure, the 
ruddy, solid cheek, and the leisurely complacent movements, all 
show how well supported and stored with vital resources the 
Englishman is. But to the American’s lip the great foster- 136 
Climate and Locality. 
mother has proffered a more pungent and rousing draught— 
not an old Saxon sleeping-cup for the night, but a waking-cup 
for the bright morning and busy day.” 
A Swiss savant, M. Desor, attributes to the dry and stimu- 
lating character of the American climate our national restless- 
ness and impatience. He says: 
“ There is no European who, on landing in Hew York, Bos- 
ton, or Baltimore, has not been struck with the feverish ac- 
tivity which reigns on all sides. Everybody is in a hurry— 
people on the wharves and along the side-ways run rather 
than walk. If two friends meet each other in the street, they 
merely shake hands, and have no time to converse together. 
An impatience so general must, necessarily, have its source in 
some general cause. Although we do not yet possess much pre- 
cise information as to the manner humidity in the air works 
more or less on the nervous system, we do not believe we err 
in attributing this nervous irritability of the people of the 
United States to the dryness of the American climate. Can 
we not cite in support of this opinion the less durable effect, 
but not less constant, that the easterly wind produces with us ? 
[The easterly wind is a dry wind in Europe—the west wind 
being humid, and bringing rain.] The inhabitants of the Jura 
know too well what effect it has on the nerves, and even on 
the disposition of the mind, to such an extent, that when the 
easterly wind blows for a long time, people feel a sort of un- 
easiness, of irritation, which often degenerates into bad humor 
—so much so, that in certain localities it has become a com- 
mon saying, that the easterly wind makes women wicked; 
and 1 have heard more than one remark, that they would in- 
vite no person to their houses during an easterly gale. 
“If, therefore, dry winds produce such marked effect? 
among ourselves, where they only occasionally blow, we may 
imagine that their influence must be much greater in a country 
where they are the prevailing winds all along the Atlantic 
coast,” 
An excess of humidity in the air is, equally with extreme Earth and Man. 
137 
dryness, inimical tc health and physical well-being. Com- 
bined with cold, it deranges greatly the principal functions of 
*he body, producing rheumatic, scorbutic, and catarrhal affec- 
tions, and predisposing to consumption. United with heat, 
its effects are still more serious, eruptions, bowel complaints, 
and fevers—nervous, intermittent, malignant, and contagious 
—being among its most common results. 
A medium between the two extremes of dryness and humid- 
ity, which we have here contrasted, is of course most favor- 
able to the well-being of the physical system ; and other things 
being equal, should be sought by those who are at liberty to 
choose their locality. 
Wilkinson, in that unique and most admirable work, “ The 
Human Body and its Connection with Man,” thus character- 
izes some of the effects of climate upon the human features: 
“ The inhabitants of the regions of gusty winds have weather- 
beaten faces, and lines as of the tempests blown howling into 
their skins. Mountain races have stony or granitic features, 
as of rocks abandoned to the barren air. The people of moist 
and marshy places look watery and lymphatic. Those where 
extremes of temperature prevail for long periods are leathern 
and shriveled, as though their skins had given up the contest 
with Mature and died upon their faces.” 
The climate of the country, as we have already incidentally 
remarked, is more favorable to health and beauty than that 
of the city. It is so because the air is purer, the sunlight less 
obstructed, and our communion with Mature more complete. 
The last specification may provoke a smile on the lips of some 
readers, but it is the most important of the three. Considered 
as physical beings, we are, at most, but two steps removed 
from the clods among which we delve. There is but a single 
link (the vegetable kingdom) between us and the earth; and 
ties, unseen but strong, and inwoven with every fiber of our 
bodies, unite us to the rocks and trees and running brooks. 
We appeal to the student and true lover of Mature to say if 
this be not so. Are you not conscious of an accession of life 138 
Climate and Locality. 
and vigor every time your foot touches the fresh earth ? does 
there not come to yon an actual, although it may he a name- 
less, good, from the hills and fields, which neither aii’, nor 
water, nor sunlight, nor all three combined, can impart? 
This magnetism of .Nature (to give the influence a name) doubt- 
less affects some more than others, because some are, so to 
speak, more completely en rapport with Nature than others, 
but all feel it more or less. In the city, the ties which unite 
us with living Nature—the invisible tubes through which her 
vitalizing currents flow into us—are mostly cut off. We loose 
our foothold on the earth, and tread only upon cold, dead, 
hewn stone and burned bricks. 
Bearing in mind the laws of human configuration set forth 
in a preceding chapter, we shall be prepared to admit that there 
may be some connection between beautiful scenery and beau- 
tiful human forms and faces, although we may not he able to 
trace it out clearly in every case. The magnificent parks of 
England have, we can readily believe, been instrumental, in 
more ways than one, in forming that high type of personal love- 
liness which distinguishes the women of the English nobility, 
whose walks and rides bring them daily within the sphere of 
their influences. 
The poets, with their intuitive perceptions of truth, have 
always recognized this influence. Wordsworth’s “Lucy” fur- 
nishes an apt illustration. Nature, who will be equally kind to 
all who truly love her, is made to say of Lucy; 
The floating clouds their state shall lend 
To her, for her the willow hend; 
Nor shall she fail to see, 
Even in the motions of the storm, 
Grace, that shall mold the maiden’s form 
By silent sympathy. 
The stars of midnight shall be dear 
To her; and she shall lean her ear 
In many a secret place, 
Where rivulets dance their wayward round, 
And beauty, born of murmuring sound, 
Shall pass into her face. Maidens and Lilies. 
139 
In distinct recognition of the same principle, Alexander 
Smith, speaking of a maiden who 
Grew up ’men!' flowers and rills. 
In the heart of distant hills, 
beautifully says 
There into her being stole 
Nature, and imbued the whole, 
And illumined face and soul. 
Worthy to he placed on the same page with these quotations 
is the following stanza, by a writer whose initials (F. O. T.) 
only are known to us. It refers, we believe, to a real child of 
Nature, whose delight in the lady-like labors of the flower* 
garden is celebrated in the poem from which it is taken; 
’Mid the roses she has wrought— 
’Mid the lilies till she caught 
Health and grace in form and thought. XII. 
DIRECT PHYSICAL CULTURE. 
We can not stretch oat an arm or a foot, or walk, or run, or leap, without 
freshening the life-currents of the system; sending new flashes of electric 
warmth along the nerves and muscles; and scattering a cloud of those blue 
and black devils that buzz around the ears of poor sedentary students, stayers 
at home, and women imprisoned in nurseries and amid their household cares. 
—North American Review. 
HE agencies affecting human physical devel- 
opment, to which onr attention has been 
mainly directed in the preceding chapters, 
are such as are generally supposed to lie be- 
yond the range of systematic bodily culture. 
We come now to speak of the more direct 
and obvious means and methods of acting 
effectively upon the physical system, modify- 
ing the shape of body or limbs, curing dis- 
ease or deformity, and promoting health and 
beauty. 
Those glorious old pagans, the Greeks, 
from whom, in spite of our boasted modern 
civilization, we have still so much to learn, 
appreciated more fully than any nation has done since their 
time, the importance of physical culture; which they madq 
the foundation of their whole system of education. They, 
evidently, were not, like some of the moderns, “ashamed of 
their bodieshut, rather, gloried in them, as tenements wor- 
thy of the indwelling soul. All the young men of the nation 
were trained in manly exercises, and their emulation excited by 
the high honors bestowed upon those who excelled in them. 
The simple crown of green leaves, which was placed upon the Americans Vs. Greeks. 
141 
brow of the victor in their noble athletic games, under the eyes 
of his assembled countrymen and countrywomen, was more 
coveted by the Grecian youth than the diadem of a king. It 
was not only a crown of glory for himself, but gave renown to 
the city in which he was born. 
It was in the gymnasium and at the Pythean, Henman, and 
Olympic games that the sure foundations of an integral educa- 
tion were deeply and strongly laid in the most complete and 
systematic bodily culture. Philosophy, oratory, poetry, music, 
painting, and sculpture formed the fitting superstructure. It 
was also in the gymnasiums and at the national games that 
Plato, Aristotle, and the other philosophers lectured and taught, 
conversing with their pupils as they rested from their exercises, 
and carrying along mental with physical training. 
And now, to bring it to the true test, what was the result of 
the Greek educational system? Undoubtedly the finest race 
that the world ever saw grew up under it—the strongest and 
bravest men and the most beautiful women (for the physical 
culture of the latter was not neglected)—philosophers, poets, 
orators, and sculptors, which the modern world has never 
equaled. 
The moderns, and especially the most modem of all the mod- 
erns, the Americans of the United States, have adopted a differ- 
ent system, and, as would naturally be inferred, have attained 
a different result. We, like the ancient Greeks, offer prizes or 
rewards to excite the emulation of our youth, and bestow 
much coveted honors upon those who excel; but these prizes 
and honors are calculated to stimulate merely the already too 
active mental powers and promote brain-stuffing at the expense 
of everything like a harmonious development of the whole be- 
ing. Manly sports and games are, for the most part, ignored 
(our only gymnastic exercises being performed within the walls 
of the cranium); physical strength and beauty are practically 
contemned; and the body itself is degraded from its high of- 
fices as the companion of the soul and the temple of the Divine 
Intelligence. In our scholastic architecture, the foundation— 142 
D ieect Physical Cultube. 
the material basis of bone and muscle—is considered of little 
importance. No wonder our beautiful superstructures of clas- 
sic and scientific learning so frequently tumble down. 
The culture which children get in the public and private 
schools of our country is mainly a hot-house culture—a system 
of mental forcing which is fast destroying the vital stamina of 
the rising generation, and rendering a natural and harmonious 
development of body and mind impossible. Everybody ought 
to know that even the most vigorous child can not be confined 
to a school-room and subjected to the forcing process to which 
we have alluded, for six hours a day, without the most serious 
injury to its health and a direct contravention of the organic 
laws. No one, and especially no parent or teacher, ought to be 
ignorant of the fact, that the principal business of childhood is 
to grow—to develop, not the brain merely, or principally, but 
the whole being in symmetry and beauty; and that to do this, 
fresh air, sunlight, and abundant bodily exercise are absolutely 
essential. But very few, seemingly, have any knowledge what- 
ever of the body’s needs, beyond the ordinary supply of food 
and clothing. We fear, in fact, that not one person in a hun- 
dred even gives the subject a thought. It does not surprise us, 
therefore, to hear the warmest praises bestowed upon a girls’ 
school in one of our large cities, where the hours of study 
amount to nine and a quarter daily, and only one hour is given 
to exercise. What sort of wives and mothers do you think th* 
pupils of that school will make ? Accomplished, no doubt, they 
will he—well-skilled in French, Italian, music, and painting— 
and if they be not also “pale and interesting,” fashionably deli- 
cate, and dyspeptic, and too good to stay long on this lusty life- 
loving earth, it will not be the fault of their teachers. We have 
faith in a better future, otherwise we should despair of the Ee- 
public. 
The girls suffer more than the boys from our false educa- 
tional system, on account of the conventional proprieties which 
so completely fetter them, depriving their limbs of f 11 freedom 
of movement, even when they are liberated from the desk. JKomps Commended. 
143 
Boys will play, when out of school, and it is generally admitted 
to be proper enough, if not necessary, that they should. It is 
to the irregular and inadequate exercise thus obtained that 
many of them owe their physical salvation. But their sisters 
are restrained, partly by their costume, hut still more by the 
absurd ideas of propriety of deportment so industriously instilled 
into their minds by their mothers, aunts, and teachers, and the 
consequent fear of being called romps or tom-hoys. They are 
expected to he ladies, instead of children, and to avoid all those 
vigorous exercises which their natural instincts would lead them 
to engage in. Pale cheeks, indigestion, headache, nervous de- 
bility, and crooked spines are among the inevitable results. 
Give us the romp or tom-hoy, with her vigorous limbs and her 
rosy or nut-brown cheeks, rather than the delicate little lady of 
ten summers. It is among the former, depend upon it, that the 
young men of the rising generation will look for their wives. 
So far has our hot-house culture of both sexes been already 
carried, that one seldom observes a ruddy face in a school-room 
without tracing it back to a Transatlantic origin. The teacher 
of a large school in Canada goes so far as to declare that she 
can recognize the children born on this side of the line by their 
invariable appearance of ill-health and their intellectual pre- 
cocity.* 
The only school, so far as we know, where anything like an 
effective system of physical education is carried out is the na- 
tional Military Academy at West Point. The pupils of that 
institution are graduated with broad shoulders, full chests, finely 
developed frames, and an erect and graceful carriage. In fact, 
they are generally among the finest specimens of manhood that 
we have ever had the pleasure of seeing. They go forth, as 
some one has happily said, “fully armed and equipped with 
better than shield and spear for life’s great struggle, even with 
the panoply of a vigorous sheathing of muscle upon a rock-like 
groundwork of bone, operated by untrembling nerves and stead' 
♦ Alla itic Monthly, for March, 1858. 144 
Direct Physical Culture. 
ily-beating pulse.” In the other professions activity and vigor 
are generally supposed to be of no special utility. 
Our colleges, with all the learning and wisdom brought to 
bear upon their management, manifest no clearer recognition 
of the body and its wants than the common schools. The for- 
cing system, commenced in the latter, is continued in the for- 
mer. The results are thus summed up by one of our popular 
lecturers: 
“We make brilliant mathematicians, and miserable dyspep- 
tics; fine linguists, and bronchial throats; good writers, and 
narrow chests; high foreheads, and pale complexions; smart 
scholars, but not that union which the ancients prized so highly, 
of a sound mind in a sound body. The brain becomes the 
chief working muscle of the system. We refine and re-refine 
the intellectual powers down to a diamond point and brilliancy, 
as if they were the sole, or the reigning faculties, and we had 
not a physical nature binding us to the earth, and a spiritual 
nature binding us to the great heavens, and the greater God 
who inhabits them. Thus the universities become a sort of 
splendid hospitals, with this difference, that the hospitals cure, 
and the universities create disease. Most of them are indict- 
able at the bar of public opinion for taking the finest young 
brain and blood of the country, and after working upon them 
for four years, returning them to the owners, skilled indeed to 
perform certain linguistic and mathematical dexterities, but very 
much below par in health and endurance, and, in short, seri- 
ously damaged and used up—physically demoralized.” 
We recognize the fact that such words as these are now not 
infrequently finding utterance in our lyceum halls, and even in 
our pulpits, as one of the most hopeful signs of the times. 
The press, too, has lifted up its voice in behalf of physical cul- 
ture. Even that staunch old conservative Quarterly the North 
American Review not long since had an excellent paper on 
“ Gymnastics as a Part of Education.”* We copy the follow- 
* We think we do not err in at ributing this paper, together with the article* Oue Colleges Condemned. 
145 
Ing paragraphs, regretting only that we have not room for 
more : 
“ O for a touch of the Olympic games, rather than this pal- 
lid effeminacy! O for a return to the simple Persian elements 
of telling the truth and hulling the javelin, instead of t] o 
bloodless cheeks, and fleshless limbs, and throbbing brains of 
our first scholars in Harvard, Yale, or Princeton! But there is 
a medium, doubtless, between the ancient and modern discipline, 
by which we might secure the benefit and exclude the vices of 
both. And until some measure of this kind is adopted, we 
must continue to have our hearts agonized by the spectacle of 
brilliant scholars dragging out a miserable existence in unstrung 
and dilapidated systems, the mind, with all its tastes, faculties, 
and energies, tuned like an angel’s harp, and performing all 
its fearful and wonderful operations to a charm, while its 
earthly companion seconds its high functions in the feeblest 
manner, and jars and grates with its crazy aches and ills in 
harsh discords amid the sublime concert of intellectual and 
spiritual harmonies. 
“It needs to be rung into the ear of every educator, as 
with the peal of a trumpet, that the body can not be neglected 
with impunity; that in its effeminated capacities the most 
morbid and monstrous passions will hold their saturnalia; and 
that only in its vigorous exercise and expansion, as well as in 
the development, culture, and equipment of the intellect, and 
the enriching and purifying of the heart, can the world have 
‘assurance of a man.’ Ho school or college with any pre- 
tensions to be level with the spirit of the age ought to proceed 
upon the old system of drugging the intellect to satiety with 
knowledge, and leaving the physical and moral powers com- 
paratively uncared for, since only as all the capacities are 
harmoniously unfolded, can any one of them attain its maxi- 
mum of strength, usefulness, and happiness. The ancient phil- 
ln the Atlantia Monthly, from which we have had occasion to quote, to the 
eloquent pen of Eev. T. W. Higginson, to whom the public is so deeply in- 
debted for his efficient advocacy of physical ed ucation. 146 
Direct Physical Culture. 
osophers can yet teach us many a lesson of high wisdom ; hut 
they can give us no more significant symbol of the fine balance 
of their systems than the lovely walks of the gymnasium, the 
arena of active sports for innumerable youths, musical with the 
voices of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.”* 
The neglect of bodily exercise, which is compulsory in the 
school-boy and school-girl, becomes finally habitual; and men 
and women whose occupations do not necessitate their exer- 
cise voluntarily, allow many of the muscles of their bodies to 
fall into almost total disuse. And even those engaged in pursuits 
which call for considerable physical exertion, are generally 
well-developed and strong only in particular parts. The 
blacksmith wields his sledge with as little difficulty as the 
child handles his painted toy, but, ten to one, he can not run 
a quarter of a mile without putting himself out of breath, or 
climb a rope to the ridge-pole of his shop without feeling the 
effects of his exploit for a week. So the farmer manages his 
heavy plow and follows it all day with ease, but talk to him 
of walking twenty-five miles a day (not to say forty) ; climb- 
ing the precipitous sides of Black Mountain, dining on its sum- 
mit, and sleeping at night by a log fire, on a bed of fragrant 
boughs at its base; or swimming across a river a mile wide 
(easy feats for any tolerably healthy man with a good physical 
education), and he will open eyes and mouth with astonishment. 
As to female pedestrianism (or any kind of out-door exercise, 
in fact), the tradition of it has long since died out among us. 
In short, the lack of physical education shows itself in both 
sexes and in all ages and classes of people, and we trust that no 
reader, whatever his position or occupation may be, will skip 
* In Germany, some time ago, when wise and patriotic men thought they 
saw the young degenerating, both physically and socially, eloquent appeals 
were made through the public press In behalf of gymnastic and vocal exer- 
cises ; and were followed, in a short time, by the organization of these exer- 
cises throughout the whole country. The result has been a revolution in the 
physical constitution of the people. We trust that the voice of the press will 
be equally potent here. The Germans have brought over to us their Turn* 
vermins an 1 Sangerhunds. Let us adopt them and make them national. Position in Bed. 
147 
over the following hints on practical bodily culture, with the 
idea that they are not needed by him, or can be of no use in 
his case. They have a universal application. 
In entering upon an explanation and illustration of some of 
the most available of the many forms of physical exercise, 
which should be comprised in a complete system of bodily cul- 
ture, it is necessary, first of all, to give our attention briefly to 
the subject of 
BODILY POSITIONS. 
Before attempting anything more complicated or difficult, we 
ought to learn how to lie, sit, and stand properly, our habitual 
attitudes having an immense influence upon our development 
and configuration. 
The position of the body during sleep is worthy of more at- 
tention than is generally bestowed upon it. All persons in 
whom there is no malformation, deviation, or serious functional 
derangement should sleep alternately on the right and left side. 
Lying on the right side favors digestion, and persons retiring 
soon after a meal (which should be avoided if possible) will 
find their comfort and rest promoted by taking that position ; 
but the fact that the lungs on the side on which one lies are ob- 
structed in their action, complete inflation taking place only on 
the other side, affords a sufficient reason, were there no other, 
why a change of position is desirable. Where the heart beats 
too rapidly, it may be retarded somewhat by lying on the back. 
This is, therefore, in special cases, a good position; but in gen- 
eral it is to be 
avoided. 
“ Bolsters and 
high pillows,” Dr. 
Trail remarks, 
“are among the 
abominations of 
fashionable life. 
A Peopee Position in Bed. 
The head should never be raised more than a few inches, by a 148 
Direct Physical Culture. 
on pillow, like 
“alps on alps,” 
until the poor 
“doubled and 
twisted ” victim 
is elevated out of 
all reasonable 
shape, and the 
neck so bent and 
lungs so compres- 
single small pillow. But it is a general custom to pile pillow 
sed that congestion is sure to affect the brain, while free breath- 
ing is utterly impossible. 
“Dullness of mental comprehension, and general torpor or 
stupidity of the intellectual faculties, are among the conse- 
quences of this pernicious habit.”* 
A Bad Position in Bed. 
One’s “ standing” among his fellow-men is quite as important 
a matter in a physiological as in a social or moral sense. “The 
splendid problem of the erectness of man,”Delpech says, “has 
not been sufficiently studied;” or, he might have added, often 
enough exemplified. It is a splendid problem—a wonderful 
phenomenon—and happy are those who always carry about in 
their own persons a complete solution and illustration of it. 
An erect carriage is essential not only to health and beauty, hut 
to grace of movement. The mere act of standing may seem a 
little thing, and too easy to require any special attention. It 
is naturally easy, no doubt, hut habit, which has been aptly 
denominated a second nature, has rendered a proper position in 
standing, in the case of nine persons out of every ten, a matter 
of no small difficulty. We have wandered so far from Nature 
in this, as well as in many other respects, that it is with much 
toil and patience only that we regain her paths. 
In ancient Greece, we are told, mothers exhorted their 
* The Illustrated Family Gymnasium. By E. T. Trail, M.D. New York 
Fowler and Wells. [Price, $1 25,] How to Sit. 
149 
daughters to be virtuous, hut they urged them still more to hold 
themselves upright and put hade their shoul- 
ders. We give emphasis to the latter clause 
of this exhortation because it is that alone 
which need be addressed to American 
maidens. 
To acquire erectness of body, practice 
the position represented in the accompany- 
ing cut for a few minutes at a time, several 
times a day, performing the inhaling pro- 
cess, described in another place, at the same 
time. The other movements recommended 
for expanding the chest will contribute to 
the same result. 
A had position in sitting is quite as com- 
mon as in standing. It is by constantly 
assuming it that students and literary men 
so often become round-shouldered, and particularly liable to 
Positions in Sitting. 150 
Direct Physical Culture. 
diseases of the lungs. The two figures of school-hoys in the 
cut illustrate very happily the right and the wrong positions. 
Malpositions in lying, sitting, and standing frequently result, 
especially among women, in curvatures of the spine and other 
distortions. 
WALKING. 
An erect posture requires the use—a certain degree of ten- 
sion, at least—of nearly all the muscles. Walking calls them 
all into action, especially where inequalities of ground throw 
the body into a variety of positions. 
As a health-promoting exercise, walking Isas been too much 
extolled by some and undervalued by others. A prescribed 
walk over a familiar road, and with no object in view beyond 
mere exercise, is of comparatively little value; but when one 
climbs a hill to obtain a better view of a fine landscape, or 
wanders through a wood in search of a rare plant, or to seek 
beneath the leaves the hidden blossoms of the fragrant may- 
flower, he returns refreshed and invigorated. 
We find the following excellent rules for walking in print, hut 
do not know to whom to .credit them: 
“1. When we rise to walk, the whole body—the trunk, the 
head, and extremities—should be thrown into a universal but 
general tension; all lassitude, bending, carelessness, falling of 
the head, dangling of the limbs, bending of the trunk, and loose, 
irregular gazing should be avoided; this general vigor brings 
all the muscles up to that state which instantly fits them for 
action. It is a positive injury to the body to exercise when it 
is toneless, lax, flexible, and careless. 
“2. The body (if not the spirit) should be perfectly erect. 
The whole body must be easily poised upon its own gravity as 
the beam of the scales upon its pivot. Then the various mus- 
cles acting upon the body, levers of the limbs and chest, will 
be freed from the labor of holding the body up, for that will 
then be done by the happily balanced skeleton, and then the 
muscles will be ready to move the various joints as the will of A Hint to Women. 
151 
the individual may dictate. Ordinarily, walkers throw their 
bodies so far form the center of gravity as to compel the mus- 
cles to not only bend the joints in the exercise, hut in addition 
actually sustain the whole weight of the body. The erect po- 
sition in walking is all-important; not only is it valuable to the 
corporal system, but begets an erect habit in the mind and 
heart. Eo person can walk with a dignified, honorable, and 
executive mien without feeling a mental and moral elevation. 
As an aid to this position, the eye should not strike the ground 
for many rods in the distance; the sight should run horizon- 
tally ; this will prevent the head from drooping, the trunk from 
bending, and the joints from being lax and weak.” 
To make your walks in the highest degree profitable to 
body and soul, cultivate a love of the beautiful as manifested 
in nature—in hills, rocks, forests, birds, flowers, and insects— 
and pursue, if leisure permit, such studies as botany, geology, 
mineralogy, ornithology, so that your spirit will always ac- 
company your body, animating and invigorating it at every 
step, instead of wandering elsewhere, or remaining snugly 
housed at home. 
Those who would add the beauty of graceful movement to 
the attractions of face and form, must be careful to correct 
any inelegance of gait to which they may be addicted. A 
little careful and systematic practice is all that will be found 
necessary to effect this. 
“ Our women,” an accurate and critical observer (G. W. Cur- 
tis, if we mistake not) remarks, “ are too stiff in their walk 
and attitude. In walking, an American woman only bends her 
knees, and hardly that; she should yield a little in the upper 
joints. Her gait gives a movement to her body like the 
squirming motion of a wounded insect with a naturalist’s pin 
through its midriff. American women hold their arms badly 
in walking; they almost universally bring them forward, cross- 
ing' their hands in front; they have, in consequence, the look 
of a trussed fowl, and have about as much freedom of motion. 
If the arms were allowed to fall freely by the side, our women 152 
Direct Physical Culture. 
would move more gracefully, walk better, and look better. 
The prevailing mode of carrying the arms hoops the shoulders, 
contracts the breast, prevents all proper development of the 
bust, ruins health, and what our ladies will be more likely to 
attend to, destroys beauty of form and all grace of movement.” 
Running, if not carried to excess, is a fine exercise for healthly 
and well-formed boys and men; but it must be cautiously, and 
at first very moderately indulged in by those who are at all fee- 
ble. The most serious injuries have frequently resulted from 
the injudicious use of this and other violent movements. 
EtrsnsriNG. 
Little girls may run with their brothers and playmates as 
much as they please (fashion and their mammas permitting), 
though they are generally less fleet of foot and fall oftener than 
boys. They will, like the boys, be invigorated by the sport; 
for, during childhood and early youth, the two sexes differ very 
slightly from each other. On the approach of womanhood, 
when the peculiarities of form which distinguish her sex begin 
to manifest themselves, and new functions are brought into 
operation, the maiden, without by any means neglecting out- 
door exercise, should discontinue some of the ruder sports of 
childhood. She is no longer like a boy; for if she were, the 
boy would never love her. She can not run swiftly and leap 
gracefully if she tries, or without danger. 
A distinguished author rather maliciously observes, that 
“ women run merely in order to be pursued and caught,” We 
have not, however, forgotten the fable of Atalanta (was she 
not finally caught, too ?), or the fact that the maidens of Lace- 
demonia ran and wrestled naked in the arena; and we by no 
means deny that some modern women, might, by means of the 
necessary training, become models of swiftness in the foot- 
race ; but we do say that such exercises as running and leap- 
ing are inconsistent with the character and functions of true 
womanhood. Swimming—Attitctcb. 
Plate XYI. Skating and Swimming. 
153 
SKATING 
Skating is an exhilarating and invigorating exercise, and we 
are glad to perceive that it is becoming fashionable. It requires 
a moderate exertion of nearly all the muscles in the body; but 
a skillful and experienced skater can travel on the ice at the 
rate of from six to ten miles an hour, for several hours in sue- 
cession, with very little fatigue. Girls and women may skate 
with profit and (if fashion permit) with propriety, provided 
great caution be observed in the first attempts, and before the 
skill which renders the exercise so easy has been acquired, to 
avoid the falls and violent straining of the muscles that boys 
usually experience. In Holland, skating is universal among the 
ladies. Queen Victoria of England also skates, it is said, and 
surely the fair female sovereigns of America may do the same. 
When the ancient Athenians wished to designate a man who 
was good for nothing they were accustomed to say, “ he can not 
even swimwhich shows how important the art was consider- 
ed by them. With the moderns it is by no means a common 
accomplishment, notwithstanding we are so often placed in sit- 
uations in which it may at any moment become of more import- 
ance to us than all the rest of our boasted acquirements put 
together, and even essential to the preservation of our lives, or 
of other lives even dearer than our own. Keally good swim- 
mers—men who might bridge the Hellespont with their strong 
limbs, as I eander did for love and Byron for glory—are very 
rare indeed among us. Even sailors, it is said, are not infre- 
quently unable to swim a single stroke. 
SWIMMING AND BOWING. 
As a hygienic agency and a means of physical culture, in 
which aspects, mainly, it concerns us here, swimming very 
properly takes a high rank. In fact, we consider it to be, with- 
in the range of its application, one of the most efficient of 
bodily exercises. Its free and graceful movements give health- 
ful action to the muscles; the contact with the animate waves, 
so full of magnetic virtue, which it involves, refreshes and in- 154 
Direct Physical Culture. 
vigorates the body; and the conquest of a new element,which 
it secures, dilates the whole being with a sense of triumph and 
of power. 
Everybody, we believe, should learn to swim—women no 
less than men. “ Beauty, the mother of love,” according to 
one of the significant myths of the ancients, “is the daughter 
of the waves and of light.” "Water and sunshine still acknowl- 
Beghnnino of the Pull. 
edge the relationship, and the fairest forms grow fairer still in 
the loving embrace of the limpid elements. The maidens of 
the Pacific islands swim like water nymphs; so do the Italian, 
Mexican, and South American women, and many others. Our 
wives and daughters need not be ashamed to follow their ex- 
ample in this matter; and we earnestly recommend our fair 
End of the Poll. 
readers (as well as our readers not so fair), who have not al- 
ready learned, to commence their lessons at the earliest oppor- 
tunity. 
A practical treatise on swimming with the necessary illus- 
trations would occupy too much space to be admissible here; 
but all necessary instructions, so far as they can be conveyed 
In words and drawings, may be found in Walker’s “Manly Ex- The Saddle Vs. the Carriage. 
155 
ercises,” Trail’s “Family Gymnasium,” or in a little paper-cov- 
ered volume entitled “ The Science of Swimming,” which may 
be bought of the publishers of this work for twelve cents. 
Sailing and rowing should be mentioned in connection with 
swimming, and with almost equal commendation. The latter 
may be learned in two or three lessons; and with a light skiff 
and light oars is a fine exercise for girls as well as boys. 
Riding on horseback is a fine manly exercise (and womanly 
too), promoting respiration, circulation, and digestion; expand- 
BIDING. 
ing the chest, and giving 
tone and energy to the 
whole system. It has 
fallen into almost total 
disuse in most parts of 
the Northern and East- 
ern States, but in the 
South and West is a uni- 
versal accomplishment, 
children of both sexes 
learning to ride almost 
as soon as they learn to 
walk. Our elegant vel- 
vet cushioned carriages 
are very comfortable and 
convenient; but if we 
The Cokkkct Position. 
A Bad Position. 
allow them to effeminize us and deprive us of the use of our 
limbs and lungs, they are of questionable utility. They have 
their place and use, however, and so, let us not forget, has the 
saddle. 
The various out-door athletic games—base-ball, foot-ball, 
cricket, etc,, need merely be mentioned with a word of hearty 
commendation. Those who have been long unaccustomed to 
BALL PLATS AND BOXING. 156 
Direct Physical Culture. 
active and vigorous exertion should however begin cautiously, 
or their aching hones might discourage them. Boxing and fen- 
cing, although the prize-fighter and the duelist have sometimes 
degraded them to unworthy and bloody uses, are noble manly 
arts and have our warmest approval. 
DANCING. 
We have the greatest respect for true piety and for all tne 
moralities and proprieties of civilized life, and just a little for 
the honest prejudices begotten by erroneous ideas of human life 
and fostered by a false education; hut we can not allow this 
respect to warp our judgment or fetter our pen. The “ resolu- 
tions” of synods and presbyteries doubtless have weight, hut 
the truths of physiological science, we must be permitted to 
think (and, on all proper occasions to say), are sufficient, when 
the two conflict, to turn the scale against them. In other 
words, we do not believe that dancing is “an invention of the 
devil,” although many most excellent and pious people have 
repeatedly denounced it as such. That the devil sometimes 
makes use of it to promote his own ends, we freely grant; so 
he does of music, poetry, painting, and even religion itself; hut 
that is no reason why we should give him a monopoly of it. 
We could fortify our opinion by an array of quotations from 
learned and pious authors, hut we prefer to let it rest upon the 
sure foundations of science and common sense, merely intro- 
ducing here a single witness. 
Fordyce, in his “Sermons to Young Women,” says: “It 
seems to me there can be no impropriety in it, any more than 
in modulating the voice into the most agreeable tones in singing; 
to which none, I think, will object. What is dancing, in the 
most rigid sense, but the harmony of motion rendered more 
palpable? Awkwardness, rusticity, and ungraceful gestures 
can never, surely, be meritorious.” 
Looking upon dancing from a physiological point of view, 
we see in it one of the most effective instrumentalities for pro- 
moting a harmonious bodily development, a graceful carriage, a Ready to Begin—Feet in First Position—Hands at Rest 
Plate XVII. D ANCING D EFBNDED. 
157 
free circulation of the fluids, and a cheerful flow of spirits, all 
of which are in the highest degree friendly to health and beauty. 
It is, in fact, the best of all in-door exercises, as it brings to bear 
upon the physical system a greater number of energizing and 
harmonizing influences than any other. 
Dancing is particularly beneficial to women and to students, 
literary men, and those engaged in sedentary occupations; but, 
as Miss Harriet H. Austin truly says, “even the man weary 
with physical toil, inspired by the music of the violin or the 
piano, feels the weight of his fatigue lifted from him and can 
join the dance for an hour in the evening with positive refresh- 
ment.” 
It is hardly necessary, we presume, to say that because we 
so heartily recommend dancing, it does not follow that we ap- 
prove all dances, much less all the concomitants frequently as- 
sociated with their performance—such as late hours, unphysio- 
logical modes of dress, and midnight suppers. The beautiful 
and beauty-giving Terpsichorean art—the veritable “poetry of 
motion”—is no more responsible for these abuses than true re • 
ligion is for the puritanic public opinion that drives those who 
desire to dance to the hotels and public halls, instead of opening 
private drawing-rooms and saloons to them. “ There are hun- 
dreds and thousands of youth” (we quote Miss Austin again), 
“the sons and daughters of pious fathers and mothers, too, who 
will dance, though it were on the brink of ruin. They can not 
dance in their fathers’ parlors; they will go where they can— 
to the ball-room, where they mingle with such companions and 
such associations as cluster round public houses. And as the 
opportunity to dance is not very frequently enjoyed, they wish 
to make the time as long as possible, and often dance on till 
morning.” Let the responsibility rest where it belongs. 
Dances which throw the body into unnatural and painful (not 
to say indecent) postures, and those that require violent exer- 
tion, should be left to the professional dancers of the theater 
and the opera. They deform and demoralize rather than ele- 
vate and beautify those who engage in them. 158 
Direct Physical Culture. 
The waltz is generally looked upon as inimical to morality 
and true delicacy. We need not discuss it on those grounds 
here. It is enough for us to say that, as an exercise, physiology 
pointedly condemns it. The rapid whirl of its movement makes 
the blood rush to the principal internal organs—the heart, the 
lungs, and the brain—and tends to cause dangerous congestions. 
We leave instructions in dancing to be given by those better 
qualified for the task than we, but two or three hints having a 
direct physiological bearing will not be out of place. 
The arms should kept in an easy semi-oval position, so 
that the bend of the elbows be scarcely perceptible, otherwise 
they would present angles which would offend the eye and de- 
stroy all appearance of elegance. The feet should be turned 
out, in order that both may attain an equal degree of execution. 
All idle attitudes must be avoided. Forcing the shoulders up 
to the ears, stooping or rounding the back, if long permitted, 
may give rise to local deformities. The body should be kept 
in an easy and graceful position—the chest advanced and the 
waist retiring; by which means the breast will be naturally 
and elegantly developed, and the shoulders brought to range 
evenly with the back and form a graceful contrast with the 
waist.* 
All the exercises we have mentioned in the preceding sec- 
tions might, properly enough, have been introduced under the 
general head of gymnastics, but the word is now generally used 
and understood in a more restricted sense, embracing merely 
those systematic movements performed within the walls of a 
gymnasium and mostly by the help of apparatus. 
THE EXERCISES OE THE GYMNASIUM. 
These exercises, taken together, form a most efficient m«ana 
of bodily culture, developing the muscles, imparting activity 
and grace of movement, increasing bodily strength, improving 
the form curing disease, and promoting health and beauty. 
* Riofrey. Tub Balancing Bab,. 
Plate XYIU. The Gymnasium. 
159 
To secure all the benefits which a course of training in gym- 
nastics is capable of imparting, a 'well-appointed gymnasium 
and a judicious 
teacher are re- 
quisite; and we 
earnestly advise 
all who can, to 
avail themselves 
of these helps ; 
but where nei- 
ther gymnasium 
nor teacher are 
within reach, a 
balancing-bar, a 
climbing stand, 
and other simple 
fixtures (which 
can be easily and 
The Aem of a Gymnast.* 
cheaply erected), will prove a tolerable substitute for the former, 
while the place of the latter may be partially supplied by the 
instructions found in books. 
The caution thrown out with reference to other exercises 
must be repeated here with emphasis. The danger with most 
persons, and especially with boys, is in daring and doing too 
* We introduce this engraving to show the effects of exercise upon the 
growth of muscle. It is taken from a east of the arm of Mr. James L. Mont- 
gomery, a teacher of gymnastics in New York. Mr. Montgomery, we are 
told, commenced the practice of gymnastics when about 19 years of age—was 
quite slender—weight 145 lbs.—chest 36 inches, arm around the biceps muscle 
or upper arm, l'2i inches. At the time the east was taken he had practiced 
about four years—weight increased to 160 lbs.—chest 43 inches, fore-aim 13| 
inches, around the biceps or upper arm 15f inches. 
We do not believe that so great a development of muscle is generally de- 
sirable, or that it can be attained, in ordinary cases, without a sacrifice of 
brain power; but it shows what influence gymnastic exercises give us over 
the development of the physical system. For a model we should take Apollo 
In preference to Hercules; although the latter was by no means a useless 
member of tbe semi-celestial fraternity. , 160 
D ikect Physical Chlthke, 
much at the outset. Those who are weak or in any way diseased 
must be particularly careful in this respect, or serious injuries 
may result. With the precaution we have indicated, incalcula- 
ble good may he derived from the simplest private gymnasium. 
Among the most important and useful exercises of the gym- 
nasium are, 1. Balancing; 2. Leaping, in its various forms; 
3. Climbing; 4. Hanging by the arm; 5. Wrestling; and 6. 
Throwing. 
1, Balancing is usually performed on a pole or bar, as repre- 
sented in Plate XYIIL, or on a tight rope. It is admirably 
calculated not only to develop, strengthen, and give flexibility 
to the muscles of the body, and especially of the loins, but also 
to confer accuracy of eye and promote self-command and cau- 
tion. 
2. Leaping strengthens and gives elasticity to the feet, the 
legs, the thighs, the knees—to the whole frame, in fact; braces 
all the muscles; improves the faculty of measuring distances 
by the eye; imparts such a command over the body that there 
is but little danger from a fall; and makes one courageous and 
self-reliant. 
Vaulting is the exercise of leaping on ahorse, into the saddle, 
or over the saddle. The accompanying figures show how it is 
House Mounting. Side Vaulting. Vaulting ovek the Saddle. 
done. The wooden horse used in the exercise is easily con- 
structed. Well-wadded leathern pads should be buckled on any 
part of the horse on which the exercises are to be performed. A Climbino Stand 
Plate XIX. Climbing and Wrestling. 
161 
3. “ Climbing,” the veteran Salzmann says, “is one of the 
most advantageous of exercises.” It strengthens the body, 
fortifies the courage, and increases the means of escaping from 
various dangers. It is performed on ladders of several kinds, 
masts, poles, and ropes, as shown in Plates XIX, and XX. The 
hands, arms, legs and thighs should he considerably strengthened 
by other exercises before climbing may properly be attempted. 
4. Hanging by the arms is a preparatory exercise to climbing. 
It is varied in many ways. Modifications of it are seen in the 
exercises with th« parallel bars, which are specially calculated 
Thb Parallel Bars. 
to act upon the joints of the wrists and shoulders, and to in- 
crease the capacity of the chest. The bars can easily be con- 
structed by any person who understands the use of the handsaw 
and the hammer. 
5. Wrestling is a somewhat violent exercise, but may be en- 
gaged in without danger by persons whose physical powers 
have already been invigorated by other athletic games. It 
gives action to every muscle in the body. 
6. Throwing strengthens the hands, the arms, the shoulders, 
and the muscles of the chest. Combined with aiming at a 
mark it exercises the eye. The popular games of quoits and 
tenpins furnish good means of taking this kind of exercise. 
Gamblers and the hangers-on about public houses should not 
be permitted to monopolize them. 162 
Direct Physical Culture. 
THE GYMNASIUM FOE GIELS. 
We do not believe, as we have had occasion to say before, 
that women should have precisely the same culture throughout 
as men; simply because they are not, and were never intend- 
ed to be, precisely like men—because, in fact, they differ radi- 
cally from our sex in some of their most important functions and 
characteristics. The remark applies to their physical as well 
as to their mental education. We desire to give them neither 
that towering expanse of forehead, nor that hardness and 
prominence of muscle, which are so fitting, so advantageous, 
and so beautiful in man; but they have minds and bodies, and 
in behalf of both have a right to demand all the conditions re- 
quisite to a healthy, natural, and beautiful development. The 
training of the gymnasium is as useful and as important to girls 
as to boys, and should be sought by women as well as men; 
but while some of its exercises are equally suited to both sexes, 
others are adapted to only one of them. 
But the first thing to be attended to is the dress. In the 
long, flowing drapery worn in the parlor, and so suitable there, 
the principal gymnastic exercises would, of course, be impos- 
sible. The costume must be adapted to the occasion. The 
principal requisites in such a costume are, that it be as light as 
may be consistent with the protection of the person, and so 
fashioned as to allow perfect freedom of movement. The 
more beautiful and becoming it may be made the better, provided 
these points be not sacrificed. The prettiest costume for the 
gymnasium that we have seen is composed of a short dress or 
frock reaching to the knee, made with a yoke and belt, and 
pretty full; and trowsers of the common pantaloon form. The 
sleeves of the dress may be short for summer wear, and gath- 
ered into a band and buttoned at the wrist for winter. A 
sack or basque of a different color from the skirt has a fine 
effect as a part of this costume. Such a dress as this, or some 
other appropriate exercising costume, should form a part of 
every woman’s wardrobe, and should be worn a portion of every T-ELB Girls' Gymnasium. 
I* LATE XX. The Indian Scepters, 
163 
day. For a ramble in the country, Fashion deigning to permit, 
it would be just the thing; but surely a woman has a right to 
wear what she pleases in the privacy of her own home, and 
during that portion of the day in which “ calls” are not in order. 
With the habits and modes of dress which now generally pre- 
vail among our women, a great number of the most import- 
ant muscles of the body, especially those around the hips, can 
not possibly get their proper development. The consequences 
are of the most serious and painful character. 
Having secured an appropriate dress, the young girl or 
woman may commence her gymnastic education with the 
easy and graceful exercises of 
the Indian scepter, alternating 
with skipping the rope, “the 
graces,” and various other movements sometimes taught in 
schools under the name of calisthenics. 
The Indian scepters, or clubs, are made of heavy, hard wood 
of the proper size and weight to adapt them to the strength of 
the pupil, or hollowed so as to be loaded with any desired 
weight, and are used in pairs. They promote greatly the 
development of the muscles around the chest, give strength 
and grace to the arras, and aid in the process of breathing. 
We greatly prefer them to the dumb-bells, so much extolled 
by some. They should not be too heavy, nor the exercises 
with them violent. Such a development of muscle as is 
shown in the arm of Mr. Montgomery, a drawing of which 
we give in another place, would hardly be appropriate in 
a woman. Take Praxiteles’ or Oanova’s Venus for a model, 
and not Minerva of Lacedemonia, with a helmet and spear. 
Trail’s “Family Gymnasium” furnishes a great number of ex- 
amples of the movements which may be executed with the 
Indian club or scepter; and most of them are as well adapted 
to girls as to boys. 
To call into action and develop the lower limbs and the 
muscles about the loins, the triangle may he brought into 
requisition. It is a short pole or bar of wood suspended by s 164 
Direct Physical Culture. 
rope from the ceiling at the height of the head. (See Plate 
XX. and the accompanying 
cuts.) 
The bar is to be grasped 
with the hands while various 
prescribed movements are ex- 
ecuted with the feet, legs, and 
body. 
“ It is desirable,” Riofrey 
remarks, “that a lady should 
be able to go up a wooden el- 
even a corded ladder ; that she should know how to make use 
of her hands, hold a rope, and mount a horse; that she should 
pass without fear from one vessel to 
another, and maintain her equilibri- 
um in a small boat, crossing a nar- 
row river ; that she should walk 
steadily on a plank placed over a 
ditch; and that she should swim.” 
We fully agree with the learned 
Frenchman, and therefore advise 
that, after the muscles have been 
considerably strengthened, and a de- 
gree of confidence acquired by the 
exercises already mentioned, the 
more difficult ones of balancing and 
climbing be engaged in and practiced 
till they become easy and pleasant, 
and the requisite skill be acquired. 
An occasional recurrence to them afterward will suffice. See 
Plate XX. for illustrations of the various forms of climbing in 
which girls may properly engage. Their balancing exercises 
may be similar to those of the boys or men, and performed on 
a similar bar, as represented in Plate XYII. They are by no 
means difficult, though they will seem so at first to the un- 
initiated. Expansion of the Chest. 
165 
MISCELLANEOUS EXERCISES. 
1. For the Expansion of the Chest.—The assertion of a dis- 
tinguished physiologist, that “many people die for want of 
breath—when it is their own carelessness alone that prevents 
them from breathing,” is no less true than startling. Our 
vitality is in proportion to our respiration. If we only half 
breathe, we only half live. To expand the chest, therefore, and 
increase our breathing capacity, where it is deficient, is of the 
utmost importance. Whether, as Alphonse Le Roy and others 
have contended, the development of the chest be actually an 
absolute standard of the length of life or not, it is clear enough 
that by expanding it life may often be prolonged and health 
and beauty promoted. 
As special exercises for expanding the chest, the following 
are excellent and if perseveringly made use of will prove in- 
fallible preventives of consumption. 
(1.) Stand erect with the feet in the first position (see Plate 
XIX.), throw the shoulders bach, and then breathe slowdy, 
freely, and deeply, filling the lungs to their utmost capacity at 
every inspiration. Do this several times a day, in the open 
air if practicable, and if not, in a well-ven- 
tilated room, continuing the operation from 
one to five minutes at each time, or as long 
as you can without fatigue. 
(2.) Stand in an erect position, as in the 
first case, set the hands fast on the hips, and 
in this half-bent position throw the arms 
forcibly back as far as possible, the trunk 
remaining immovable. The backward mo- 
tion must take place at the same time as the 
mhaling of the breath. Repeat the move- 
ment a prescribed number of times, avoiding 
fatigue, as before. 
(3.) With the body still in the same posi- 
tion. clasp the hands behind and then stretch 166 
Direct Physical Culture. 
them downward as far as possible, making this movement at the 
same time with, the exhaling of tbe breath. Repeat as before. 
By tbe last two movements tbe shoulders are strengthened 
and thrown back as well as the chest expanded. The last also 
draws the shoulders down, thereby promoting a nobler car- 
riage and remedying the wing-like standing out of the shoul- 
der-blades so often seen. 
(4.) Take a full, deep inspiration (standing erect as in the pre- 
vious movements), retain the air in the lungs as long as possi- 
ble, and then let the breath go out steadily and slowly, at the 
same time beating the chest, abdomen, and back with the 
hands, gently in front, but more smartly on the back and sides. 
Keep up the movement through from two to six inspirations. 
(5.) Extend the arms forward as nearly as possible at right 
angles with the body, and then throw them backward a num- 
ber of times with considerable force; afterward, from the 
same commencing position, bring the arms downward and 
backward, bent at the elbow, and strike the elbows together, 
or try to do so. These motions expand the chest in the line of 
the collar-bone, flatten the shoulder-blades, and thus tend to 
cure the deformity of too round shoulders, as well as enlarge A .Noble Cakeiage. 
167 
the breathing capacity. Women who have contracted the 
diameter of the chest by tight lacing will find this exercise 
particularly serviceable. 
2. For the Improvement of the Carriage.—Take a short, 
rounded stick and put it straight across the hack under the 
arms, which are thrown backward, 
and bent at right angles. In this 
manner walk up and down for ten or 
fifteen minutes, preserving as much 
as possible the upright position of the 
body. One principal point is the 
drawing of the shoulders back and 
down at the same time. A good 
carriage is thus promoted, and that 
position and bearing of the arms and 
shoulders which it is difficult always 
to preserve if the exercise be not per- 
formed with something to hold. The 
attention is to be directed exclusively 
to the upright hearing of the body 
while thus in motion. The aim of 
the movement, at the same time that 
it contributes to the strengthening of the muscles of the shoulder 
back, and foot, is to promote and confirm a habitually noble 
and healthy carriage. It is therefore designed as a remedy 
against a one-sided, loose, and unsteady carriage of the hack, 
and in general of the whole tody. This had habit often shows 
itself in young people who are growing fast, and its effects are 
then most prejudicial (defective growth, faulty formation of 
the chest, etc.), extending their influence over the whole after- 
life. 
8. For Giving Strength to the Bade and Loins.—(1.) The 
arms being extended, bend the body from side to side (as shown 
in the left-hand figure on next page), very slowly at first, count- 
ing in a prolonged monotone to correspond with the bodily mo- 
tion. Continue it for from two to five minutes. 168 
Direct Physical Culture 
(2.) Place the closed, 
hands firmly at the 
small of the back (as 
shown in the right-hand 
figure) and then bend 
backward as far as pos- 
sible. As the trunk is 
thrown backward, the 
head must be inclined 
moderately fo rwa r d. 
This movement should 
always be performed 
slowly. Repeat from 
four to sixteen times, 
counting with the backward motion only, 
(3.) After raising the arms and throwing the body moderately 
backward, throw it forward (as shown in the 
figure), the knees being kept straight and the 
flexion being done on the hips and vertebral 
joints. Prom four to sixteen times. 
4. For the Promotion of Circulation.—(l.) 
Standing erect and placing the hands on the 
hips (as shown in the following cut), hop on 
the points of the toes, first of one foot and 
then of the other, from ten to a hundred times or more. The 
body should not advance, but remain upright in its place. The 
joints of the knee and the ankle must be quite free and elastic, 
for only by this means can be promoted that soft and whole- 
some shaking of the body which, after the setting in motion of 
the leg and foot muscles, is the aim of the movement. The 
degree of intensity of the movement can be regulated at will, 
by raising the foot to any desired height. 
This movement promotes the circulation of the blood in the 
abdomen, carries off humors from the head and chest, cures 
cold feet, and is especially adapted to the bringing again into 
order hemorrhoidal fluxes and the monthly courses of females Round Shoulders. 
169 
which may have got out of order by obstruction, due atten 
tion, of course, being paid to the general 
principles which should regulate all exer- 
cises, and of which the careful reader of this 
book will not remain ignorant. 
(2.) Standing upright and throwing the 
arms into a nearly horizontal position, rub the 
hands together backward and forward, from 
forty to a hundred times; or, to vary the ex- 
ercise, strike the palms vigorously together 
from ten to fifty times. This exercise in 
connection with the previous one is useful 
as a remedy against affluence of the blood 
and nervous affections of the head. It can 
be also used against the same complaint of 
the inner organs of the chest. But in this 
case the energetic striking together of the 
1 hands, which rather strains the muscles of 
the chest, should give place to a quiet rubbing together of the 
same, which being longer performed, the operation gains in 
amount what it loses in intensity. 
5. For the Correction of Found Shoul- 
ders, etc.—Perform the following exercise 
with the 
long back- 
board for a short time every day. Take 
the back-board by the handle with the 
left hand, placing the right hand on the 
top while the other end rests on the 
floor ; then, at the word “ attention” (or 
without the word), bring it in front of 
the body, holding it with both hands, 
their backs being in front. From this 
position raise it slowly to a horizontal 
position over the head, and then bring 
it down gradually across the back of the 170 
D ijrect Physical Culture. 
shoulders, where it may be held for a minute or two, or tha 
movement may be immediately reversed. This exercise may 
be profitably alternated with that of the Indian scepter. 
For other special exercises we must refer the reader to 
works on medico-gymnastics, or to Dr. Trail’s “ Family Gym- 
nasium,” from which last we have borrowed several of the 
foregoing examples. 
On the subject of vocal gymnastics—reading, speaking, sing- 
ing, etc.—which should form a part of every system of physi- 
cal education, the best work in the English language (or in any 
language so far as we know) is Professor 0. P. Bronson’s “Elo- 
cution, or Mental and Vocal Philosophy,” which we commend 
to our readers in place of the brief and unsatisfactory remarks 
which we might have offered here. A popular little hand- 
book, entitled “ How to Talk,” has some excellent hints on this 
subject. 
SOME GENERAL RULES AND HINTS. 
1. The best time for gymnastic exercises is early in the morn- 
ing. Toward evening, however, is also considered a favorable 
time. If practiced late in the evening or near bedtime, they 
should be more moderate. 
2. Gymnastic exercises should never be taken immediately 
before or immediately after a meal—Riofrey says, “ not within 
two hours of the meal-time.” It is doubtless true that the 
stomach should be empty, or nearly so. 
3. The open air is the best place to take all kinds of exercise; 
but as, in a systematic course of physical training, the exercises 
must not be interrupted, as they would be, by bad weather, in 
the open air, an in-door gymnasium is to be preferred; but it 
must be perfectly ventilated, and kept at a low and, so far as 
possible, an equable temperature. 
4. The dress should be light and easy, so as not to impede 
the movements of the body, and nothing should be carried in 
the pockets. 
5. “Exercises,” Dr. Trail remarks, “should always be com- 
menced and finished gently, and all abrupt transitions, as a Plate XXI. 
MO ‘EMINTS WITH TM INDIAN SCBPTER. General Rules. 
171 
general rule, avoided.” They should also he frequently varied, 
so as to call into action alternately various sets of muscles. 
6. The exercises should never be so prolonged as to induce 
great fatigue; for injury rather than benefit might result from 
such a course. 
7. When heated and perspiring from exercise, do not sit or lie 
down at once, but walk about for awhile, till the circulation 
becomes slower and the body cooler; and carefully avoid cur- 
rents of cold air, and the too copious drinking of cold water. 
8. Never go into the water to bathe or swim when fatigued. 
“ A high temperature, perspiration, or feverishness of the body 
is, in itself, no objection to cold bathing, but rather an indica- 
tion for it, provided the body be not fatigued or the respiration 
disturbed.” 
9. It is by moderate and prolonged rather than violent and 
fitful exertions that organs or parts of the body are developed 
and strengthened. 
10. The weaker organs or parts should receive most attention 
and be most frequently subjected to exercises specially adapted 
to invigorate them. 
11. It must be borne in mind that gymnastic exercises, to 
effect their object, must be proportioned to the age, sex, and 
strength of the pupil. A movement that might develop, 
strengthen, and beautify one, might cause serious injury and 
perhaps death to another. Begin moderately, and feel your 
way along, as it were, to more difficult feats. 
12. Our general directions and examples apply, for the most 
part, only to persons who are (in the common acceptation of 
the term) naturally formed, and not affected by any serious or- 
ganic disease. Where deviations, distortions, or alterations of 
structure exist, they might be increased instead of being rem- 
edied by many of the movements recommended. Such cases 
require special exercises under the guidance of a competent 
teacher or physician; or in the absence of these, the instructions 
to be found in the works of such writers as Moritz Schreber, 
Ling, Delpech, Riofrey, and Roth. 172 
Direct Physical Culture. 
13. Avoid extremes. “The great art in education,” it has 
been truly observed, is to combine in their proper proportions 
mental and bodily development; and not to oppose the one to 
the other. If a prodigy of learning be Required, he will prob- 
ably be weak and sickly; while if extreme bodily strength be 
sought, and we strive to make a young Hercules, he will be 
ignorant.” 
14. All exercises should be made as attractive as possible; 
should engage the mind as well as the body ; and should be 
regular, systematic, and perseveringly applied. 173 
XIII. 
PRACTICAL HYGIENE. 
Unerring Nature—still divinely bright— 
One clear, unchanged, and universal light— 
Life, force, and beauty must to all impart, 
At once the source, and end, and test of Art.—Pope. 
HEALTH and beauty, as we 
have shown in previous chap- 
ters, are inseparable—the lat- 
ter being but a sign or visible 
manifestation of the former. 
Our teachings throughout this 
work, therefore, since they 
all relate, either directly or 
indirectly, to the means of ac- 
quiring and preserving beauty, 
may be considered as more or 
less complete enunciations and 
illustrations of the laws of 
health—using the latter term 
in its broadest signification as 
the perfection of bodily or- 
ganization and functional ac- 
tion. On some points, however, we have touched lightly, and 
on others scarcely at all; and we purpose here to set the whole 
subject before the reader in a compact and methodical, but 
popular, form. Our statements and illustrations will neces- 
sarily be brief, but they will at least indicate the path to be 
pursued, if they do not furnish a complete chart of the whole 
route. Practical Hygiene. 
Health, even in the restricted sense in which the word is 
generally used, is now so rare a phenomenon that we seem to 
be getting accustomed to look upon illness as our normal state. 
To the common salutation, “How do you do?” we are wont to 
reply, “Very well,” when, in nine cases out of ten, a more 
correct answer would be, “Ho sicker than usual.” 
But health is possible. Individual men and women may, 
even at this day, be found in almost every country, who have 
at least escaped actual sickness through the whole course of a 
long life. In fact, large communities have existed, if we may 
credit the earlier navigators, in entire exemption from disease. 
When the celebrated Captain Cook first visited the Hew Zea- 
landers, he says he found them enjoying perfect and uninter- 
rupted health. In all the visits he made to their towns, where 
old and young men and women crowded around the voyagers, 
they never observed a single person who appeared to have 
any bodily complaint; nor among the numbers that were seen 
naked was once perceived the slightest eruption of the skin, or 
the least mark which indicated that such eruptions had for- 
merly existed.* 
Health, then, since it occurs in individuals, must be possible 
for the race as a whole. Is it reasonable to believe that the 
means of attaining and preserving it are hidden beyond the 
possibility of discovery ? 
Health depends upon the existence of certain conditions, 
clearly indicated by our physical and mental constitutions, all 
of which may be included under the following general heads: 
I. A sound physical organization; 2. A vigorous and well- 
balanced mind; 3. A constant and adequate supply, and the 
right use of all the elements essential to the sustenance of the 
body, including air, sunlight, electricity, food, and drink; 
4. Physical exercise, rest, and sleep; 5. Cleanliness ; 6. A 
proper temperature; 7. The satisfaction of the affections, or 
harmonious social relations. 
♦ Kippis’ Life of Captain Cook. The Dependence of Thihns. 
175 
I. As the only secure basis of perfect functional efficiency 
we must have a sound and well-formed body, complete and 
symmetrical in all its parts and proportions. Without this, the 
most perfect combination of all the other conditions named 
will not avail. If, for instance, the chest be narrow and the 
lungs imperfectly developed, the most copious supply of pure 
air, since it can not be efficiently made use of for the purpose 
of vitalizing the blood, may be continually presented in vain. 
So with defects in the stomach, the limbs, or any other part of 
the physical system. 
It has already been shown how a sound physical organiza- 
tion may be secured to children at birth by the observance of 
certain pre-natal conditions; how such an organization may be 
preserved in all its harmony, strength, and beauty through the 
great perils of infancy; and how original defects of consti- 
tution may, in a measure at least, be remedied, especially in 
childhood and youth. Under this head, therefore, we need 
merely refer the reader back to previous chapters, and particu- 
larly to Y., YL, and XII. 
2. That mental vigor and balance are essential to physical 
health can not be doubted by any one who is at all acquainted 
with the laws of life. Without mind, the body, at best, merely 
vegetates. Activity, guided by intelligence, is essential to 
bodily well-being. If the intelligence be wanting or deficient 
in balance, the activity must either fail or be irregular and ab- 
normal. It is for this reason that idiotic and insane persons 
are generally sickly. But this point, like the preceding one, 
has been sufficiently elucidated in the preceding chapters. 
3. The human body has been thrown into the circle of “the 
great dependence of things,” from which no amount of mental 
power can rescue it. As physical beings, we are compelled to 
owe the continuance of our lives to the elements and objects, 
organic and inorganic, by which we are surrounded—to air, 
sunlight, electricity, food, drink, and so forth. 
(1.) Air is the first and the last demand of our lives. “Ac- 
tive life, the vif al union of body and spirit, and all the powers Practical Hygiene. 
and susceptibilities of our our earthly being, are only main* 
tained by the action of air in our systems—air which we inhale 
incessantly, day and night, from birth to death. There is an 
awful life-import in these never-ceasing, rythmic movements 
of inspiration and expiration—this tidal flux and reflux of the 
gaseous ocean through animal mechanisms.”* 
Atmospheric air, in its natural state, consists of four sub' 
stances—two elements, nitrogen and oxygen; and two com- 
pounds, carbonic acid gas and the vapor of water. Of the 
nitrogen—the neutral or diluting principle—dry air contains 
nearly seventy-seven per cent.; and of the oxygen—the active 
or life-supporting principle—twenty-three per cent. The per- 
centage of moisture is small and very variable, and that of car- 
bonic acid amounts, on an average, to no more than one two- 
thousandth. Such is the air which the human respiratory 
system demands, and which is essential to healthy vital action. 
In breathing, the air is drawn in by the nostrils, and, pass- 
ing through the bronchial tubes, is received into the air cham- 
bers (see description of the lungs in Chapter I.), where it is 
brought into contact with the venous blood, to which it yields 
a portion of its oxygen, and receives carbonic acid in return 
It is by this process, and by this alone, that our blood can be 
purified and re-vitalized. It comes to the lungs in dark and 
turbid tides, meets the air, freighted with the life-giving ele- 
ment, casts off its poisonous load (to be taken up and carried 
out by the same willing messenger), and is thrown back in 
crimson streams to the outmost boundaries of the vital domain. 
It is this oxygenated or vitalized blood that imparts the hues 
of health to the human skin; and the fair one who desires to 
have rosy cheeks and ruby lips on any other terms than the 
copious breathing of pure air, must buy them at the shop 
of the chemist, and renew them every time she makes her 
toilet. 
It is to the oxygen of the atmosphere, it will be perceived, 
* Tollmans’ Hand-Book of Household Science. How Aie becomes Impuee. 
177 
that the effects we have noted are to be attributed. The same 
element which kindles our fires keeps alive the vital flame. 
Without it both are quickly extinguished. If the proportion 
of oxygen in the air we breathe be diminished, all our powers 
of body and mind are depressed to an extent corresponding 
with the deficiency Now, every time we breathe, a certain 
portion of air is deprived of a large part of its oxygen, and 
rendered, by that loss alone, unsuitable for respiration. If the 
same air be again taken into the lungs, another portion of its 
oxygen is abstracted, and so on till it is no longer capable of 
sustaining life. But this abstraction of its oxygen, it must be 
remembered, is not the only effect which respiration has upon 
the air. The place of the life-supporting element taken away 
is supplied by a deadly poison—the carbonic acid received 
from the venous blood. Besides this, constant streams of effete 
animal matter exhale from every living body, and help to 
poison the air by which we are surrounded in close rooms. 
The breath of diseased persons is particularly noxious. The 
odor of the air at the top of the ventilator of a crowded room is 
of so obnoxious a character that it is dangerous to he exposed to 
it for the shortest time.* If the room be provided with no 
means of ventilation, as is too often the case, this foul and 
deadly air must be breathed over and over again by those con- 
fined within. The mere thought of it is almost sufficient to 
make one sick! 
Out of doors, fresh supplies of pure air are constantly offered 
to the lungs, and the vitiated products of respiration are re- 
ceived by the general currents of the atmosphere to be carried 
through the perpetual round of purification; but in our almost 
air-tight rooms the case is quite different. A single person will 
deprive from one to two hogsheads of air of its blood-puntying 
qualities, and saturate it with poisonous gases in a single hour. 
In the light of this fact, consider what must be the effects of 
the in-door life of our people, and especially of our women- 
* Leblanc, quoted by You in ana. 178 
Practical Hygiene. 
Think of our crowded work-rooms; of family gatherings 
around the sitting-room stove; of evening parties in unventi- 
lated parlors, where the lights which make everything so bril- 
liant rapidly hasten the deteriorating process which respiration 
has commenced; and of two or more persons sleeping all night 
in a close seven-by-nine bedroom. “ Close bedrooms,” Dr. 
Hall says, “make the graves of thousands.” The occasional 
opening of doors gives us now and then a breath of fresh air 
in the rooms occupied during the day; but even this is denied 
us in our sleeping apartments. 
Could we but see the mass of vitiated and poisoned air in the 
midst of which we pass so large a portion of our lives—should 
it for a moment become visible in the form of a lurid mist, for 
instance, we should flee from our stove-heated and unventilated 
rooms as from a city swept by a pestilence! 
Is it a wonder that pale cheeks, sallow complexions, cutane- 
ous eruptions, dyspepsia, scrofula, and consumption prevail? 
It can not be otherwise. To maintain good health, and live 
through the long winters, which prevail in the northern parts 
of our country, in unventilated or ill-ventilated rooms, is utterly 
impossible. Beauty fades; the cheek loses the roseate tinge 
which, as we have seen, fresh air alone can give, and body and 
brain alike sink into premature imbecility. 
If you would acquire and preserve health and beauty, do not 
forget that pure air must be constantly supplied for the purpose 
of respiration, and that unventilated rooms are entirely unfit 
for human beings to live in, and absolutely fatal, in the end, 
not only to health and beauty, but to life itself. As it is now, 
we are safe nowhere except in the open air. At home, we sit 
around that “household demon,” as Dickens calls it, the air- 
tight stove, and breathe carbonic acid; at church we breathe 
carbonic acid while we listen to a sermon which has probably 
been written under the depressing influences of the same gas; 
in the lecture-room, the theater, the opera-house, and even in 
the schoolroom, in which our children spend five or six hours 
day, the same atmosphere of disease and death prevails. The Air-JBath. 
179 
Need we say more? The easy remedy for this territ/le state of 
things is—ventilation.* 
Everything which vitiates the air should be, so far as possible, 
excluded from our rooms, and especially from our sleeping 
apartments. Even flowers should not be permitted in any room 
where there is not a free circulation of air. The leaves of 
plants give off1 oxygen, hut flowers absorb it. A rose placed 
under a bell-glass very quickly destroys the vitality of the air, 
so that a candle will not burn in it. 
Having secured a copious and constant supply of fresh air, 
the next requisite is that it be made use of to the fullest extent. 
Some of us (partly because we are so much subjected to the 
depressing influences of bad air) only half breathe. This is 
not enough. The lungs should be well expanded at every 
inspiration. On this point, see directions for expanding the 
chest in Chapter XII. 
But it is not through the pulmonary organs alone that we 
are affected by the different states of the air with reference to 
purity. The skin is closely akin to the lungs. It also breathes, 
in its way, imbibing oxygen and throwing off carbonic acid. 
Hence come the great benefits of the air-bath, so much extolled 
by Dr. Franklin. A bath in carbonic acid, however, is not to 
be recommended. 
(2.) Solar light, although generally left almost entirely out 
of the account by physiological and hygienic writers, has a 
great and striking effect upon the human physical system. 
'Without it, in fact, nothing like perfect bodily development, 
health, or beauty can possibly exist. 
* To give a description of the various modes of securing the thorough venti- 
lation of our dwelling-houses and public buildings would occupy more space 
than wc can give to the subject here ; but we are happy in being able to refer 
our readers to a work in which the necessary information may be found in an 
available form, together with much other needed knowledge. Wc have refer 
enee to Tollmans’ “ Hand-Book of Household Science,” a most admirable 
work, the teachings of which should be v “ familiar as household words” in 
every family 180 
Practical Hygiene. 
It is well known that plants growing in the shade or in dark- 
ness are always slender, weak, and pale. Deprivation of light 
has a similar effect upon man, a£ shown by persons confined in 
dungeons, mines, or other dark habitations. The complexion 
grows sallow, the strength fails, aqueous humors break out on 
the skin, and dropsy often intervenes. 
Women who avoid the sunlight, and darken their parlors 
and sitting-rooms through fear of spoiling their complexions, 
invite thereby the very evil which they wish to avoid. Here, 
as elsewhere, however, extremes are to be avoided. The direct 
rays of a noonday sun should be warded off by broad-brimmed 
hats and sun-shades; but to shun the solar ray altogether, and 
shut it out from our dwellings, is equaled in folly only by the 
exclusion of fresh air. 
To promote the symmetrical development of the body and 
limbs, and the health of the skin, it is useful to expose the 
whole person frequently to the light in a well-lighted (day- 
lighted) room, or better still, where it can be made practicable, 
in the open air. The air-bath mentioned in another place 
should be made a light-bath as well. Light is particularly 
necessary to children and youth during the process of growth. 
(3.) Electricity is undoubtedly an important agent in the 
development and sustenance of the human body; but our pres- 
ent knowledge of the modes of its action is too limited to permit 
any profitable discussion of the subject here. Fortunately, 
we can not so effectually exclude this subtile element from our 
dwellings and persons as we do air and light. 
(4.) We now approach the subject of food—one of the most 
important in the whole range of hygienic inquiry, and one 
involving a greater number of mooted questions than any other. 
To discuss it properly in all its bearings would require a large 
volume. We shall not, of course, attempt even the outlines of 
such a discussion within the compass of a few pages. Our 
purpose is rather to put the reader in the way of settling the 
question of diet for himself than to essay the solution of it 
here. We shall, however, endeavor to give our brief remarks Abuses of the Stomach. 
181 
such a hearing that they will not he wholly without practical 
value, apart from their use as guides in the true path of investi- 
gation and thought. 
A superficial knowledge of the subject, a few loosely con- 
ducted experiments and observations, and some very hasty 
generalizations have of late been made the basis of a good deal 
of confident but specious and unreliable inculcation on the 
subject of diet. We have had too much dogmatism and too 
little thorough investigation and sound deduction. Much, 
however, has been learned within the last ten years, and the 
knowledge which we possess, or which lies within our reach, 
is far in advance of our practice. The confessed uncertainty 
in which some points are yet involved is not a sufficient excuse 
for the abominably bad feeding of which we are guilty at the 
present day, and especially in this country. 
Mo other civilized peeple, probably, are accustomed to abuse 
their stomachs so badly as we, Americans of the United States. 
Our food is often badly chosen, still more frequently spoiled in 
cooking, and almost always eaten in utter disregard of dietetic 
rules. We eat far too much flesh-meat (and especially pork, 
its most objectionable form*), and too little bread, vegetables, 
and fruits. Our hot, soda-raised biscuits; hot griddle cakes, 
saturated with butter; and the hot, black, intolerable coffee, 
which form the staples of our breakfasts, are, in the way in 
which they are taken, among the most deleterious articles ever 
put upon a table. Pies are another American abomination, 
and have no small share of our ill health to answer for. The 
mince pie, as it is generally made, is the abomination of abom- 
inations. Some one describes it as “very white and indigest- 
ible at the top, very moist and indigestible at the bottom, and 
with untold horrors in the middle.” Even our bread is un- 
wholesome. It is made of the finest of fine flour, and either 
fermented till its natural sweetness and a large portion of its 
* More than thirty millions of swine are slaughte ed annually in the United 
States, nearly all of which are appropriated for food 182 
Practical Hygiene. 
nutritive elements are destroyed, or raised with those poisonous 
chemicals, soda and cream-of-tartar. In either case it is unfit 
to he eaten. The rich cakes which our good housekeepers 
deem so indispensable are still worse, and so on. How add to 
our badly chosen dishes and our objectionable cookery the rapid 
eating, imperfect mastication, and the continually interrupted 
digestion which our intense and feverish life necessitates, and 
we have a complication of abuses which would, one must be- 
lieve, have long since have utterly destroyed the vital stamina 
of any people not originally endowed with marvelous physical 
powers. 
In the lower animals (except where domestication has greatly 
demoralized them), instinct seems to be a perfect guide in the 
choice of foods and drink. With them the demands of appe- 
tite and the sense of taste are always in harmony. The wild 
beast or bird makes no mistakes, and never poisons itself by 
eating or drinking anything inimical to its life or health. This 
instinctive perception of what is adapted to his system and 
fitted to supply its needs belongs also to man; and a natural 
appetite is, no doubt, an infallible guide, in our case as well as 
that of the lower animals. But our natural appetite has, for 
the most part, been so perverted that it is now impossible, in 
many cases, to distinguish the undepraved cravings of the sys- 
tem from the demands of acquired and vicious tastes. If we 
can but find our way back to Nature once more, no doubt all 
our original endowments will be restored to us; in the mean 
time, we must make our observing and reasoning faculties 
serve us instead. 
A late writer,* who has given us some excellent hints toward 
a system of dietetics founded upon a firm basis of science, lays 
down the principle, which we believe can not be successfully 
called in question, that “ The tody itself is the rule of its food 
.—that is, as is the chemical nature of the body at large, such 
must be the chemical nature of the entire mass of aliments 
• Professor Levi Reuben, in a series of articles in the American Phrenw 
logical Journal, vols. XXII. and XXIII. What to Eat. 
183 
taken; and as is the nature of each particular structure to 
which we would secure nutriment and efficiency, such must be 
the nature of the particular aliment employed to that end. Or, 
to express the same thought in other words: A person should 
eat such material as he is, or such material as he would be, 
so far as that is allowable in view of known truths of physi- 
ology.” 
Taking this grand principle as our guide, we might, if time 
and space were allowed us, approximate, at least, the true 
answers to such questions as these; “For what do we eat 
Why do we eat what we do? Why should particular persons 
employ or avoid particular kinds of food? What are the 
special uses in the body of special kinds of food? To produce 
or maintain a required condition of bodily health and power, 
what aliments, in a particular case, will prove most effectual ? 
Why do we not always subsist on some single article of food— 
say upon potatoes, or wheat-flour, or flesh ? How is it that 
many of the lower animals do subsist on substantially one spe- 
cies of aliment ?” 
The first thing to be done is to ascertain the nature of the 
substances which compose the blood and tissues—the fluids 
and solids—of the human body, and the next to examine the 
various alimentary principles found in the ordinary species of 
food, with reference to the especial use of each in the economy 
of the living physical system. Having a clear conception of 
what his body is made of, and of what the bread, meat, vege- 
tables, and fruits placed before him consist, one may eat and 
drink understandingly. 
The course of investigation we have suggested (for which 
recent standard works on physiology and chemistry will furnish 
the required facilities) will make clear the reason why variety 
in food is essential to health; why diet should be modified by 
climate, season, occupation, temperament, age, ses, and so 
forth, and why the same dietary is not adapted to all persons 
alike, or to the same person at all times. 
Some of the conclusions arrived at by the writer last quoted 184 
Practical Hygiene. 
may here be concisely stated, although the investigations which 
led to them can not be followed out. 
(a) The law previously stated that “The body is the rul« 
of its food” is modified by another equally imperative, namely: 
that “ Exercise is the rule of food'"—that is, “the food we eat 
should contain as nearly as possible the several elements in the 
same proportion as their expenditure occurs in the individual 
system of the consumer, owing to his particular mental and 
physical activities.” In other words, if a man exercise hia 
muscles largely, he should consume largely of muscle-forming 
aliment; and if he work his brain continually, he must satisfy 
the cravings of the system with brain-food. 
(b) The plastic, cell-forming, or nutritive aliments are albu- 
men and the substances usually grouped with it—gluten, 
casein, and the substance of muscle-fiber, nerve-tube, and cell- 
membrane ; the calorific or respiratory foods are sugar, starch, 
and the oils or fats; the acids are cooling, purifying, and 
blood-perfecting in their action; water is indispensable, both as 
vehicle and material to digestion, absorption, assimilation, cir- 
culation, nutrition, secretion, and excretion, muscular and 
brain-action; the inorganic elements other than water, some- 
times called nutritive minerals, have various uses.* 
(c) Among the alimentary compounds particularly fitted to 
produce muscle are wheat-meal, corn-meal, beans, cabbages, car- 
rots) and the flesh of quadrupe Is ; while eggs, nuts, cream, oils, 
fish, and the flesh of poultry are specially adapted to nourish 
* The hones, especially in the young and growing, must have phosphate and 
carbonate, of lime ; and the phosphate of lime must also enter freely into all 
nutritive materials and processes. The blood, brain, and muscle, as also the 
hair, must have sufficient iron. Digestive fluids, blood, all nutritive processes, 
and secreting or excreting glands, demand a due supply of common salt. All 
circulating fluids, together with muscles, demand potash, and all the former, 
with all the secretions, but in particular mucus and bile, require soda. Nutri- 
ent fluids, bones, and tissues call for the phosphate of magnesia, though in a 
less degree than for that of lime. Muscles, nerves, bile, and hair must receive 
a due supply of sulphur ; and nerves, but more especially brain, necessitate, 
In proportion to their activity, a plentiful allowance of phosphorus.—Prof 
Levi Reuben. Rules of Diet. 
185 
the brain. “ Oatmeal and milk seem to belong to both classes 
of aliments; and rice, potatoes, fruits, and a large list of foods 
may be styled indifferent, as specially favoring neither devel- 
opment. 
(d) “ The diet of no two persons should be, in reality, exactly 
alike, since their constitutions, states of health, avocations, 
and forms and amounts of physical expenditure are necessarily 
different. 
(e) “Insufficient variety in food is as great an evil as insuf- 
ficiency in the quantity of food, and an evil of the same kind; 
because it necessarily withholds from the system a due supply 
of some one or more essential forms of aliment. A moderate 
variety is desirable at every meal; a greater, from day to 
day. 
(/) “That diet is most perfect for each individual which 
furnishes to each the various forms of substance necessary to 
make up his fluids and solid tissues, and in the same proportion 
as they exist and are daily expended in his particular constitu- 
tion and mode of life. 
(y) “ Muscle and nerve both necessitate albuminous food; 
the former, in connection with the finer or phosphorized fatty 
substances; the latter, with the grosser fats and the phosphate 
and carbonate of lime. 
(h) “Excess in food is not to be defined by any particular 
quantity. It exists only when there is a surplus over health- 
ful expenditure; and by this rule one adult system may require 
more than twice the amount of food demanded by another. 
(i) “Both vegetable and animal foods have their uses; the 
former favor and support more especially the organic develop- 
ment and processes, such as nutrition and secretion; the lat- 
ter, the animal or active functions, such as locomotion, will- 
power, and intellectual action. 
(j) “Ho imperfect vegetable or animal production, as those 
that are dwarfed, or sicMy, or immature, or undergoing decay, 
can furnish materials for complete human alimentation. 
(Tc) “ Some foods- constitute necessary compensating adjuncts 186 
Practical Hygiene. 
to others, and should be used with them. Thus, rice, corn, 01 
potatoes require the addition of wheat-meal bread, or flesh, or 
milk and eggs, to supply the albuminous and mineral elements 
which they possess in much less degree. So beans, pease, cab- 
bages, cauliflower, asparagus, etc., lack the oleaginous element, 
and this should be added in our cookery.” 
(J) A larger proportion of fatty or heat-producing food is re- 
quired in the winter than in the summer, and in a northern 
than in a southern climate. 
The points at issue between the vegetarians and the advo 
cates of a mixed diet can not be argued here. We can do 
little more than state our own opinion, which may pass for 
what it is worth. After a thorough trial of both systems, we 
have become convinced that a mixed diet (embracing, how- 
ever, a much smaller proportion of flesh-meat than is usually 
taken in this country, and excluding pork altogether) is, on 
the whole, better than one composed exclusively of the 
products of the vegetable kingdom, for the great majority of 
adult persons living in a northern climate, and under the 
regime of existing social and industrial organizations. That 
health and long life can be enjoyed in the use of either, history 
and observation furnish conclusive evidence. Exceptional in- 
dividuals, or persons placed in exceptional positions in civilized 
society, may find a vegetable diet best suited to their needs; 
but we think there is an admirable harmony between the 
mixed diet and existing social and industrial antagonisms. 
Life is, with most of us, a perpetual warfare, not with persons, 
perhaps, but with circumstances, and the soldier who carries 
beef and bread in his knapsack is generally more than a match 
for him who is provided with bread alone. In the coming ages 
of Harmony we may, perhaps, return to the diet of Eden. 
But that we eat too much flesh-meat in this country (and 
more than any other civilized people) is beyond a doubt, and 
that we are too careless in reference to its quality is equally 
clear. The opponent of vegetarianism need not fear to admit 
this, and should, for the sake of the cause he advocates (leav- Bread and Butter. 
187 
ing out of sight all high considerations), he foremost in pro- 
moting a reform in this particular. 
Among the best articles of food for general use we should 
enumerate bread, wheaten grits or cracked wheat, hominy, 
rice, beans, pease, milk, cream, butter, eggs, poultry, beef, 
mutton, fish (such as have scales), potatoes and the other com- 
mon garden vegetables, and fruits. 
The best bread is made of wheat-meal (commonly called 
Graham flour); but-a mixture of wheat and rye meal, or of 
corn-meal with either, makes excellent bread. The meal 
should be freshly ground, as it soon deteriorates by keeping. 
Unleavened bread is the sweetest and most nutritious. If fer- 
mented or raised bread be required, hop yeast is the best fer- 
ment that can be used. The exclusive use of fine or bolted 
flour for bread is exceedingly injurious. Johnny-cake or corn- 
bread is an excellent article, if properly made and cooked, and 
not eaten hot. That favorite New England dish, pork-aud- 
beans, minus the pork, is not to be despised. Supply the place 
of the swine’s flesh (if you will take our advice) b}r a little 
sweet milk or cream, or a slice of beefsteak. 
Meat should be chosen with great care. It should always 
be the flesh of a healthy animal, and must not be in the 
slightest degree tainted. It should be eaten sparingly, if at 
all, during hot weather. Baked meats are more nutritive and 
wholesome than boiled. Salted meats are less easy of digestion 
than fresh, unless they be merely corned. 
Milk and butter, to be wholesome, must be pure and sweet. 
Butter that is in the slightest degree rancid is as hurtful to the 
stomach as it is repugnant to the palate. Heat renders butter 
empyreumatic and very objectionable, especially for weak 
stomachs. A slight degree of heat effects the change, and 
this accounts in part for the hurtfulness of hot bread or hot 
biscuits and butter. All the fats are liable to be changed by 
heat into various acrid and irritant fatty acids. It is this that 
renders frying so objectionable a form of cooking, and makes 
cakes mixed with a large proportion of butter or eggs (the 188 
Pkactical Hygiene. 
yolk being rich in oil) so injurious to the stomach, the high 
heat of baking rendering these oils empyreumatic. Dr. Pereira 
remarks: “Fixed oil or fat is more difficult of digestion, and 
more obnoxious to the stomach, than any other alimentary 
principle. Indeed, in some more or less obvious or concealed 
form, I believe it will be found the offending ingredient in nine 
tenths of the dishes which disturb weak stomachs. Many 
dyspeptics, who have most religiously avoided the use of oil or 
fat in its obvious or ordinary state (as fat meat, marrow, but- 
ter, and oil), unwittingly employ it in some more concealed 
form, as yolk of eggs, livers of animals, rich cheese, fried 
dishes, buttered toasts, suet puddings, etc.” Dr. Chambers 
says; “Patty food can be taken without pain by gastric inva- 
lids, very closely in proportion as it is fresh and without ran- 
cidity. New-made butter often agrees, when the empyreu- 
matic fat in baked meat makes it utterly indigestible. If there 
is much emaciation, it is right to try several forms of oleaginous 
food in each case, to see if one can not be found capable of 
supplying nutriment to the failing adipose tissues.” 
Fresh eggs, slightly boiled, form a wholesome basis for a 
substantial breakfast. With good brown bread, sweet but- 
ter, and a cup of fragrant Mocha, they leave little to be 
desired. 
Fruits, in their season, should have a far more prominent 
place on our “bills of fare” than is now generally awarded to 
them. Apples, pears, peaches, plums, grapes, figs, strawber- 
ries, raspberries, and melons are food fit for gods. They should 
be perfectly ripe and free from decay, and should form a part 
of our regular meals. They can not be improved by cooking, 
being “baked, roasted, and boiled in the sunlight,” 
Dishes compounded from many different articles are gene- 
rally unwholesome, however unobjectionable these ingredients 
individually may be. They do not agree with each other. 
Until we know' something more of the harmonies of diet, it is 
best to be content with the simplest accords. Very highly 
seasoned viands are for the most part bad; so are old smoked What to Deink. 
189 
Balt meat and fish, old strong cheese, sausages, mince pies, and 
fat pork. 
“ Good cheer is friendly to health.” A generous diet pro- 
motes vitality and capability for action; but high living is not 
always good living. Let all your dishes be nutritious, but 
plain and wholesome. 
Three meals a day are enough; and if the second he not 
promptly digested, the third should he omitted. The latter 
should always be light, and taken at least two hours before bed- 
time. Nothing should ever he taken between the regular meals. 
Regularity in the time of taking meals is particularly important, 
and we should allow no ordinary hindrance to interfere with 
it; hut we must not eat when we have no appetite. It is bet- 
ter to wait till the next meal-time. Eating without an appe- 
tite is one of the most fatal of common errors. Food taken 
under such circumstances generally remains for a long time 
undigested, and may become rank poison in the stomach. We 
should also avoid eating when greatly fatigued, or when excited 
by any violent emotion. Tranquillity and cheerfulness promote 
digestion. “Chatted food is half digested,” the proverb says, 
and truly. A meal eaten slowly in the midst of pleasant con- 
versation is readily assimilated, and at once invigorates body 
and brain, while another, composed of the same viands, hut 
eaten rapidly and in silence, may prove but a clog upon the 
energies of both. Eat slowly, masticate thoroughly, and, if 
possible, rest awhile after each meal. In reference to quantity, 
we can only say, eat so much as the system demands and is 
capable of assimilating, and no more. “Drunkenness is de- 
plorably destructive,” Dr. Kitchener says, “but her demure 
sister Gluttony destroys a hundred for her one.”' 
(5.) For a universal drink, we can safely recommend water; 
and we suppose there will be few to call our recommendaion in 
question. We have heard of persons, however, who contend 
that man is not naturally a drinking animal; and once, by Avay 
of experiment, we ourself abstained entirely and without incon- 
venience from every kind of drink for several weeks in succes- 190 
Practical H YGIENE. 
eion, eating copiously of juicy fruits, however, and refraining 
from the use of animal food at the same time. But we are not 
disposed to put an exception in the place of the general rule. 
"Water, in seme form, is absolutely essential to the welfare of 
the physical system. If, however, we make use of none but 
wholesome articles of food, with a proper proportion of fruits 
and vegetables, and do not over-eat (the most common cause 
of thirst), we shall require comparatively little drink of any 
kind. The water made use of both for drinking and for cook- 
ing should be fresh and quite pure, many diseases arising wholly 
from the use of that which is impregnated with decaying animal 
or vegetable matter, or with unwholesome mineral substances. 
We have felt half disposed to pass over tea and coffee with- 
out even a mention. To speak of them without committing 
ourself either for or against their use would (as we have settled 
convictions on the subject) do no credit to either our honesty 
or our moral courage. To condemn them in toto, contrary to 
our convictions, and in the face and eyes of our practice, would 
be still worse; while by giving our approval to their use with- 
out being able, for want of available space, to set clearly and 
fully before the reader our reasons for doing so, or to draw the 
necessary sharp lines of demarkation between use and abuse, is 
liable to subject us to misapprehension, and perhaps to throw 
discredit upon our work in the eyes of some whose counte- 
nance we should be sorry to lose. The last-mentioned course, 
however, has been decided upon as preferable to absolute 
silence. A little dogmatism (for which we have the example 
of those who take the opposite side of the question) may be 
unavoidable, and will, we trust, be charitably excused. 
Tea and coffee are stimuli, and on this ground are generally 
condemned by physiological and hygienic reformers. We are 
disposed to call in question the justice of the sentence. Stim- 
ulation, instead of being inherently wrong, as their verdict 
assumes, is a law of our being. We are all subjected eveiy day 
and every hour of our lives to the action of stimuli, which legit- 
imately animate, but in excess might destroy our organism. Tea and Coffee, 
191 
They present themselves in various forms, material and spirit- 
ual, natural and artificial; hut so far as they comport them- 
selves alike or with equal propriety in the system, all are 
equally admissible. 
Now, looking at them, for the present, merely as stimulants 
san any substantial difference be pointed out between the phys- 
ical effects of a cup of coffee and those of a piece of good news 
received with one’s breakfast ? Has not the lively conversation 
of a brilliant woman the same exhilarating influence as the infu- 
sion she is wont to pour from her tea-pot ? Five or six cups 
of the tea or the coffee, taken in rapid succession, might cause 
great ultimate depression and exhaustion of the vital energies; 
so intense joy, from an excess, so to speak, of good news, may 
throw one into a swoon, or even destroy life; and the wit of a 
beautiful woman, if it elevate overmuch, may leave one dis- 
pirited and downcast in the end. In all these cases, it is the 
excess to which the mischief is to be attributed. 
But we are reminded of a second ground of objection to tea 
and coffee—that they are poisons. We do not so label them; 
but it matters little whether they be called by this or some 
other name. That, taken in moderate quantities, they act in 
any proper sense as poisons in the human system, has not to 
our knowledge been shown. We have the greatest respect for 
chemistry, but when it pushes its inquiries within the domain 
of physiology, without fully acknowledging the sovereignty of 
the life which reigns there, and which it can not analyze, we 
have a right to distrust its deductions. Poisons destroy the 
structure or subvert the functions of the body. We have yet 
to see the proof that tea and coffee, in their moderate use, do 
either. In excess they may act as poisons; and so, under cer- 
tain circumstances, may a too full meal of Graham bread or 
roasted potatoes. To some weak stomachs they may be injuri- 
ous in any quantity, as may a ripe apple or a glass of cold 
water. The eyes of some persons are so debilitated that they 
can not bear the light; but that, surely, is not a sufficient 
reason for shutting us all up in dark rooms. The same ezcep- 192 
Practical Hygiene, 
tional phenomenon may be recognized on a spiritual plane \ for 
high truths, “the stimuli of the soul,” often intoxicate and 
render insane the more weak-minded of their receivers. 
We condemn as strongly as any one can the abuses of tea and 
coffee which so generally prevail. The strongest and healthiest 
man, to say nothing of delicate and nervous women, can not 
possibly drink eight or nine cups of strong tea or half that 
number of coffee per day, and continue the practice from month 
to month and from year to year, without the most disastrous 
consequences to both stomach and nerves. Let no one, there- 
fore* who is guilty of any such excess, endeavor to shelter him- 
self under our recommendation. Throughout this work we 
have constantly warned our readers against extremes and ex- 
cesses, and counseled moderation. 
In this, as in other matters of diet, allowance should be made 
for differences of age, sex, temperament, and so forth. Some 
persons may take more than others, and some, as we have said, 
should abstain wholly. As a general rule, a single, medium 
sized coffee-cup full of coffee with one’s breakfast, and about 
the same quantity of not very strong black tea with his supper, 
are sufficient.* 
Black tea should be used in preference to green, the latter 
being objectionable from the chemicals used in its preparation, 
to heighten its color. Tea should be infused (not boiled) in a 
tight vessel, boiling water being poured upon it. 
The beverage drunk at most American tables under the name 
of coffee, is a vile, black, muddy compound, as disagreeable to 
the unperverted taste as it is harmful to the stomach ; but the 
properly extracted flavors and aromas of the genuine Arabian 
• We hare not alluded in the text to the fact that both tea and coffee servo 
another purpose—in some eases, an important one—in the system besides stim- 
ulation. The investigations of Lehmann and Bocker prove that they protraol 
decomposition and greatly diminish the waste of the system; so that, if the 
diet be sufficient, the body is more likely to gain weight if they are taken than 
when not; and that when the diet be insufficient, they limit the loss of weigh! 
thereby entailed. Juice of. the Geape. 
or East Indian berry, tempered into mild deliciousness by tb« 
right proportions of boiled milk, sweet cream, and refined sugar, 
compose a draught which the gods of Olympus, with their cups 
overflowing with nectar and ambrosia, might covet.* 
The drugged preparations generally sold at the present day 
under the name of wine can not be too strongly condemned or 
too carefully avoided; but the pure juice of the grape, as a 
beverage of occasions, is worthy of the place it has held for 
ages on the festive board. Those who hold, with the total ab- 
stinents, that alcohol can not be received into the system in the 
smallest quantity without injury, and who therefore reject wine 
altogether, may make use of the unfermented juice in the form 
of a syrup, which is slightly stimulating and very pleasant to 
the taste; and it is our firm belief that in no other way could 
the noble cause of temperance be so greatly promoted, and the 
* As good coffee is one of the rarest of luxuries on American tables, we 
shall deserve, if we do not receive, the thanks of some of our readers for the 
following hints: 
1. To have good coffee, the first essential is to procure the genuine berry 
(Mocha or Java are always to be preferred, and the first is best of all) in a 
perfect and undamaged state. It should be round, small grained, free from 
dust, and of a light color. Never buy groxind coffee, unless you are willing to 
pay a high price for roasted chiccory, peas, and corn. 
2. It must be properly roasted. On this point most housewives fail; and the 
best coffee badly roasted can hardly be distinguished from the poorest. In 
roasting, the heat should be strong and the operation as brief as possible. The 
proper degree of heat gives the berry a glossy appearance, and a peculiar flavor 
and aroma, which fail to appear with too little heat, and are totally destroyed 
by too much. Avoid burning, as a single charred grain will spoil the whole. 
3. It should be ground flue, and just before using. 
4. It should be infused, and not boiled. Use the French coffee-pot (cafe- 
tidre) ; or if this can not readily be procured, or is too expensive, Stockwell’s 
patent coffee-strainer, which can be used in any common coffee-pot, is an ex- 
cellent subsii;ute. Pour boiling water upon the coffee and let it stand a few 
minutes to steep, and you will have a strong infusion, with all the proper flavor 
and aroma of coffee. Dilute this in the cup with ric i boiled milk (adding 
cream, if you have it), and sweeten to the taste. Use at least two parts of 
milk—real cow's milk—to one of coffee, making the latter very strong. Allow 
Bridget to boil it, and you have quite a different article, which let those drink 
who like it. The flavor and aroma which give th<3 properly prepared coffee its 
magic charm are gone. 194 
Practical , H YGIENE. 
detestable poisoned strong drinks, with which our people are 
besotting themselves, driven from our midst, as by covering the 
hill-sides of our country with vineyards.* 
We do not, let it be understood, insist upon tea, coffee, or 
wine as essential to physical well-being. One may probably 
live as long without them as with them—if that be the point 
mainly aimed at—and perhaps longer. We merely express the 
opinion that the highest planes of existence can not be reach ed} 
and the greatest sum and the richest experiences of life possible 
for us enjoyed, without some stimulation, material or spiritual, 
beyond what our common food and the ordinary routine of 
every-day sensations and emotions afford; and that these bever- 
ages furnish, in a desirable form, a portion of the needed exhil- 
aration. Faith, enthusiasm, fanaticism, love, and other passiona 
of the soul, serve with some to raise their lives, and sustain 
them for a long time above their original level. These stimuli 
are more powerful than wine, and those who are subject to 
them are often intoxicated. They have no need of other ex- 
citants, unless it be to neutralize the effects of these. But we 
leave the whole subject in the hands of the reader. “ Let every 
man be fully persuaded in his own mind,” and if he drink tea, 
or coffee, or wine, let him not do it on pretexts.! 
(6.) In connection with what is received into the system in 
the form of food and drink, the excretions, or what passes off 
by the natural outlets of the body, should be considered. These 
are the worn-out materials of the system, and those parts of 
the food which, although perhaps of the greatest use, are not 
assimilable. Retained in the system, they poison its fluids and 
* Those who desire to see what may be said on both sides of the alcoholic 
question should consult Youmans’ “Alcohol and the Constitution of Man,” 
and Trail’s “ Alcoholic Controversy,” on the. side of abstinence, and Wilkin* 
son’s “ Human Body and its Connection with Man,” on the side of temperance. 
The last-named work treats the subject on the high grounds of vital philosophy. 
f We beg the reader not to hold any person or class of persons with whom 
we may be supposed to be in any way associated, or whose views are, in tb-s 
main, the same as ours, in’ any way accountable for the sentiments we l«v« 
here or elsewhere expressed We claim the entire responsibility. Exekcise and Best. 
195 
ultimately destroy its tissues. The complete and regular per- 
formance of the excretory functions is therefore of the utmost 
importance. A stoppage of the bowels or of the pores of the 
skin can not exist for a single day without positive injury to the 
health. A too great relaxation, on the other hand, is equally 
to be avoided. 
A properly regulated diet will generally insure regularity and 
efficiency in the action of the bowels. If costiveness or diar- 
rhea occur, the cause should at once he ascertained, if possible, 
and removed. This will ordinarily suffice. The diet is often 
in fault, in which case it should at once be changed. Among 
the foods of a constipating tendency are bread and cakes from 
fine wheaten flour, rice, beans, peas, meats, eggs, and tea. 
Bread from wheaten meal or unbolted flour, rye or corn ; 
fruits, raw and cooked; raw sugar and molasses; and gener- 
ally substances abounding in ligneous matter, are laxative in 
their tendency. 
Avoid purgative medicines, as they have a tendency to in- 
crease, in the end, the very evil they are intended to remedy. 
If the means we have suggested do not prove sufficient, a few 
injections of pure water, even in the most obstinate cases, 
effect the desired result. 
4. The necessity of bodily exercise has been sufficiently in- 
sisted upon in a previous chapter. The amount required varies 
with age, sex, and temperament; but no person can enjoy 
vigorous health, or acquire or retain any high degree of per- 
sonal beauty, without more or less active bodily exertion. 
The women of our country are suffering incalculably for want 
of the proper exercise of their muscles. Exercise in the open 
air should be an every-day duty, and an every-day pleasure, 
with every man, woman, and child. 
If exercise is essential to human well-being, repose is not 
less so. The one is the complement of the other. Without 
exercise, repose would have no meaning and no use; and 
without repose, exercise would soon wear out and destroy the 
body. 196 
Practical Hygiene. 
The most complete and refreshing repose, is found in sleep— 
Tired Nature’s sweet restorer. 
“The vital energy expended in many ways, during the activ- 
ity of the day, is recruited during the repose of the night. Rest 
without sleep affords a less complete opportunity for the re- 
storative process, but to a certain extent is efficacious for the 
same end. During mere rest, the whole of the voluntary mus- 
cular actions at least can be suspended, and with the help of 
quiet and darkness, new impressions from the outward world 
can be excluded. The activity of the mind not being so easily 
within control, the brain may continue to fulfill the demands 
of thought, imagination, or memory. In order that the brain 
and nervous system may also obtain rest, the state of sleep is 
provided.” 
Hardly anything is more destructive to health and beauty 
than insufficient sleep. Children require more sleep than 
adults ; and some individuals more than others. From seven 
to eight hours is, perhaps, a good average for adults. The 
harder we labor, either with mind or body, the more sleep we 
need. To answer the purpose for which it was bestowed, 
sleep must be quiet and sound. Among the causes which pre- 
vent or disturb sleep arc, indigestion (often caused by late or 
heavy suppers); too great bodily fatigue ; mental excitement; 
strong tea or coffee in excess ; disordered passions; unsatisfied 
desires; bad air; too much or two little clothing—in short, all 
unnatural conditions.* 
* Dr. Binn, in his curious essay on the “ Anatomy of Sleep,” thus directs 
how to fall asleep: 
“ The great point to be gained in order to secure sleep is to escape from 
thought—especially from, that clinging, tenacious, imperious thought which, in 
most cases of wakefulness, has possession of the mind. I always effect tins 
by the following simple process : I turn my eycb.ills-as far tQ the right or left, 
or upward or downward, as I can without pain, and then commence rolling 
them slowly, with that divergence from a direct line of vision, around in their 
Rockets, and continue doing this until—l fall asleep; which occurs generally 
within three minutes, and always within live at most. The immediate effect 
of this procedure differs from that of any other which I ever heard, to procure 
«leep. It not merely diverts thoughtinto a new channel, but actually suspends it Cleanliness and Godliness. 
Feather beds should be avoided, as unwholesome at all times, 
and especially so in summer. Healthy persons, who wish to 
continue healthy, must not sleep with the sick; nor children 
with old people. The sick and the aged may be thus benefit- 
ed, but the healthy and the young are sacrificed; and it is a 
sacrifice which no one should be selfish enough to demand. 
Well may we all join Sancho Panza in invoking blessings on 
him who invented sleep, and sing with Keats the following 
sweet lullaby : 
What is more gentle than a wind in summer? 
What is more soothing than the pretty hummer 
That stays one moment in an open flower, 
And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower? 
What is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing 
In a green island, far from all men’s knowing? 
More healthful than the leaflness of dales ? 
More secret than a nest of nightingales ? 
More serene than Cordelia’s countenance? 
More full of visions than a high romance ? 
What but thee, sleep ? Soft closer of our eyes ! 
Low murmur of tender lullabies ! 
Light hoverer around our happy pillows! 
Wreather of poppy buds and weeping willows! 
Silent cntangler of a beauty’s tresses! 
Most happy listener! when the morning blesses 
Thee for enlivening all the cheerful eyes 
That glance so brightly at the new sunrise. 
5. It was the good St. Ambrose, we think, who said that 
“ Cleanliness is next to godliness ; and we commend the aph- 
orism to our modern saints, who are too much disposed to ig- 
nore the body and its needs altogether. Cleanliness promotes 
godliness by promoting health, beauty, and happiness. “ Dirt 
upon the skin,” Wilkinson says, “is not merely dirt, but dirty 
feeling; and the latter is no sooner set up than it travels soul- 
ward while cleanliness “ places a cordon of pure life around 
our bodies, as a troop of angels around the bed, and before the 
path of the faithful.” 
The millions of pores which everywhere pierce the skin, 
#xercise important functions, respiratory and excretory, and 
their stoppage, among other evils, causes accumulations of im- 198 
Practical Hygiene. 
pure humors, which finally break out iu the form of pimples 
or sores, to the great disfigurement of the body. To keep 
them open, frequent ablutions are required. This necessity, 
no doubt, results in a great measure from our artificial and 
erroneous modes of life and dress; hut we state the fact as it 
exists and manifests itself under the existing order of things. 
If you would he healthy you must keep yourself scrupulously 
clean. As a general rule, the whole body should be washed 
all over every day in summer, and at least once a week in 
winter. Tepid water—say from 80° to 92°—or that which 
feels slightly cool, but not cold to the body, is best for general 
use. The cold hath is a powerful stimulus, and, like other 
stimuli, must be used in moderation and with good judgment. 
The skin as well as the stomach may be stimulated too much. 
As a remedial agent, in some forms of disease, the cold bath is 
invaluable. The warm bath may be used occasionally with 
great benefit, but, like the cold bath, is liable to abuse. It 
must not be indulged in too frequently. The moderate use of 
tepid and warm baths tends to increase the plumpness of the 
body, the smoothness, softness, and freshness of the skin, and 
the sr ppleness and elasticity of the muscles. 
The towels used at the bath should be only moderately 
coarse. The friction required should mostly he given with the 
hands The violent rubbings and scrapings with very coarse 
towels, flesh-brushes, etc., which some have recommended, 
may sometimes, in cases of torpid skin and general sluggishness 
of the vital functions, be highly useful as a remedial agency, 
but they should never be applied to any tolerably healthy skin. 
6. In speaking of the effects of climate (in Chapter XI.), the 
relation of temperature to the human body was pointed out and 
illustrated. We need only add here that sudden transitions as 
well as extremes of temperature should, so far as possible, be 
avoided. Clothing should be proportioned to temperature; 
but in our changeable climate it is seldom safe to go very thinly 
clad. Our rooms are generally kept too warm in winter, and 
we wear t. >o much clothing in-doors, by which means our sys* Bkain and Heakt. 
199 
terns are relaxed and weakened, and the necessary occasional 
exposure to the open air rendered far more deleterious than it 
would be if we kept our in-door temperature lower. From 60° 
to 62° Fahrenheit, is, we believe, as agreeable and as whole- 
some a temperature as can be designated. 
7. The influence of mental states upon bodily health can not 
be adequately discussed here. We have already devoted a 
chapter (YU.) to an elucidation of the effects of intellectual 
culture on the configuration of the body. The statements 
which seem to be called for here, are but corollaries of the facts 
therein set forth. 
Mental activity has already been shown to be almost as es- 
sential to health as bodily exercise; but to act is not enough. 
We must also enjoy. “Sorrow,” Melancthon says, “strikes 
the heart, and makes it flutter and pine away with great pain.” 
And if one merely feels “ stupid,” or is out of “ humor,” or has 
the “ blues,” he is already half sick, and likely soon to be 
wholly so. The cheerful man digests his food properly; his 
blood circulates freely ; and his system is duly nourished; but 
depress his mind with sorrow or care, and all his functions are 
obstracted and he grows lean and pale. 
As a people, we need more cheerful amusements, more re- 
laxation from work, more time to enjoy the objects which we 
pursue with such terrible earnestness. 
8. Finally, the affections must also find their satisfaction in 
our lives. Unsatisfied longing for love, for the joys of mater- 
nity, or for the companionship of kindred and friends, depress 
the vital energies, wither the roses and lilies of the cheek, and 
dim the light of the eye- Unhappy marriages, and family dis- 
cords in general, bring with them physical derangement as 
well as mental suffering. The whole man must be in har- 
mony with itself and with all surrounding circumstances, or 
perfect health can not be enjoyed. 
The whole tenor and spirit of our remarks, in this chapter 
and throughout this work, inculcate temperance in the use of 
all good things, and abstinence from all hurtful indulgencies—■ 200 
Practical llyuiene. 
in other words, the dominance of the intellect and moral feel- 
ings over our lower or animal nature; we will not therefore 
particularize here the various abuses and vicious indulgences 
which are destroying the health and the lives of so many, and 
among them some of our otherwise promising young men. 
They are all condemned in the preceding rules and hints in 
terms, which, although they may not name them, will be un- 
derstood by all who are willing to be instructed. 201 
XIV. 
WOMANHOOD. 
The destiny of woman is to be a wife and mother, but she does not, like Eve, 
awake full grown. She has to pass through the various phases of growth 
before she is able to fulfill the duties of her ordination.—Bur<aud Riofrey. 
OMAKHOOD, 
crowned with pecu- 
liar honors, is also 
environed by pecu- 
liar perils. With 
the education and 
habits which gener- 
ally prevail at the 
present day, the 
crisis of puberty, 
common to both 
sexes, is fraught 
with far greater 
danger to the girl 
than to the boy; 
and the culminating 
point of joy and of 
exaltation, in maternity, is reached by the woman through 
trials of which the man knows nothing. If by a few words 
of counsel, drawn from the teachings of physiological science, 
we shall be able to lessen, in any degree, these trials and dan- 
gers, we shall not have written this chapter in vain. 
At the age of from twelve to fifteen, according to climate 
and temperament, the young girl who has reached that period 
under tolerably healthful conditions, experiences that wonder- W OMAMOOD. 
ful change which transforms her, in the course of a few months, 
from a child into a woman. Among the physical modifications 
which this crisis ushers in are the rapid development of the 
reproductive organs; a considerable widening of the pelvis, 
which makes the hips appear broader and larger; a marked 
expansion of the base of the brain; a gradual filling up of the 
interstices of the muscles with cellular tissue, resulting in more 
delicate and rounded contours; and increased fineness of tex- 
ture and smoothness of the skin. The bosom expands into 
luxuriant fullness, the features acquire new and more expressive 
lines, the cheeks become more fresh and rosy, and the lips glow 
in tempting ripeness. Nature has accomplished her work. 
Beauty has reached its climax. The girl is a woman, and may 
become a wife and a mother. 
Normally, these changes are accomplished, the monthly flow 
established, and the new phase of life fully inaugurated with 
very little pain or inconvenience, and no real danger. In the 
abnormal state to which our unnatural and pernicious systems 
of education and our unphysiological habits, with the conse- 
quent depreciation of vital stamina, have brought a majority 
of girls, particularly in cities, the case is widely different; and 
thousands on thousands either lose their lives at once (the hap- 
pier fate), or enter upon what should be the supremely happy 
and honorable career of womanhood with constitutions irre- 
trievably ruined, and utterly incapable of the distinctive func- 
tion of the sex. 
In the debilitated and diseased state of the system to which 
we have alluded, puberty exhibits itself under several abnormal 
aspects. It is frequently precipitated; sometimes it is retarded 
beyond the natural period; and very often, when taking place 
at the proper age, it is accompanied by the most serious and 
dangerous derangements and diseased conditions. Over-heated 
rooms, feather beds, improper clothing, rich and too stimulating 
food and drink, want of exercise in the open air, improper 
books, pictures, and conversation, and the pernicious example 
of depraved persons, tend to bring on premature sexual matu A Woed to Mothers. 
203 
rity, establish the menses before the proper age (sometimes, we 
are told, as early as the eighth or ninth year), and lay the 
foundation for disease and premature death. 
At tills point we beg the fond mother to pause a moment 
and reflect on her position, her duties, and her responsibilities. 
It is your fault mainly if these false and unhealthful conditions 
be permitted to exist, and your daughters be subjected to this 
premature and abnormal development. We beg you, then, as 
you value their health and beauty (and what mother does not 
desire to see her daughters beautiful?), their moral welfare, 
and their present and future happiness, see to it that the condi- 
tions we have named be all reversed, and that in their educa- 
tion and management everything that is calculated to promote 
precocity, either mental or physical; impair the strength of the 
constitution; or interfere in any way with the natural, orderly, 
and harmonious development of every organ and faculty of 
body and mind, be carefully avoided. Above all, beware of 
that direct incitement to sexual feeling, so common in many 
families, which consists in allusions to love, courtship, and 
marriage, in the company of boys and girls, and with the express 
purpose of directing their attention to these subjects. Iso 
harm is meant by this sort of talk, we are aware; but harm, 
and great harm is done, nevertheless. Never talk to a young 
girl of lovers, or tease her with reference to any person of the 
other sex, and by no means allow her to be kissed or fondled 
by any boy or young man, except a father or a brother. But 
if you have not already corrupted her, or allowed her to bo 
corrupted, you will have no occasion to forbid such liberties. 
Her own instinctive modesty and sense of propriety will be a 
sufficient safeguard. If, however, you are accustomed to urge 
her, against these instinctive feelings, to kiss this or that boy 
or young man whom you represent as a lover or suitor, you 
have already taken the first step toward her ruin. Allow her, 
we heg you, to remain a child till Nature, in her own good 
time, shall make her a woman. 
In peculiar diseased, debilitated, or sluggish states of the 204 
WOMANHOOD, 
system, the phenomena of puberty, instead of being precipi- 
tated, fail to appear at the proper period. This retarded devel- 
opment is often characterized by great derangement of the 
general economy, extraordinary tastes, and diseased appetites. 
Girls thus affected sometimes eat with avidity chalk, charcoal, 
plaster, clay, slate pencils, and other innutritions substances, 
and are pale, sickly-looking, dyspeptic, and nervous. 
The thing to he done in cases like this is to restore the gen- 
eral health, by first removing the causes through which it has 
been lost, and then bringing to bear upon the system such 
hygienic agencies as a well-chosen diet, exercise in the open 
air, judicious bathing, lively company, and pleasing amuse- 
ments. Thus Nature may be assisted, and the function finally 
established. Avoid drugs in all such cases. None but an 
ignorant or dishonest physician would prescribe them; and 
yet the health of thousands, already sufficiently deteriorated, 
is utterly ruined by their use. The fault is frequently in the 
ignorant mother, who either doses her daughter with some 
advertised nostrum, or insists upon receiving medicines for her 
from her physician. 
Where there is simply a degree of tardiness in the appear- 
ance of the menstrual flow, without any other symptoms of dis- 
ease or debility, no alarm need be felt. The case may be left 
mainly to Nature. No harm will result from a little delay. 
The desired development may be legitimately promoted, how- 
ever, by the tonic and stimulating action of cold water dashed 
upon the bosom at the morning hath ; by wet bandages, worn 
low down on the abdomen, and by cool sitz-baths. 
Every mother should inform herself thoroughly on the sub- 
ject of which we have been speaking, that she may he qualified 
to prepare her daughters for the important changes which 
await them at the verge of girlhood. She should understand 
the rationale of the menstrual function, know the conditions 
on which its normal development depends, and he deeply im- 
pressed with its important hearings upon health and beauty. 
■ With this conviction and this knowledge she will endeavor to M AEEIAGE. 
205 
surround her daughters with all the conditions of health, re 
move carefully every cause of disease or debility, and prepare 
their minds, by such instructions as may be necessary, for the 
new and interesting phase of life upon which they are about to 
enter. The crisis will thus be mainly disarmed of its dangers 
and its terrors, and, safely passed, will usher the young girl 
into a healthy and beautiful womanhood. 
Regularity in the performance of the menstrual function, once 
rightly established, depends upon health, regular habits, and 
regulated passions. Irregularity indicates disease or debility, 
and leads to the most disastrous results, affecting health, 
beauty, and life itself. 
The menstrual function being regularly established, it would 
seem to be in accordance with the intentions of Nature that, 
other conditions being favorable, marriage should at once take 
place, and the grand work for which the materials and forces 
are now prepared be consummated. If puberty has not been 
precipitated, but has been established and become regular at 
the normal period, under circumstances of perfect physical de- 
velopment and sound health, we see no physiological objection 
to this course; but taking the physical conditions as we find 
them at the present day, it seems to ns far better, in a majority 
of cases, that marriage be deferred for several years, or till 
more solidity and vigor of constitution than generally exists at 
puberty be attained. 
Of marriage it is not our purpose to speak at length; but we 
can not forbear a word or two of counsel to the young maiden 
or wife in reference to its physiological bearings; for looking 
upon it from the point of view here suggested alone, it is fraught 
with the most momentous consequences. 
The young woman who has honored these pages with a peru- 
sal need not be told, after reading so far as this, that an educa- 
tion, to be worthy of the name, or anything better than a mis- 
fortune to the receiver, must embrace other branches than 
French, Italian, music, and drawing—that physiology and its 
implications must not be ignored. Having arrived at woman- 206 
W OM ANHOOD. 
hood, a thorough knowledge of your own physical and mental 
constitution becomes imperative. Whatever relates to the re- 
quirements of your destiny as wife and mother—a destiny 
which no true woman, we believe, can desire to avoid—is at 
this juncture of paramount importance to you. Without this 
knowledge you launch your bark upon an unknown sea, and 
sail forth without chart or compass. The most perfect phys- 
ical organization and the best health are thus liable to be ship- 
wrecked during the first matrimonial voyage. With how many 
thousands, alas! is this the sad actual which takes the place of 
the maiden’s ideal wifehood. For proof, look about you and 
observe the contrast between the blooming brides and the pale 
and sunken-cheeked wives of even the best and most loving of 
husbands, who have tenderly tried to shield them from all 
the harms which their own ignorance has permitted them to 
see. A little easily acquired information on the part of the 
wife, and a course of action dictated by it, would, in a majority 
of cases, entirely prevent the deplorable consequences we have 
noted. Permit us to urge you again to seek this knowledge at 
once; for, without it, whatever may be your other qualifica- 
tions, physical or mental, you are utterly unfitted to marry.* 
Marriage, when love and physiology unite in sanctioning it, 
gives the finishing touch to the beauty of both man and woman ; 
nor does maternity, exercised under proper conditions, impair 
in the least the attractions of the latter—in fact, it adds to 
them. If.J then, you would retain your health and beauty, 
become the mother of healthy children, and remain a perpet- 
ually overflowing fountain of joy to your husband, study and 
obey the laws of your being. 
* In connection with standard works on general physiology, Dr. Edward 
H. Dixon’s “ Women and her Diseases,” Alexander Walker’s “ Intermar- 
riage,” and 0. 8. Fowler’s “ Love and Parentage” and “ Matrimony,” and 
especially the last named (in spite of a blunt and unpolished style, which is 
apt to repel), may be read with profit. 207 
XV. 
THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY. 
Nothing is more advantageous to man than long life. • * * * That 
which gives one the truest pleasure is to perceive that age and experience may 
render a man wiser than the schools can make him. We do not know the value 
of ten years of healthy life at an age in which man can enjoy all his faculties 
and profit by all his experience.—Louis Cornaro. 
«NE FOURTH, at 
least, of all the 
children who are 
horn, die before 
they have com- 
pleted their sev- 
enth year, and one 
half before reach- 
ing the age of sev- 
enteen. Only six 
persons in a hun- 
dred reach the age 
of sixty-five, and 
hardly more than 
one in ten thou- 
sand lives one 
hundred years. 
What an appalling picture of life—or of death, rather—on 
this globe do these startling facts present! Is it possible, that 
this terrible premature mortality is natural and inevitab' e—a 
part of the permanent Providential order of things? Is man. 
as a physical being, essentially a failure? Among the lower 
animals nothing of this kind occurs; and anatomy and physi- 
ology have failed to discover anything in the structure or 208 
The Secret of Longevity. 
functions of the human system that necessarily leads to these 
sad results. On the contrary, they show clearly enough that 
every child born with a sound constitution possesses the basis 
of a long life. The one in ten thousand—the man who lives a 
hundred years—to say nothing of the still longer lives of which 
history and observation have taken note—is only a man, and 
has no organs, faculties, or powers which are not the birth- 
right of the race. Now, as all men are subject to the same 
fixed natural laws, it follows that under the same set of con- 
ditions throughout, the same length of life would have been 
possible for each individual of the ten thousand, and is fairly 
within the capabilities of the race. 
How comes it, then, that this birthright is not also the pos- 
session of the race? What are the causes which ha\e thus 
shortened life and filled it with pain? How shall we regain 
our lost inheritance—length of days? It is upon these im- 
portant questions that we now purpose to throw such light as 
we have been able to bring to the proper focus. 
The means by which we shorten life and swell the melan- 
choly records of premature mortality are almost innumerable, 
consisting of whatever lessens the sum of vital power, weakens 
or mars the organism, hastens vital consumption, or hinders the 
natural restorative processes—in a word, we abbreviate exist- 
ence by the same means, in the main, that we make use of to 
destroy health, bodily symmetry, and beauty; and these have 
already been pointed out. 
Multitudes of children (through the transgressions of their 
parents) are brought into the world with the seeds of disease 
and dissolution already implanted in their bodies, or with organ- 
isms so weak or imperfect that they are unable to carry on the 
processes of life, and they die almost as soon as they have be- 
gun to live. Other multitudes, more fortunate in the c utset, 
and born with tolerably sound constitutions, perish during the 
first few months, from the combined effects of improper food, 
over-feeding, impure air, rocking and jouncing, laudanum, par- 
egoric, castor-oil, and tight bandages. Thousands on thou- The Perils of Life. 
209 
sands, with their systems weakened, their functions deranged, 
and their vitality lowered by the abuses just enumerated, and 
whatever else the ignorance or stupidity of their parents has 
been able to inflict upon them, lose their lives at the period of 
the first dentition, which, although a natural process, and 
fraught with no danger to the well-managed and perfectly 
healthy child, constitutes a most perilous crisis for those who 
are weak and surrounded by unhealthful conditions. The 
second dentition, made dangerous by similar means, carries ofl! 
a great number more. Then come the perils of puberty, and, 
with woman, those of maternity follow, leaving but a shattered 
remnant of the great phalanx of life still on their feet. Im- 
proper food; intemperance in eating and drinking; dissipation 
and excesses of various kinds ; family cares; the excitements 
and anxieties of business; and unphysiological habits and 
false conditions generally, carry oif the remainder, one by one, 
long before they have reached the natural term of life. 
The perils which thus environ us at every turn, and at almost 
every step, are mainly the creations of our own ignorance or 
folly, and might therefore be avoided, and the highway which 
leads to old age rendered pleasant and safe, by pursuing that 
course of conduct which knowledge and wisdom would dictate. 
What this course of conduct seems to us to be will appear from 
what follows. 
The conditions on which longevity depends (to give our 
remarks a less negative turn) are mainly these : 
1. A sound physical constitution. We have shown how this 
may be insured to all infants at birth. The children of long- 
lived parents, other things being equal, are most likely to be 
long-lived, because they generally inherit those qualities of 
constitution which are favorable to that result. 
2. A judicious physical education, symmetrically developing, 
solidifying, and hardening the bodily organs. 
3. Simplicity, wholesomeness, and regularity of diet, and 
the efficient action of all the nutritive or restorative functions. 
4, Sufficient pleasurable exercise in the open air to promote 210 
The Secret oe Longevity. 
a healthy circulation and keep the muscles in tone, and ade- 
quate rest and sleep. 
5. Immunity from harassing cares and anxieties, excesses of 
every kind, and all unhealthful conditions. 
fi. Constant moderate activity of body and mind. No idler 
ever reached a great age. 
7. Happiness. “Enjoyment,” Dr. South wood Smith says, 
“ is not only the end of life, but it is the only condition of life 
compatible with a protracted term of existence. The happier 
the human being is, the longer he lives; the more he suffers, 
the sooner he dies. To add to enjoyment is to lengthen life; 
to inflict pain is to shorten existence.” 
But all this, in substance, has already been set before the 
reader in previous chapters, and the simple statement of these 
conditions is all that is necessary to show their extended appli- 
cation. A new statement of the principal question raised in a 
preceding paragraph may, however, bring out new facts and 
illustrations. 
“But I can not, in my own person,” the reader may say, 
“go back to the beginning, and insure myself a perfect consti- 
tution and a judicious physical education. I must forego the 
full realization of these conditions. Taking myself as I am, 
then, with the measure of soundness and the sum of vital 
power with which I find myself possessed, what are the prac- 
tical means by which I may prolong my days in health and 
comfort to the greatest possible extent ?” 
Consider, in the first place, the sum of your vital power and 
the strength of your organism as making up your stock of life 
—the capital on which the business of existence is to be carried 
on—life itself, which is action, making constant drafts upon it ; 
bo that, if there be no process of restoration—no income—it 
must soon be exhausted. 
But here you must understand, in the second place, that 
Nature takes care to guard against this bankruptcy by provid- 
ing means by which the original stock may be kept good, and 
Under favorable conditions, even increased, Constitution and Yital Powuk. 
211 
The simple facts thus briefly stated and illustrated are of 
vital importance, and seem to suggest something like the fol- 
lowing practical rules: 
1. Every available means must be made use of to strengthen 
the constitution and give a sufficient degree of solidity and 
hardness to the organs. Exercise, within proper limits (which 
will be indicated in another rule), bathing and friction, a mod- 
erately cool temperature, and a free use of gelatinous nourish- 
ment, impregnated with iron, are some of the more important 
agencies to be made use of for this purpose. A degree of solid- 
ity and hardness amounting to rigidity must, however, be care- 
fully avoided, as it will shorten life by rendering the organs 
sooner unfit for action. We should carry the hardening process 
so far as to make strong, but not stiff*. 
2. The sum or fund of vital power must, if practicable, be 
increased. The means of ddng this should be sought mainly 
in the expansion of the chest (see Chapter XII.) and the inhal- 
ing of copious drafts of pure air, whereby the blood is more 
highly vitalized, the digestive functions rendered more efficient, 
and circulation and nutrition more active. 
But here, too, there may be excess. Overmuch vital power 
leads to a higher degree of action than is consistent with long 
life, and also increases the liability to inflammatory diseases. 
Ilufeland says: “Sound health may shorten the duration of life 
by intensifying it, and a certain kind and degree of weakness 
may be the means of prolonging it.”* The idea he wishes to 
express is no doubt a correct one; but the excessive vitality to 
which he probably refers is not sound health, although it may 
temporarily assume the appearance of it. A very ruddy face 
and a full habit are by no means signs of longevity, as the 
most cursory examination of the subject will convince the can- 
did reader. A degree of paleness and lankness, although de- 
noting deficient vital power, are more favorable indications, 
A moderate plumpness, and a diffused, but not a high color in 
the face, are the marks of enduring vigor. 
* Art of Prolonging Life. 212 
The Secret of Longevity. 
8. Vital consumption must be so lessened or moderated that 
it may not be attended with a too speedy wasting of the powers 
and the organs. If you would live long, you must not live fast. 
The energy of life is in inverse ratio with its duration.* It is 
for each individual to judge for himself how slowly or how 
rapidly, within practicable limits, it may be desirable to live ; 
but the question now before us is in reference to the duration 
of life, and not to its absolute sum. Of two persons, then, each 
possessing the same stock of vital power and capability of 
physical endurance, one may consume twice as much in a day 
as the other, and, other things being equal, live only half as long. 
To retard vital consumption, moderation must govern all our 
thoughts, feelings, and actions. We must avoid— 
(1.) Excessive stimulation of all kinds, intensity of feeling, 
the excitements of the passions, and whatever unduly incx-eases 
organic or functional activity. 
(2.) All straining of the mental powers by too intense or too 
greatly prolonged study or thinking. 
(3.) Too violent or long-continued muscular exertion. 
(4.) Irritants of all kinds, whether affecting body or mind. 
(5.) Immoderate excretions. 
Retarding vital consumption must, howevex*, have its limits. 
Without a degree of activity, the organs lose their power, aud 
become unfit to act at all. Some of the lower animals have 
the power of remaining dormant—the activities of life ceasing 
without life itself becoming extinct—and their existence may 
be prolonged in that way indefinitely; but man is differently 
constituted, and the idea of Dr. Franklin and others, of sus- 
pending the processes of life entirely for a time, and afterward 
restoring animation, will probably never be found practicable 
with the human being. 
4. The restoration of the vital power consumed by the activ- 
ities of I ody and mind must be complete and easily effected. 
Xutritive food, a good digestion, repose, and sleep are essential 
• Hufelanu. King David and Abistiag. 
213 
to tins end. The last-named must be especially insisted upon. 
Without it, necessary restoration of vital power can not be 
effected. With insufficient sleep, the vigor of the body is very 
soon impaired, and the term of life greatly shortened. 
There is another means of restoring vitality and prolonging 
life, which we mention merely to express our abhorrence of 
the atrocious selfishness which would make use of it. Ever 
since the time when Abishag the Shunammite was brought to 
King David to “ cherish him” and lie in his bosom, “so that 
he might get heat,” it has been well known that living with 
the young and healthy, and especially sleeping with them, has 
a restorative effect upon the old and the feeble. Reinhart calls 
living with the young the restoration of the old,* and Bartho- 
lin says the same, that it is a preventive to the chilliness 
of old age, and by the breath restores much of the expired 
physical powers.t Rudolph of Hapsburg is said, according to 
Serar’s account, when very old and decrepit, to have been 
accustomed to kiss, in the presence of their relations, the 
daughters and wives of princely, ducal, and noble personages, 
and to have derived strength and renovation from their breath. 
The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, near the end of his life, 
was advised, by a Jewish physician, to have young and healthy 
boys laid across his stomach, instead of using fomentations.^ 
The story of Lucius Claudius Hermippus, who reached a 
great age by being continually breathed upon by young girls— 
detestable old man!—has often been quoted. Hufeland re- 
cords the following inscription discovered in Rome : 
“ To JEsculapius and Health 
this is erected by 
X>. Clodius Hermippus, 
who, by the breath of young girls, 
lived 115 years and o days, 
at which physicians were no little 
surprised. 
Successive generations, lead such a life!” 
• Blbelkronkheiten des Alten Testaments. 
t Ennemoser. History of Magic. 
t De Morbis Bibliic. 214 
The Secket of Longevity 
What became of the young girls whose virgin lives wera 
thus absorbed—made use of as so much tonic medicine—by 
this shameless and selfish old philosopher, we are not told. 
The Bible is equally silent with reference to the condition of 
Abishag when she had done keeping King David warm. 
Old men, on the same principle, prolong their days by mar- 
rying young wives,* and invalid mothers by daily contact with 
their children. That those who thus impart vitality where 
they receive nothing in return must experience a loss equal to 
the gain on the other side, is sufficiently plain.f 
The grand secret, after all (a sound constitution and an ade- 
quate fund of vital power being assumed as a basis), is Modera- 
tion in everything, and a happy medium as to climate, tem- 
perature, employment, social condition, diet, and so forth. 
Almost the entire substance of Cornaro’s celebrated “Dis- 
courses,”! and of Hufeland’s “Art of Prolonging Life,” may 
be reduced to this single aphorism—Without moderation, the 
strictest obedience to all other rules will be vain. “Dew would 
believe,” M. Eeveille-Parise says, “ how far a little health, well 
managed, may be made to goand Cicero declares, “ To use 
■what we have, and to act in every thing according to our 
strength, is the rule of the sage.Ӥ 
* De Longueville, who lived to the age of 110, had ten wives, the last of 
whom he married when he was ninety-nine. We saw it recently stated in a 
newspaper that a man in Massachusetts had lived forty-one days without eat- 
ing anything, during which period he had been nourished altogether by cold 
water, and “ by the influence absorbed by him while daily holding the hand 
of hia wife.” 
t Dr. E. P. Foote says : “ I once knew a woman who had become prostrate 
with incurable consumption. Her infant occupied the same bed with her 
aimost constantly, day and night. The mother lingered for months on the 
verge of the grave, her demise being hourly expected. Still she lingered on, 
daily disproving the predictions of her medical attendant. The child mean- 
while pined, without any apparent disease. Its once fat little cheeks fell away 
with singular rapidity, till every bone in its face was visible. Finally it had 
imparted to the mother its last spark of vitality, and, simultaneously, both 
died.” 
% Discorsi della Vita sobria. § De Senectute. How Long We Mat Live. 
215 
In connection, with tie means of prolonging it, tie question, 
What is tie natural duration of luman life ? may very properly 
receive a passing notice. 
Leaving out of tie account tie antediluvians, whose tones 
we will not now disturl, and coming down to comparatively 
modern times, we find at least ten instances of persons living 
to one lundred and fifty years and upward.* Petrarcl Czarten, 
a Hungarian peasant, lived, as tie record is, from 1587 to 1772, 
or one himdred and eighty-Jive years; Louisa Truxo, a Soutl 
American negress, one lundred and seventy-five years; Henry 
Jenkins, an Englishlalorer, one lundred and sixty-nine years; 
Tlomas Parr, an Englishman, one lundred and fifty-two 
years. Instances of persons reading tie age of one lundred 
years and upward are comparatively numerous, and come 
witlin tie observation of almost every one. Tie tables of 
mortality for England and Wales, for a period of eighteen 
years, commencing in 1813 and ending in 1830, as quoted by 
Pinney, slow that seven lundred and seven persons lived to 
tie age of one hundred years; eighteen to one lundred and 
ten; three to one lundred and twenty; and one to one hun- 
dred and twenty-four. 
How it is by no means certain, or even probable, that the 
longest lived individuals on our list lived in strict accordance 
with the laws of nature, or reached tie furthest possible limit 
of luman life. Tlomas Parr, who lived one hundred and 
fifty-two years, died of a fit of indigestion, brought on by lav- 
ing been feasted at court. Dissection slowed that all tie 
viscera were perfectly healthy and tie cartilages not ossified. 
He might lave lived many years longer, lad he not died thus 
of an accident. May we not reasonably infer from these facts 
that it is possible, under the most favorable conditions, for men 
to live nearly or quite two centuries? This was the opinion 
* Captain Eiley thinks he has met with Arabs on the Great Desert who were 
three hundred years old, and that “ a great many of them lire two himdred 
years and upward.” We can not quote these, however, among our well- 
authenticated instances of longevity. 216 
The Seceet oe Longevity, 
of the celebrated physiologist Haller, who says that “man 
should he placed among the animals that live the longest.”* 
But there is another means of reaching, approximately at 
least, the point at which we aim. As long ago as the time of 
Aristotle it was known that the length of the growing period 
is an index of the possible length of life—the latter being 
some number of times the former. Buffon, the great natural- 
ist, develops and illustrates this idea in his works; hut there 
has existed an element of uncertainty in this method, growing 
out of the difficulty of ascertaining the exact limits of the 
period of growth. M. Flourens, a late French writer, has re- 
moved this difficulty by finding a sign of this limit—the union 
of the bones with their epiphyses.f This having taken place, 
the animal grows no more. According to this rule, man 
reaches the limit of growth in about twenty years; the camel 
in eight years; the horse in five years; the ox in four years; 
the dog in two years, and the rabbit in one year. How, if the 
camel lives about forty years, the horse twenty-five years, the 
ox twenty years, the dog ten years, and the rabbit five years, 
or, in each case, five times the period of growth, man should 
live one hundred years, or five times his period of growth. 
This is the result at which Flourens arrives. The lives which 
exceed this term he sets down as extraordinary or exceptional, 
and adds; “ Just as the duration of growth multiplied a certain 
number of times—say five times—gives the ordinary duration 
of life, so does this ordinary duration, multiplied a certain 
number of times—say twice—give the extreme lt 
is possible, then, as we have already inferred from historical 
facts, for man to live ten times the period of growth, or two 
hundred years. Ought not this, then, to be received as the 
normal duration of life, and possible, under supposahle con- 
• Elementa Physiologiae. 
t Epiphysis (plural epiphyses), Gr. enliven, accretion; the growing of one 
bone to another by simple contiguity. 
X Human Longevity and the Amount of Life on the Globe. By P. Flourena. 
Translated from the French. London. 1855. Human Capacity foe Life. 
217 
dit'u qs, for all men ? So it seems to us. Whether all the 
essential conditions are now attainable or not is another 
question. A late writer, to whose contributions to our scien- 
tific literature we have before had occasion to refer, remarks 
that “ we must distinguish between the ‘possible and the prac- 
ticable length of life,” and that “the distinction is very wide.” 
He continues: 
“In fine, although the problem is yet in a degree open, and 
the results may require to be somewhat varied, we feel war- 
ranted in drawing from the facts presented [in the series of 
articles from which we quote] the following conclusions: 
“ 1. Men and women have lived to an age of near two hun- 
dred and fifty years, and within the last few centuries a few 
individuals to from a hundred and forty to a hundred and 
eighty-five years. 
“2. Since these were but men and women, they possessed 
no capabilities but those which all of us possess; and provid- 
ing our parentage, habits, and external and internal conditions 
in all respects were as good as theirs, all men and women now 
could attain to ages of from a hundred and forty to a hundred 
and eighty-five years. 
“3. Just as soon as the race at large shall have discovered 
and reduced to unmistakable rules the principles of health and 
endurance on which those few stumbled, as it were, by chance, 
the majority of human kind may live to at least a hundred 
and forty or a hundred and fifty years. 
“4. "When for a few generations the practice of hygienic 
living has been quite universally adopted, so that the constitu- 
tion may recover from its present broken and enfeebled con- 
dition, deaths under eighty should become as unusual as deaths 
over a hundred now are; and the whole race, with rare excep- 
tions, could then attain to ages ranging from a hundred to a 
hundred and fifty years, and may even beyond that, to near or 
quite two hundred years. We have, as human beings, the 
germs of the capacity to do this; we only need to look after 
and develop them. 218 
The Secret oe Longevity. 
“ 5. While a life thus prolonged is our birthright, and would 
become our possession if our condition and modes of living 
were brought to a perfection of system and practice, it is evi- 
dent that until some great change is made in the causes now 
at work, we shall continue to reap the present consequences. 
And so, with a right to exist in health, comfort, nay, positive 
happiness, to the age of one hundred and fifty years, the 
coming century will likely, as the past has done, find children 
and adults dying rapidly from the first year, and indeed the 
first hour of being, until the number of centenarians, even if 
somewhat increased, shall still be extremely small.”* 
Notwithstanding the lamentable premature mortality of the 
present day, statistics show that the length of life has been 
steadily increasing since the sixteenth century, when, accord 
ing to Dr. Buchanan, its average was only eighteen years. It 
is now forty-three years. 
In Geneva, Switzerland, of whose population, births, and 
deaths an accurate account has been kept for three centuries, 
the mean duration of life— 
Prom 1500 to 1600 was 21 years 2 months 
“ 1600 to ITOO “ 25 “ 9 “ 
“ 1700 to 1800 “ 32 “ 9 “ 
In 1880 “ 40 “ 5 “ 
In 1850 “ 47 “ 0 “ 
The mean duration of life among the ancient Eomans, not 
including the servile classes, according to Ulpianus (as quoted 
by Dr. South wood Smith), was only thirty years. Among the 
same class in Great Britain at the present time it is fifty years. 
For the whole population of Great Britain the average is forty- 
five; for France forty-two, and for the United States about 
forty-three. 
These facts illustrate in a very striking manner the influence 
of civilization and an increase of knowledge and the comforts 
of life in promoting physical welfare. The poor and laboring 
classes in most countries (popular belief to the contrary not- 
* Prof. Levi Reuben, in Life Illustrated. Louis Coenaro. 
219 
withstanding) are shorter lived l>y more than one-fourth than 
the wealthy. A comparison made for France by M. Yille- 
merme, and based on actual statistics, shows that the wealthy 
live on an average twelve years longer than the poor. The pro- 
portion would be different here, however, as even those whom 
we call poor possess most of the conditions essential to health 
and long life as largely as the rich, and are free from some of 
the unfavorable conditions to which the latter are subjected. 
“ Philosophers and men of quiet reasoning, naturalists, states- 
men, and other men whose studies and avocations were espe- 
cially calculated to develop and maintain the supremacy of the 
moral and intellectual powers, have been proverbially long- 
lived. In this connection we may name, among the ancients, 
Homer, Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Plutarch, Xenophon, Plato, 
Thales, Carneades, Sophocles, Zeno, Galen, Democritus; and 
among the moderns, Locke, Newton, Galileo, Boyle, Leibnitz, 
Buffon, Gibers, Blumenbach, Hahnemann, Swedenborg, Sir 
Edward Coke, and Fontenelle. All of the persons thus named 
were distinguished by active and laborious habits, and some of 
them were intense, if not intemperate workers.” 
The married live longer than the single; large men live 
longer than small ones; more women than men become old, 
but men only attain the highest point of longevity. Savages 
do not live so long as civilized people; but in this country the 
most remarkable instances of longevity have been found among 
the negro slaves of the Southern States. 
One of the most remarkable and instructive instances of 
longevity on record is that of Louis Oornaro, author of “Dis- 
courses on a Sober and Temperate Life,”* who was born in 
Venice, of an illustrious family, in the year 1467 (according to 
the “ Biographic Universelle”), and died in 1566. 
Born with a very feeble constitution, and plunging early into 
the fashionable excesses of his times, he lost his health, and 
when only thirty-five years old was told by his doctors that he 
could not live more than two years. 
♦ Published by Fowler and Wells, New York, price 30 cents- 220 
The Secbet of Longevity. 
This serious warning had the effect of inducing him to 
abandon his pernicious habits and commence a simple and tem- 
perate life. His abstemiousness became almost excessive. 
Twelve ounces of solid food and fourteen ounces of wine each 
day were for more than half a century all his nourishment; and 
this diet agreed so well with him that during the whole of that 
half century he was never ill. He took this quantity, in the 
beginning, at two meals; but afterward, as he became older, 
he made four meals of it. He ate, he says, “bread, mutton, 
partridges, and so forth. All such articles of food are suited 
to old men, who, if they be wise, will be contented with them, 
and not seek for others.” 
But for the particulars of Oornaro’s way of living we must 
refer the reader to his book. We call attention to him here 
simply as an example of the extent to which one’s health and 
longevity are in his own hands. What a noble victory was 
that which he gained over himself and over the disorders and 
weaknesses which assailed him! No wonder he is proud of 
living, and never ceases speaking of what he calls his beautiful 
life, and of the victory he has gained. “ What lam going to 
say,” he exclaims, “will appear impossible or hard to believe; 
nothing, however, is more true. It is a fact known to many 
persons, and worthy of the admiration of posterity—l have at- 
tained my ninety fifth year, and find myself as healthy, merry, 
and happy as if I were hut twenty-five.'1'1 221 
XVI. 
THE ARTS OF BEAUTY. 
’Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white 
Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on —Shakapmre. 
HARMING woman, not content with the 
5 wealth of beauty with which opulent Na- 
ture has so lavishly endowed her, presses 
Art also into her service to heighten her 
attractions. Far he it from us to raise 
an objection. Our love for Nature does 
not prevent us from admiring Art, her 
beautiful sister. The one is not opposed 
to the other, but both act in perfect har- 
mony. That which tends to pervert 
Nature or thwart her beneficent inten- 
tions is not true Art, but an impostor 
working under her name. 
Some of the means already brought forward for the promo- 
tion of a symmetrical and beautiful physical development, and 
the corresponding functional harmony, may be called artificial; 
but they all have their foundation in natural laws, and co-ope- 
rate harmoniously with Nature’s more direct agencies. So far 
as dress, personal ornaments, cosmetics, and so forth, can be The Arts of Beauty. 
properly placed in the same category, they have our approval, 
and no further. 
The Arts of Beauty, so far as we purpose to treat of them 
here, may be properly considered under three heads: 1. The 
Use of Cosmetics; 2. Dress; 3. The wearing of Ornaments. 
I.—THE USE OF COSMETICS. 
A cosmetic (from the Greek xotf[uxog) is properly a T>eautifier 
—anything that is capable of improving personal beauty. It 
is in this broad sense that we use the term. Of course, then, 
we approve of cosmetics, but not necessarily of everything that 
passes under that name. The careful reader of the foregoing 
pages no doubt already anticipates the drift of our remarks 
under this head. The principal beautifiers have already been 
described and recommended; but, at the risk of repeating some 
of the hints presented in previous chapters, we beg permission 
to offer here the following 
a&ecipes. 
1. To Acquire a Beautiful Form.—-Take abundant exercise 
in the open air—free, attractive, joyous exercise, such as young 
girls—when not restrained by false and artificial proprieties— 
are wont to take. If you are in the country, or can get there, 
ramble over the hills and through the woodlands; botanize; 
geologize; seek rare flowers and plants; hunt bird-nests, and 
chase butterflies. Be a romp, even though you may be no 
longer a little girl. If you are a wife and a mother, so much 
the better. Eomp with your children. Attend also to your 
bodily positions in standing, sitting, lying, and walking, and 
employ such general or special gymnastics as your case may 
require. Live, while in-doors, in well-ventilated rooms; take 
sufficient wholesome and nourishing food, at regular hours; 
keep the mind active and cheerful —in short, obey all the laws 
of health. 
Take a lesson from the English girl, as described in the fol- 
lowing extract: The English Gikl. 
223 
“ The English girl spends more than one half of her waking 
hours in physical amusements; that is, in amusements which 
tend to develop, and invigorate, and ripen the bodily powers. 
She rides, walks, drives, rows upon the water, runs, dances, 
plays, swings, jumps the rope, throws the ball, hurls the quoit, 
draws the bow, keeps up the shuttlecock, and all this without 
having it forever impressed upon her mind that she is thereby 
wasting her time. She does this every day, until it becomes a 
habit, which she will follow up through life. Her frame, as a 
necessary consequence, is larger, her muscular system better 
developed, her nervous system in subordination to the physical; 
her strength more enduring, and the whole tone of her mind 
healthier. She may not know as much at the age of seventeen 
as does the American girl; as a general thing she does not, but 
the growth of her intellect has been stimulated by no hot-house 
culture, and though maturity comes later, it will last propor- 
tionably longer.”* 
2. To Promote Plumpness.—A lack of the proper degree of 
embonpoint, for which no other physical quality can compen- 
sate, is a very common defect among American women. The 
cause of this want of plumpness is generally either actual ill 
health, or an abnormal development of the mental tempera- 
ment. If the vital system be naturally well developed, the 
desired fullness will come with health. To increase the vital 
temperament, moderate (within the limits of health) the activ- 
* Among the items particularized in the published accounts of the bridal 
outfit of the Princess Eoyal of England, on the occasion of her marriage with 
ihe Crown Prince of Prussia, is the following: 
“ Twelve dozen pairs of boots of useful and solid make ; some of them in- 
tended for rough walking, being provided with treble soles, and small but pro- 
jecting nails.” 
“ Only think,” an American newspaper says, “ of some of our ‘paper-soled, 
delicate-footed damsels, sporting, by way of novelty, hob-nailed, triple-soled 
shoes! Does any one doubt, however, that such an innovation would do more 
to preserve the roses in fair cheeks than any style of hygiene which ‘ the fac- 
ulty’ could recommend? We denounce often the fashions of England as mo- 
narchical—we think the Princess Eoyal might set us good republicans an ex- 
ample in the matter of understanding The Akts of Beauty. 
ity of both mind and body; choose your diet with reference to 
the formation and deposit of cellular tissue; and live, so far as 
possible, an easy, serene, and cheerful life. Tepid and warm 
baths (keeping in mind the cautions we have already dropped 
with reference to bathing) will contribute to the same end. 
We do not recommend spending half one’s time in the bath, as 
some women of historical renown are said to have done, but 
when taken for the purpose here indicated, they may be some- 
what prolonged with profit. 
3. To Improve the Features.—Cultivate the mind, refine the 
tastes, cherish all the virtues, and every gentle and loving 
mood, avoid gross food and strong drink, and harbor no dis- 
turbing passion. Be lovable, and you will be beautiful. 
4. To Acquire a Beautiful Complexion.—The beauty of the 
complexion, depending upon the efficient performance of the 
vital functions of nutrition, circulation, and excretion, is gen- 
erally in proportion to the integrity and vigor of the vital sys- 
tem. The complexion, then, is improved by increasing vitality, 
and injured by depressing it. To promote vitality (and through 
it a clear complexion), expand the chest by deep, full breathing, 
either in the open air or in well-ventilated rooms, and by other 
appropriate movements (for which see Chapter XII.); keep 
the pores of the skin open by bathing and gentle friction; 
avoid hot bread or biscuits and butter, all very greasy or high- 
seasoned food, rich pies and cakes, hot or heating drinks, the 
excessive use of tea and coffee, bad air (and, if possible, stove* 
heated rooms), excessive heat and cold (and especially sudden 
transitions from the one to the other), dissipation, and late 
hours. 
If you are troubled with pimples or other eruptions on the 
face and neck, avoid washing these parts with cold water, as it 
will have a tendency to cause a still greater flow, not only of 
the blood, but of the impure humors also, to them. Use tepid 
or slightly warm water instead. 
A bath composed of tepid water and wheat bran is said to 
he remarkably efficacious in cleansing, purifying, and beautify- How to have Rosy Cheeks. 
225 
ing the skin. Milk, or milk and water, are also recommended. 
There is certainly no harm in trying either of these, or the 
much-lauded pimpernel water, made by infusing the plant in 
pure rain water, as auxiliaries to the grand hygienic agencies 
we have enumerated.* 
Beware, above all, of the cosmetic lotions advertised in the 
papers and sold by the apothecaries. They are, almost without 
exception, worse than worthless, and in the end destroy, instead 
of' improving, the complexion, whatever their makers and 
venders may say to the contrary. 
6. To Obtain Rosy Cheeks.—Cultivate a flower-garden. 
Rise early, and try to discover where the roses and carnations 
get their brilliant complexions. It is a secret worth knowing. 
You will find the cosmetic you seek in the same place. 
6. To Beautify the Hair.—Keep the head clean, the pores 
of the skin open, and the whole circulatory system in a healthy 
condition, and you will have no need of bear’s grease (alias 
hog’s lard) or Macassar Oil. Where there is a tendency in the 
hair to fall otf on account of the weakness or sluggishness of 
the circulation, or an unhealthy state of the skin, cold water 
and friction with a tolerably stiff brush are probably the best 
remedial agents. 
7. To Beautify the Bosom.—The fullness, whiteness, smooth- 
ness, and elasticity on which the beauty of the bosom mainly 
depends, are due to the perfection of the vital or nutritive sys- 
♦ We may add to the foregoing auxiliary beautiflers the celebrated lait vir- 
ginal, which is said to have been known to the beauties of the court of Charles 
11. It is a simple tincture of benzoin precipitated in water. It emits a most 
agreeable perfume, has a slightly stimulating effect upon the skin, and gives at 
least a temporary brilliancy to the complexion; but those who put this or any- 
thing else in the place of pure air, light, exercise, wholesome food, and good 
habits, will soon see how powerless it is for any grand cosmetic effect. It may 
be made according to the following 
3£trci p r. 
Take a small piece of gum benzoin, and boil it in alcohol till it becomes a 
rich tincture, which bottle up for use. Ten or fifteen drops of this in a tumbler 
•kill of water makes the famous virgin milk. 226 
The Arts of Beauty. 
tem, and are promoted in the same way as the general plump 
ness of form of which we have spoken in another place. Cold 
water and gentle friction will stimulate the development of the 
breasts. The cotton padding so generally used to give “the 
appearance of something where there is nothing,” is utterly 
destructive to the health and beauty of these organs. They 
should be covered as lightly as may be consistent with their 
protection, and left to grow in unrestrained luxuriance, like the 
lilies of the field. All compression, and especially the pressure 
of such hard substances as steel or whalebone, and above all, 
whatever tends to push them out of their proper place—the 
place in which symmetry and use alike require them—is sure 
to result in more or less deformity, and may give rise to more 
terrible evils still, in the form of abscesses or cancers. To 
young girls just budding into womanhood these cautions are 
of the utmost importance. 
8. To Improve the Arms and Hands.—The recipes already 
given for the promotion of beauty of form, complexion, and so 
forth, will apply here. An additional hint may be found in the 
following extract: 
“ It has been suggested that the Greek or lonian, whose arms 
»rere of so perfect a form, owed that beauty in some measure to 
the custom of leaving them nude, or covered only by loose dra- 
pery, as in that case no pressure constricted the roundness of 
the fleshy parts, and prevented their development; no ligature, 
binding the upper part of the arm, altered the color of the skin; 
and the arm, being always uncovered, received at the toilet the 
same attention as other parts. * * * * It is certainly not 
improbable that we may attribute the absence of this beauty, 
in some measure, to the custom of wearing long sleeves; but 
want of exercise is the great cause.”* 
9. To Retain Beauty and Youthfulness.—The rules we have 
given for acquiring beauty supply also the needful instructions 
for retaining it. It comes and goes with health. The bad 
* Walker. Beauty May be Retained. 
habits and false conditions which destroy the latter render the 
former impossible. Youthfnlness of form and features depends 
upon youthfulness of feeling. 
Spring still makes spring in the mind 
When sixty years are told— 
Love wakes anew the throbbing heart, 
And we are never old. 
If, then, we would retain youthful looks, we must do nothing 
that will make us feel old. 
Beauty is generally spoken of as a fleeting show, a fragile 
flower, an evanescent gleam of celestial radiance; and too often 
these terras are well applied, especially in this country. This, 
however, we are convinced, is not according to the intentions 
of Nature. Some women have retained their beauty and 
youthful appearance till a very advanced period of life. Of 
Diana of Poitiers, who died at the age of sixty-seven, Bran- 
tome says: “ I saw her six months before her death, still so 
oeautiful that I know not a heart so rocky as not to be moved 
at the sight of her.” “I believe,” he adds, “if this lady had 
lived a hundred years, she would never have grown old, either 
in the face, so finely was it formed, or in the person, so good 
was her constitution, and so excellent her habit of body.”* 
Ninon de I’Enclos and other famous beauties are also represented 
as being exceedingly fascinating at forty or even fifty years of 
age. Examples of the same well-preserved loveliness are not 
entirely wanting at the present day. A late writer, speaking 
of English society, says: “ One meets ladies past fifty, glowing, 
radiant, and blooming, with a freshness of complexion and full- 
ness of outline refreshing to contemplate.”! Another, speaking 
of the Italian women who have passed what he calls the “ first 
bloom of youth,” remarks: “ Instead of presenting a shriveled 
and withered appearance, they seem to grow in beauty as thej 
grow in years, and although age of course makes its progress, 
yet its ravages are well-nigh imperceptible. In no country in 
• D-rmes Galautes ((Euvres tom. IV.). + Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe. The Arts of Beauty. 
228 
the world are so many middle-aged beautiful women as in Italy, 
and this also we attribute to the fullness of their imagination 
and spiritual nature, which permits them to bear the sacred 
pangs of motherhood without impairing the vigor and buoyancy 
of their physique or their intellect.” Is all this impossible for 
American women? We do not believe it. The women spoken 
of in the foregoing extracts Tceep their beauty because they Tceep 
their health. Here is the grand secret, after all; and it ia 
mainly because they lose their health that American women 
lose their beauty. We have shown how health is lost, and 
indicated the means by which it may be regained and preserved. 
It is not necessary to repeat here the instructions scattered 
through the preceding chapters. 
The writer whose remark in reference to the English women 
is quoted in the preceding paragraph continues: “ How comes 
it that our married ladies dwindle, fade, and grow thin—that 
their noses incline to sharpness, and their elbows to angularity, 
just at the time of life when their island sisters round out into 
a comfortable and becoming amplitude and fullness? If it is 
the fog and the sea-coal, why, then, I am afraid we shall never 
come up with them. But perhaps there may be other causes 
why a country which starts some of the most beautiful girls in 
the world produces so few beautiful women. Have not our 
close-heated stove-rooms somewhat to do with it ? Have not 
the immense amount of hot biscuits, hot corn-cakes, and other 
compounds got up with the acrid poison of saleratus, something 
to do with it? Above all, has not our climate, with its alter- 
nate extremes of heat and cold, a tendency to induce habits of 
in-door indolence ? Climate certainly has a great deal to do 
with it—ours is evidently more trying and more exhausting; 
and because it is so, we should not pile upon its back errors of 
dress and diet which are avoided by our neighbors.” 
Another writer, after detailing the various abuses which are 
undermining the constitutions and ruining the beauty of Ameri- 
ean women, says: 
“All day long in winter the stove-heat burns into the brain Lack of Taste in Dress. 
229 
and withers the cheeks, and palsies the muscles, and enfeebles 
the step; and though summer comes with its outer air, and its 
fruits and flowers, the loads it is asked to remove are too much 
for it, and the years circle round—the weary, aimless, soul- 
consuming years! and the bad diet, and the uncleanly habits, 
and the foul air, and the hot stove have done their miserable 
work. Beauty is gone, health is vanished, hope has set, and 
the young mother, who should be just beginning to shed 
beauty and goodness and light around her, has shrunken 
mournfully into the forlorn and wrinkled and unlovely old 
woman.”* 
Need we add anything more? These warning words are 
from the lips of your own sisters. Ponder them well, we beg 
you. 
XL—DRESS. 
Women are sometimes charged with devoting too much 
attention to matters of dress. There is, perhaps, some founda- 
tion for the accusation, for these things should not, certainly, 
be made the principal business of their lives; but we would by 
no means counsel them to treat dress as a trifling or unimpor- 
tant matter. The grand cause of regret is, not that they devote 
themselves so zealously to it, but that their studies and labors 
in that direction are not guided by a better kuowledge and 
more artistic tastes. With all the time, attention, and labor 
bestowed upon the subject, comparatively few women, espe- 
cially in this country, dress well, either in an esthetic or a 
nygienic point of view; and what is intended to heighten their 
charms, too often obscures, and, in the end, destroys them. A 
woman who has herself the reputation of dressing well, and 
who has had abundant opportunities of observing the toilets 
of different nations, says: “The great majority of my sex 
understand the art of dress no further than that ‘ fine feathers 
make fine birdshence, they dress more or less in bad taste.” 
The fact is, dress is not studied as an art, and in the light 
♦ Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis. 230 
The Aets of Beauty. 
of the fundamental principles of taste, as it should be, but Is 
subjected to the arbitrary and senseless rules of fashion. 
Fashion is an arch tyrant whom we would gladly overthrow, 
but she is securely enthroned beyond the reach of our blows* 
A direct attack would be useless. Our only hope is in gradu- 
ally undermining her power by the diffusion of knowledge and 
the cultivation of the popular tastes. To contribute to such 
an extent as our very limited space will permit, to these ends 
we offer the following hints: 
1. The Uses of Dress.—Dress has primarily two functions— 
to clothe and to ornament; but use and beauty, in this as in 
other cases, so far from requiring any sacrifice for combination, 
are found, each in the highest degree, where both are most 
fully obtained—the fittest or most comfortable dress being that 
which is most graceful or becoming. Fitness is the primary 
demand, and the dress that appears uncomfortable is untasteful.* 
2. Subordination of Clothes.—“ Dress is always to be con- 
sidered as secondary to the person.” This is a fundamental 
maxim in the art of costume, but is often lost sight of, and 
dress made obtrusive at the expense of the individuality of the 
wearer. A man’s vest or cravat must not seem too important 
a part of him; and a woman should not be wholly lost in her 
crinoline. If you are not better and more beautiful than your 
clothes, you are, indeed, a man or a woman of straw.f 
Mrs. E. Oakes Smith very happily says : “ The greatest com- 
pliment that can be paid to a woman is to forget her dress, or 
rather not to see it—as proving it to be so characteristic that 
we are not incommoded by observation, and are thus left to 
unalloyed companionship. "We see, as it were, face to face, 
and not through whalebone and starch. The rose in her hair 
is a part of her womanhood, and the robe, in hue and shape 
is so a part of her mold that we do not see it, but her. All is 
harmony, and she is the genius to which everything else ha? 
become subordinate.” 
• The Crayon. 
t How to Behave. The Law of Fitness. 
231 
3. Fitness of Dress.—-It follows from the principles already 
stated, that any costume, to fulfill properly either of its impor- 
tant functions, must possess fitness in forms, materials, and 
colors to the person of the wearer, and to the conditions of 
time, place, and occasion on which it is worn. The fact that 
fashion compels us constantly to violate this principle does not 
invalidate it. In treating of dress as an art, we must ignore 
fashion altogether. In our practice we must do what we can. 
It is but justice, however, to fashion and its promoters, to 
admit that they are not responsible for all the incongruities 
with which we meet. They are often mainly due to bad taste 
and affectation. 
(1.) The first application of the law of fitness gives us the dis- 
tinction of sex in dress, and shows the absurdity of dressing 
men and women alike. The physiological reasons why every 
form of dress which is becoming on one sex may with propriety 
be rejected by the other, will suggest themselves to any one at 
all familiar with the human figure. 
“Some,” Mrs. Smith says, “have contended that there 
should be no difference in the dress of the sexes. I think that 
a moment’s reflection will convince us that this is a mistaken 
taste. As a general rule, we are shorter than the other sex, 
and I am sure we do not wish to seem only a poorer sort of 
men.”* 
(2.) There should be fitness to the individual, as well as to the 
sex. ¥e instinctively know that the young and the old should 
not dress alike. Neither should the tall and the short, the pale 
and the rosy, the grave and the gay, the tranquil and the viva- 
cious. Each variety of form, color, and character has its ap- 
propriate style. 
“Woman,” the erratic, but beautiful and witty Lola Montes, 
says, “ may take a lesson on dress from the garments which 
Nature puts on at the various seasons of the year. In the 
spring of youth, when all is lovely and gay, the light and trans- 
* Hints on Dress and Beauty. 232 
The Aets of Beauty. 
parent robes of brilliant colors may appropriately adorn the 
limbs of beauty. Especially if the maid possess the airy form 
of Hebe, a light, flowing drapery is best suited to display her 
charms. This simple garb leaves to Beauty all her empire. 
No heavy ornaments should load the figure or distract the atten- 
tion in its admiration of the lovely outlines. The young 
woman of graver mien should select her apparel with reference 
to her different style of beauty. Her robes should always be 
long and more ample than those of her gayer sister; and they 
should also be thicker in substance and of a more sober color.” 
“In form,” another writer says, “simplicity and long, un- 
broken lines give dignity, while complicated and short lines 
express vivacity. Curves, particularly if long and sweeping, 
give grace, while straight lines and angles indicate power and 
strength. In color, unity of tint gives repose—if somber, grav- 
ity, but if light and clear, then a joyous serenity—variety of 
tint gives vivacity, and if contrasted, brilliancy.” 
Tall women should not wear dresses with longitudinal stripes, 
as they will make them appear taller than they really are. 
Flounces and stripes running around the dress have an opposite 
effect, and should be avoided by short persons. Light colors 
are more suitable to small persons than to large ones, as they 
increase the apparent size. The colors worn should be de- 
termined by the complexion, and should harmonize with it and 
with each other. The following suggestions from Youmans’ 
“ Household Science” will be useful to our fair readers: 
“ Any colored objects, as bonnet trimmings or draperies, in 
the vicinity of the countenance, change its color; but clearly 
to trace that change we must know what the cast of complex- 
ion is. This varies infinitely, but we recognize two general 
sorts, light and dark, or Monde and brunette. In the blondes 
or fair-complexioned the color of the hair is a mixture of red, 
yellow, and brown, resulting in a pale orange brown. The skin 
is lighter, containing little orange, but with variable tinges of 
light red. The blue eye of the blonde is complementary to the 
orange of the hair. In brunettes the hair is black, and the skin Hints on Colons. 
233 
dark, ot of an orange tint. The red of the brunette is deeper 
or less rosy than that of the blonde. Now the same colors 
affect these two styles of complexion very differently, A green 
setting in bonnet or dress throws its complement of red upon 
the face. If the complexion be pale and deficient in ruddy 
freshness, or admits of having its rose-tint a little heightened, 
the green will improve it, though it should be delicate in order 
to preserve harmony of tone. But green changes the orange 
hue of the brunette into a disagreeable brick-red. If any green 
at all be used, in such case it should be dark. For the orange 
complexion of brunette the best color is yellow. Its comple- 
mentary, violet, neutralizes the yellow of the orange and leaves 
the red, thus increasing the freshness of the complexion. If 
the skin be more yellow than orange, the complementary violet 
falling upon it changes it to a dull pallid white. Blue imparts 
its complementary orange, which improves the yellow hair of 
the blondes, and enriches white complexions and light flesh 
tints. Blue is therefore the standard color for a blonde, as 
yellow is for a brunette. But blue injures the brunette by deep- 
ening the orange, which was before too deep. Violet yellows 
the skin, and is inadmissible except where its tone is so deep as 
to whiten the complexion by contrast. Eose-red, by throwing 
green upon the complexion, impairs its freshness. Bed is ob- 
jectionable, unless it be sufficiently dark to whiten the face by 
contrast of tone. Orange makes light complexions blue, yel- 
low ones green, and whitens the brunette. White, if without 
luster, has a pleasant effect with light complexions; but dark 
or bad complexions are made worse by its strong contrast. 
Fluted laces are not liable to this objection, for they reflect the 
light in such a way as to produce the same effect as gray. 
Black adjacent to the countenance makes it lighter.” 
(3.) Dress should accord with the wearer’s pecuniary means, 
her social position, and the society in which she moves. 
(4.) One’s costume should be suited to the time, place, and 
other circumstances under which it is to be worn. You would 
not, of course, wear your summer clothes in winter, or your The Arts of Beauty. 
winter clothes in summer. For a similar reason you should 
have one dress for the parlor and another for the kitchen, one 
for in-doors and another for the street or a ramble in the coun- 
try. “ Long flowing and even trailing skirts are beautiful and 
appropriate in the drawing-room, hut in the muddy streets, drag- 
gling in the filth and embarrassing every movement of the 
wearer; or in the country, among the bushes and briers, they 
lose all their beauty and grace, because no longer fitting.” 
(5.) No dress that hinders the movements of the body or pre- 
vents its symmetrical development can he either fitting or in 
any high sense beautiful, whatever Fashion, which has no 
respect for physiology, may say to the contrary. 
4. Variety in Costume.—An application of the principles 
just laid down would give a pleasing variety in style and color 
in place of the uniformity which now so generally prevails. 
No two persons should dress precisely alike, unless two can he 
found between whom no point of difference, either in physical 
or mental character, can be discovered. What is wanted is to 
get rid of the absurd tyranny of Fashion, so that what is be- 
coming to each person, whether man or woman, may be worn 
without social outlawry or discredit. Of the advent of such a 
state of things as this we have strong hopes. There is now 
certainly a tendency in the right direction among the more 
thoughtful and independent of both sexes. 
5. A Hint to Married Women.—A newspaper writer, whose 
name we do not get hold of, has the following hint, which we 
hope no fair reader of ours will feel constrained to take to 
herself. 
“It is no uncommon thing for women to become slatternly 
after marriage. They say they have other things to attend to, 
and dress is habitually neglected—except, perhaps, on great oc- 
casions, when there is a display of finery and bad taste abroad, 
to be followed by greater negligence at home. Great respect 
is shown to what is called ‘ company,’ hut apart from this there 
is a sort of cui hono abandonment, and the compliment which 
is paid to strangers is withheld from those who have the best Ornaments. 
235 
right to claim, and are most likely to appreciate it. This is a 
fatal, hut too common error. When a woman, with reference 
to the question of personal adornment, begins to say to herself 
‘lt is only my husband,’ she must prepare herself for conse- 
quences which, perhaps, she may rue to the latest day of her 
life.” 
6, The Hair and Beard.—The hair and beard, in one of their 
aspects, belong to dress. In reference to the style of wearing 
them, consult the general principles of taste. A man to whom 
Nature has given a handsome beard, deforms himself sadly by 
shaving. On this point, we believe fashion and good taste at 
present agree. 
In dressing the hair there is room for the display of a good 
deal of taste and judgment; but every lady will be able, after 
a few experiments, to decide what mode renders her face most 
attractive. 
“Einglets hanging about the forehead suit almost every one. 
On the other hand, the fashion of putting the hair smoothly, 
and drawing it back on either side, is becoming to few; it has 
a look of vanity instead of simplicity: the face must do every- 
thing for it, which is asking too much, especially as hair, in its 
pure state, is the ornament intended for it by Nature. Hair is 
to the human aspect what foliage is to the landscape.” 
111.-THE WEARING OF ORNAMENTS. 
That beauty 
Needs not the foreign aid of ornament, 
But is when unadorned adorned the most, 
is a trite observation; but with a little qualification it is worthy 
of general acceptance. Aside from the dress itself, ornaments 
should be very sparingly used—at any rate, the danger lies in 
overloading oneself, and not in using too few. A young girl, and 
especially one of a light and airy style of beauty, should never 
wear gems. A simple flower in her hair or on her bosom is 
all that good taste will permit. 
When jewels or other ornaments are worn, they should be 236 
The Arts of Beauty. 
placed where you desire the eye of the spectator to rest, leaving 
the parts to which you do not want attention called as plain 
and negative as possible. 
There is no surer sign of vulgarity than a profusion of heavy 
jewelry carried about upon the person. XVII. 
EXTERNAL INDICATIONS OF FIGURE* 
have shown not only that form corre- 
mmjm spends with character, but that each part 
sf!i-agrees with every other part and with the 
llfi1'1 figure as a whole. A practical application of this 
Pr^ncd^e enables us to judge with great accuracy, 
from the mere sight of a face or a hand, of the 
""■ physical characteristics of those parts of the person 
concealed by the dress. An oblong face, for instance, we 
know indicates the motive or active temperament (see plates 
X. and XI.), and is associated with dark, strong, and abundant 
hair; a somewhat long and tapering neck; rather broad and 
definitely marked shoulders; only a moderate fullness of bosom 
(in woman); a finely shaped waist, and rather long and slender 
limbs; while a round face is a sure index of the vital temper- 
ament (see plates XII. and XIII.), and is found in connection 
with soft and light hair; blue eyes; a clear complexion; a 
rather short neck; finely rounded shoulders; a full chest (and, 
in woman, a luxuriant development of bosom); large, but 
tapering limbs; and comparatively small feet and hands, the 
whole figure being portly in man, and soft and voluptuous in 
woman. The oval or pyriform face (see plates XIV. and XV.), 
The eye of the physiologist penetrates all disguises.—J. IT. Daniels. External Indications of Figure. 
symbolizing the dominance of the mental powers, goes with 
the high forehead, the straight nose, the intensely expressive 
eye, wavy or curling hair, rather a small frame, deficient in 
fullness, moderately rounded limbs, and a figure, as a whole, 
characterized by intellectuality and grace. 
The correspondence between the arm or the hand and the 
figure as a whole are equally perfect. “ Long-handed persons,” 
O. S. Fowler says, “have long fingers, toes, arms, legs, bodies, 
heads, and phrenological organs ; while short and broad shoul- 
dered persons are short and broad-handed, hroad-fingered, 
and broad-limbed. When the bones on the hand are promi- 
nent, all the bones are generally so, and thus of all other 
characteristics of the hand or any other part of the body. 
Hence, let a hand be thrust through a hole, and I will tell the 
general character of its owner, because if it be large or small, 
hard or soft, strong or weak, firm or flabby, coarse-grained or 
fine-grained, even or prominent, small-boned or large-boned, 
or whatever else, the whole body must be built on the same 
principle, with which brain and mentality must also corre- 
spond.”* 
Alexander Walker thus remarks upon some of the indications 
of the female figure afforded by the walk: 
“In considering the proportions of the limbs to the body— 
if, even in a young woman, the walk, though otherwise good, 
be heavy, or the fall on each foot alternately be sudden, and 
rather upon the heel, the limbs, though well formed, will be 
found to be slender, compared with the body. 
“ This conformation accompanies any great proportional de- 
velopment of the vital system; and it is frequently observable 
in the women of the Saxon population of England, as in the 
counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, etc. 
“In women of this conformation, moreover, the slightest in- 
disposition or debility is indicated by a slight vibration of the 
shoulders and upper part of the chest at every step in walking. 
• Self-Instructor. Walker’s Remarks. 
239 
“ In considering the line or direction of the limbs—if, viewed 
behind, the feet, at every step, are thrown out backward, and 
somewhat laterally, the knees are certainly much inclined in 
ward. 
“ If, viewed in front, the dress, at every step, is as it were 
gathered toward the front, and then tossed more or less to the 
opposite side, the knees are certainly too much inclined. 
“ In considering the relative size of each portion of the limbs 
—if, in the walk, there be a greater or less approach to the 
marching pace, the hip is large; for we naturally employ the 
joint which is surrounded with the most powerful muscles, 
and in any approach to the march, it is the hip-joint which is 
used, and the knee and ankle-joints which remain proportion- 
ally unemployed. 
“ If, in the walk, the tripping pace be used, as in an approach 
to walking on tiptoes, the calf is large; for it is only by the 
power of its muscles that, under the weight of the whole body, 
the foot can be extended for this purpose. 
If, in the walk, the foot be raised in a slovenly manner, 
and the heel be seen, at each step, to lift the bottom of the 
dress upward and backward, neither the hip nor the calf is 
well developed.” 
* Beauty. INDEX. 
Arm, The Perfect 34 
“ Beauty of 42 
“ How to Improve 226 
ASneid, Extract from 56 
Atavism 72 
Air, Necessity of, to the Infant... 79 
“ as a Condition of Health 175 
“ How it is Poisoned 177 
Atmospheric Influences 135 
Affections, Early Cultivation of... 85 
“ Satisfaction of 199 
Anxiety, Effects of 123 
Attitude 134 
Appetite as a Guide 182 
A. 
Page 
Configuration, Laws of 54, 62 
“ Affected by Mental 
Culture 91 
“ Affected by Civili- 
zation 114 
Cuvier on Molecular Changes 57 
Childhood 76 
“ Chief Business of 78 
“ Conditions of its Healthy 
Development 79 
Children, How to make them 
Healthy 86 
Cradles Condemned 81 
Caspar Hauser 88 
Cleanliness 82,197 
Chaucer 93 
Catholicism,lnfluence of on Beauty 105 
Conditions, Social 112 
Country, City and 116,187 
Clerks 122 
Country Girl 124 
Clergymen, 111 Health of 126 
Climate 130 
Climates of the United States 131 
Cold, Effects of 131 
Colleges Condemned 144 
Climbing 161 
Ohest, Expansion of 163 
Carriage, How to Improve 167 
Circulation, Promotion of 16S 
Coffee 190 
“ How to Prepare 193 
Cornaro, Louis 219 
Cosmetics 222 
Complexion, How to Improve ... 224 
Color, Hints on 232 
Pagic 
B. 
Body, Structure of 19 
Bones, Growth of 20 
Brain, Description of 29 
Beauty a Sign of Goodness 32 
“ Worship of 82 
“ Native Country of 131 
“ Arts of 221 
“ of Eorm 221 
“ How to Eetain 226 
Bosom 42 
“ How to Beautify 223 
Breasts 42, 2 !6 
Butchers, Health of 120 
Book-keepers 122 
Bed, Position in 147 
Balancing 160 
Back, Exercise for Strengthening. 167 
Breathing 179 
Body, its own Eule of Food 182 
Bread 187 
Butter 187 
Bathing 198 
D. 
C. 
Dryness of Air, Effects of 135 
Direct Physical Culture 140 
Dancing 156 
Dress for Exercise 162 
“ Hints on 229 
Chin 40 
Cheeks 40 
“ Eosy 225 242 
Index. 
Dark Rooms to be Avoided 180 
Diet, Hints on 184,189 
Drink, Universal 189 
Page 
Growth, Rapid, of Childhood .... 78 
Goodness of Heart and Rosy 
Cheeks 102 
Grecian Education 141 
Gymnasium, Exercises of 158 
“ for Girls 162 
Gymnast, Arm of 159 
Gymnastic Exercises, General 
Rules for 170 
Gymnastics, Yoeal 170 
Grape, Juice of 193 
l<ei 
Elizabeth of Hungary 85 
Eye, Color of 40 
“ Size of 40 
Exercise, Development Promoted 
by. 58 
“ Essential in Childhood. 82 
“ a Duty . 195 
Exercising Dress for Girls 162 
Education, Narrow and Mistaken 
Notions of 61 
“ Physical 88, 140 
“ of Infancy 84 
“ Physical Effects 0f... 89 
Embryology 64 
Epochs, Physiognomy of 93 
Ease, Effects of 114 
Erectness 149 
Electricity 180 
Eggs 188 
Excretions 194 
English Girl 223 
E. 
Human Body, Structure of. 19 
Human Figure, Proportions 0f... 86 
Head, Perfect Form of 89 
“ Changes in the Shape of.. 90 
Hair, Color of 41 
“ Curling 41 
“ To Improve 225 
“ and Beard 185 
Hands 42, 226 
Helen of Troy 47 
Heat, Effects of 131 
Humidity, “ 136 
Hermippus, How he Prolonged 
Life 213 
Hygiene, Practical 178 
Health a Rare Phenomenon 174 
“ Possible 174 
“ Conditions of 174 
H. 
F. 
Face, Profile of 89 
“ Altered by Education 90 
“ American, Improvement of 96 
“ as an Index of Moral States 99 
Feet, How Deformed 42 
Form, Always Adapted to Func- 
tion 55 
Pood of Childhood 79 
“ Rule of 182 
“ Hints on 184,189 
Franklin 95 
Fine Arts, Influence of 107 
Freedom and Beauty 114 
Farm Life, Real and Ideal 118 
Farmers, Appeal to 118 
Farmers’Wives and Daughters.. 123 
Flowers in Rooms 179 
Food 180 
“ The Body, a Rule of 182 
“ Exercise, do 184 
“ Adaptation of 183 
“ Elements of 184 
Fats and Oils 187 
Fruits as Diet 188 
Figure, External Indications of.. 237 
Intestines 28 
Infants, Spartan Treatment of ... 77 
Infancy, Training of 78 
“ Proper food of 79 
I. 
J. 
Joints 28 
K. 
Kentucky, Great Looking Men of 182 
L. 
Ligaments 23 
Lymphatics 25 
Lungs. Curious Structure of 26 
Liver, Office of 27 
Lymphatic Temperament 48 
Light Essential to Health and 
Beauty e2 
Love, the Grand Cosmetic 109 
Labor, Effects of. 114 
Laborers. In-door 121 
Literary Men 127 
Glands 26 
Q cethe, Description of 35 
Q reek Slave 38 
G. Index 
243 
Leisure, Persons of 128 
Locality 180 
Lucy, Wordsworth’s 188 
Leaping 160 
Light, Effect of 179 
Light Bath 180 
Longevity, Conditions of 209 
“ Eules for Promoting.. 211 
“ Objectional Means for 
Obtaining 218 
“ Secret of 214 
“ Increase of 218 
“ and Philosophers 219 
Life, Natural Limits of 215 
Page 
Pelvis, Structure of 21 
Plumpness, Admiration of 49 
“ How to Acquire it. .. 49 
Pre-Natal Conditions 74 
Prospective Parents, Appeal t0... 73 
“ “ Eules for... 74 
Periodicity, Law of 86 
Pagan and Christian Art 104 
Physiognomy of Sects 106 
“ Professions 117 
Physicians 127 
Persons of Leisure 128 
Plains favorable to Beauty 186 
Physical Education 140 
Pork 181 
Pies an American Abomination.. 181 
Pork and Beans 187 
Puberty 201 
Plumpness 223 
P. 
Paok 
Motive System. 20 
“ Temperament 46 
Muscles 24 
Mental System 28 
“ Temperament 50 
Man and Woman, The Perfect... 81 
“ Contrasted.... 83 
Mouth 40 
Maternal Impressions 60, 67 
Maternity, Sacredness of 125 
Mothers, Nursing, Food of SO 
“ Appeal to 208 
Maidens and Lilies 189 
Meals, Frequency of, in Childhood 81 
“ Eegularity of 81 
Mental Culture, Effects of 88 
Music, Influence of 109 
Mechanics, Operative 121 
Manufacturers 121,123 
Merchants 122 
Maryland 132 
Mountain Life 134 
Mental Vigor. 175 
Mince Pies 181 
Minerals, Nutritive 184 
Milk 187 
Meat • 187 
Menses 204 
Marriage, Time for 205 
Mortality, Premature 207 
Married Women 234 
M. 
E. 
Eachel, Description of 61 
Eegularity of Meals. 81 
Eeligion, Physical Effects of.. 103, 111 
Eevolutions 113 
Eestlessness, Cause of. 186 
Eunning 152 
Bowing 155 
Eiding 155 
Bound Shoulders, How to Correct 169 
Best 196 
8. 
Skeleton, Beauty of 21 
Stomach 28 
Sense, Organs of 29 
Shoulders 41 
Skin as an Index of Health 42 
Sub-Temperaments f2 
Soul, Connection of, with the Body 55 
“ of the World 56 
Statues in Bed-chambers 72,108 
Spartan Custom 77 
Sleep of Infancy 81 
Sects, Physiognomy of 106 
Savage, Physical Characteristics of 112 
South Carolina Planter 115 
Shoemakers 121 
Servants, Health of 126 
Southerners 188 
Schools, American 142 
Standing 148 
Sitting 149 
Skating 168 
Swimming 168 
Stomach, Abuse of 181 
Stimulation 19°, 194 
Sleep 196 
N. 
Nutritive System 24 
Neck 41 
Nmvi Materni 59 
Nurses, Diet of 80 
New England Farmer 115 
Northerners 133 
Natural rcenery 137 
New Zealanders, Health of 174 
O. 
Occupations 112 
“ Classified 117 
Ornaments 235 244 
Index 
T. 
Page 
Y. 
Pagh 
Thorax 22 
Temperaments, Classification of.. 44 
“ Combinations of. 52 
Temperament, Motive 46 
“ American 46 
“ Lymphatic (so-called) 48 
“ Vital 48 
“ Mental 60 
“ Nervous (so-called).. 52 
“ Change of 58, 57, 91 
Transmissions of Qualities 65, 69 
“ Laws of 66, 74 
Transfigurations 101 
Theater 110 
Turnvereins 110 
Tailors 121 
Tedium Vitse 129 
Throwing 161 
Triangle, Exercise with 164 
Tea and Coifee 190 
Towels 198 
Vital System 28 
“ Temperament 48 
Venus de Medici 87 
Ventilation, Lack of 121 
Virginia 132 
Vegetarianism 186 
W. 
Waist, Natural form of 88 
Warmth, Essential to Infancy 82 
Woman, Education for ..... 97 
“ Cause of her Deteriora- 
tion 124 
Womanhood 201 
West Point 143 
Walking 150, 288 
Wrestling 161 
Water as a Universal Drink 189 
Wine 193 
Walk as an Indication of Figure. 238 
U. 
Y. 
Ugliness and Satan Synonymous. 101 
Truthfulness, How to Retain