DISEASES OF WOMEN

CHAPTER XXIX

DISEASES OF WOMEN

Importance of Diseases of Women--The Beginning of Female Disease--Ailing Women Are Inefficient--As Home-makers, as Wife, as Mother--Few Ailing Women Become Pregnant--The Chief Cause of Female Disease--The Existence of the Average Mother--Female Diseases Are Avoidable--The Story of the Wife--Women Who Don't Want Children--Abuse of the Procreative Function--What the Woman with Female Disease Should Do--Cancer in Women--Cancer of the Breast--Cancer of the Womb--What Every Woman Should Know About Cancer--Change of Life--The Menopause--The Climacteric--The Average Age at Which the Change of Life Occurs--Symptoms of the Change of Life--Importance of a Correct Diagnosis--Danger Signals of the Change of Life--Conduct During the Change of Life.

No conscientious physician can give thought to this subject without being profoundly stirred. It may justly be said that all types of disease affecting the general health, the happiness, and the efficiency of the people are equally important, and should elicit the same degree and quality of kindly consideration. For many reasons this is not so, as I will endeavor to show. The dominating reason which renders diseases of women an exception to this rule may be mentioned here, however, so that the reader will keep its supreme significance prominently in mind while considering the subject in its various other aspects. "Diseases of women" rank first as a eugenic problem. They have a direct and far-reaching influence on posterity. They affect the environment of the home and thereby the health and the efficiency of all concerned.

The diseases which form the basis of the statements in this article are as follows: leucorrhea, displacements, or malpositions of the internal organs; lacerations, ulcers, tumors, s.e.xual incompetency, and the venereal complications.

It is not possible or desirable to tabulate the symptoms which result from these conditions. They would not convey to the average individual a just picture or an intelligent summary of the life of a victim of these ailments. An actual description of the life of a patient will be more effective because it will depict the incidental domestic atmosphere in which most of these patients live.

THE BEGINNING OF FEMALE DISEASE.--When a woman first begins to feel the effects of so-called "female weakness" she is conscious of not feeling "fit." She wonders what the matter is. She may not have actual pain at this time, simply the consciousness that "she is not what she used to be." Her work seems harder and more tedious, she worries without cause, she begins the day with less energy and ambition than she used to, her disposition is more uneven, more irritable and she tires easier and is more willing to retire earlier than formerly. After a time she has more or less undefined pains. It may be an occasional headache, or backache, or she may have various severe neuralgic twinges. She gets nervous and moody; her appet.i.te is not good and she is troubled with constipation. A little later, the general condition growing worse, her nervous system suffers most. So she drifts into neurasthenia and has fits of crying and periods of melancholia. She is more irritable, more impatient, more dissatisfied with herself, her family, and her friends. She loses faith in herself, in the future, and even in her religion, and she may contemplate self-destruction.

There are thousands and thousands of just such women in the world, and the pity is that many of them are mothers. It is surely self-evident that these women must be failures as efficient factors in many ways.

NEUROPATHIC ANCESTRY[C]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

From a first glance at the chart it would appear that Daniel was an accidental case of feeble-mindedness. His progenitors were, however, decidedly neuropathic. The presence of apoplexy, paralysis, alcoholism in a family should be watched for with vigilance because of their possible effect upon the nervous system of the offspring.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Parents would do well to scrutinize the man who "led a fast life" before allowing him marry their daughter. The world would be shocked if it knew how many men with disease enter into conjugal relations. David's father had syphilis. David's feeble-mindedness was probably only one of the awful results.

[Footnote C: "Feeble-mindedness; Its Causes and Consequences," G.o.ddard, The Macmillan Company.]

AILING WOMEN ARE INEFFICIENT

FIRST OF ALL AS HOME-MAKERS.--No woman can possibly be expected to successfully conduct a home if she is not enjoying a reasonable degree of good health. A home inefficiently supervised is an instrument for evil. It engenders discord and discontent, and it is lacking in the spirit which is essential to the cultivation of good-fellowship and which encourages harmony.

AS WIFE.--Most men resent the burden and the discomfort and the expense of an ailing wife, no matter how well-intentioned they may be. It is a failing of the male species to be cursed with the inability to understand any type of nervousness in a wife. Being inexplicable to him he attributes the symptoms to an evil imagination or to a bad disposition. He believes he is being imposed upon and proceeds to resent it. Many homes are rendered permanently miserable and unhappy by a failure to comprehend the real source of the trouble and to apply the remedy. Being inefficient as a home-maker the wife is not able to carry out her part as housekeeper. The home atmosphere is wrecked, the husband seeks comfort and congenial fellowship elsewhere. His efficiency is compromised and his earning capacity interfered with.

AS MOTHER.--Anyone familiar with the exacting obligations and responsibilities of motherhood can well appreciate that normal health is an essential requisite to its successful consummation. The success of motherhood depends upon the proper exercise of many diversified qualities, and those in turn primarily depend upon an adequate degree of physical fitness, otherwise failure is certain to ensue. A woman, therefore, cannot exercise her function of motherhood if she is a neurasthenic.

Inasmuch as it has been proved that the regeneration of the race is dependent upon the maintenance of mentally and physically fit mothers, any condition that interferes with this standard is contrary to the eugenic requirement. Children sent out into the word unfit physically or morally are factors detrimental to the best interests of society and to their own progress and prosperity. A mother rendered incapable through sickness is, therefore, a menace to the home and to the eugenic promise.

FEW AILING WOMEN BECOME PREGNANT.--Nature fortunately seems to apprehend the true condition because few of these women become pregnant. This suggests an inquiry into the cause, or causes, underlying this unfortunate situation.

Are women responsible for these ailments?

Most married women whose health is broken down by some disease peculiar to their s.e.x refer the commencement of their suffering to a confinement or premature birth. The large majority of those women whose health is affected, because of some "female weakness," suffer from a displacement, or malposition of the internal organs, and as this condition is most frequently a product of maternity, there would seem to be some reasonable degree of justification for the a.s.sumption that the wrecked health is the result of a legitimate physiological act, and consequently a natural phenomenon. This is not, however, altogether true. A displacement is not, under any circ.u.mstances, a natural process. It is the result of causes which are avoidable. Most of them are the penalties imposed by nature because of the infraction of her laws. We will not consider those causes which have their beginning in wrong methods of dress or conduct during the years prior to maternity. Many such cases exist, but they are too few in number to justify consideration at this time. They are frequent enough, however, to suggest to mothers that it is always wise to keep a close watch over the tendencies and conduct of their daughters.

THE CHIEF CAUSE OF FEMALE DISEASES.--When a woman has given birth to a child her womb begins to contract and in a very brief s.p.a.ce of time will resume its normal position, provided nothing interferes with the process. Nature will do exactly what is right if she is permitted to work in her own way. In another part of this book I have explained why it takes time for the recently pregnant womb to contract to its normal size. There is a 600 per cent. increase in volume to be got rid of by absorption. This takes time and nature can not be hurried without "taking chances." This is just where the "cause" exists which we have been looking for. Women do take chances.

Every woman should stay in bed for at least three weeks after confinement and should spend another three weeks convalescing before she a.s.sumes any domestic duty. This is a reasonable proposition when one considers the actual situation. There is an enormous amount of readjustment to be undertaken, and there is no way of hastening this process. There is, however, a way to a.s.sist nature and to prevent mistakes. That way is to remain in bed a sufficient length of time to allow proper contraction of the womb. While the ligaments and muscles are still lax, to not undertake any muscular effort that will overtax or overstrain them,--a condition that favors displacement by weakening the support of the womb. A woman cannot understand why she should stay in bed when she feels well enough to get up. It is, however, unjust to censure the s.e.x on this account. I am convinced the fault lies with the medical profession who do not take time to explain, in language which a woman may understand, the important reasons why they should stay longer in bed despite the fact that they do feel well.

THE EXISTENCE OF THE AVERAGE MOTHER.--In considering this subject it is necessary to give some serious thought to the domestic and financial circ.u.mstances of the thousands and thousands of average mothers. Every observing, thinking person knows that the average mother's existence is more or less of a never-ending tragedy. Physically, mentally, and spiritually, they are victims of unalterable economic and social exigencies. They are compelled, because of ignorance, to live an unsanitary and unhygienic existence. The care of home and children, and maybe the unappreciative and inconsiderate attention of a careless and vindictive husband, add to the incidental worries,--fraying her nerves and disposition,--of the ordinary routine of a cheerless, hopeless life.

Add to this experience the enormous drain of frequent child bearing upon her vitality, and we have a picture with which every physician is familiar.

Can such a woman possibly observe the essential rules of the hygiene of pregnancy? Has she the time and the means to build up her reserve energy and strength to competently undertake the duties of maternity or motherhood? Is she physically fit to give birth to a child? After it is all over can she devote the time to permit nature to do her share of the physical readjustment? Can she afford, or will she be permitted to remain in bed long enough to allow conditions to be favorable to getting up without "taking a chance"? Inasmuch as her muscular tone is poor, her strength depleted, her vitality wasted, her ambition and hope at a low ebb, nature should be given a longer time, under the most favorable hygienic and domestic conditions, to help in the problem of readjustment, because her whole future, as an efficient machine, as wife, as mother, as home-maker, and as an economic individuality, is dependent upon how this crisis is met. This is the most important problem which an enlightened civilization has before it. It is the supreme eugenic task, and it is the most pressing and the most vital question for statesmen to solve. No man can deny that the permanency of the state is dependent upon the function of motherhood, yet motherhood is conducted by unskilled labor--labor, the quality of which no business would tolerate. We also know that the health of the workman has become an economic problem. Capital finds that labor is of better quality, and consequently more remunerative in every sense, if the environment is conducive to happiness and health. Yet motherhood, the most important labor in the world, upon which the very existence of the state depends, in addition to being performed by unskilled labor, is undertaken by physically unfit and frequently unwilling laborers, in an environment which is a disgrace to civilization and which cannot be duplicated in the whole realm of the brute world. This is the quality of labor, the products of which const.i.tute the state.

If anyone is disposed to believe that this is an over-drawn picture, let him study the facts brought out in the recent patent medicine investigation. It was found that one small, unimportant, quack medical company had under treatment at one time (the day the government closed it up) 200,000 women, suffering exclusively from female diseases. How many similar cases must there be to support the large advertising concerns, whose tentacles reach to the remotest corners of the country and who limit their activity and cater to "diseases of women" only. Let him also give some thought to the fact that no specialty in the whole field of legitimate medical practice has grown with such enormous strides, or is as remunerative to the ordinary physician as the department of "diseases of women."

FEMALE DISEASES ARE AVOIDABLE.--If, as has been a.s.serted, the great majority of these ailments are traceable to causes which are avoidable, what is the remedy? In one word it is "Enlightenment." We must educate the ordinary mother who is so busy over her wash tubs and babies that she has no time to seek information upon subject which she doesn't even know exist, who does not even know how to feed her baby as well as the scrubbiest cat does her kitten, who does not know what eugenics means and is interested in it even less. We must stop limiting our talks to theorizing in clubs and societies. We must carry the tidings to the firesides of those hundreds of thousands of women who would listen and act, but who do not know what to do or how to correct their faults.

There is another feature of this subject which should be recalled in this connection. It has already been gone into in detail in the article on eugenics. There are many thousands of women who are compelled to fight the battle of life, upon whom an unjust disease has been grafted, which is sapping their strength and vitality, and which they do not appreciate or understand. Husbands infect wives unwittingly, wreck their const.i.tutions, blast their hope of ever having a child, and then heap upon them abuse for an inability for which they are themselves directly responsible. Many homes are desecrated in this way and the real culprit is never suspected. Many women, who begin their married life under the most auspicious conditions so far as physical fitness or temperamental quality is concerned, have their health, and happiness, and success utterly ruined, and after spending a miserable, wretched existence, have their hope of maternity forever blasted on the operating table. The story of "the wife" has never been told. It is G.o.d's riddle.

WOMEN WHO DON'T WANT CHILDREN.--Sometimes the woman is at fault. Many young wives begin married life with the intention of not having a child for a year or two. They don't want to be tied down too soon. They want some fun themselves. They are willing to become the legal mistress of a man, but they are not willing to a.s.sume the responsibilities of married life. It is difficult to understand the ethics of this type of morality.

I have always given these young wives credit with simply not knowing what they were doing. Either their education or their common sense is lamentably deficient, or what is still worse, their mother was the wrong kind of a woman. If these unfortunate young wives have no regard for the cultivation of a good conscience, they should at least have some regard for their own health. From a purely selfish standpoint,--the standpoint of efficiency and success,--one would imagine these women would be unwilling to risk their whole future physical welfare on the chance of immunity--and it is a small chance.

ABUSE OF THE PROCREATIVE FUNCTION.--In order to carry out this programme, various means are brought into requisition. In many cases I have known the wife has compelled the husband to wear devices which rendered conception impossible. This is a highly reprehensible procedure. If continued for any length of time it will seriously affect the husband's nervous system and general health, as this act is simply a form of self-abuse. Any husband who will tolerate such imposition is beginning married life wrong. He will pay a high price for his complacency. Any woman who suggests or acquiesces in such an arrangement is a moral degenerate and is absolutely unworthy of ever becoming a mother.

Some women buy expensive and fantastic syringes and proceed to abuse themselves with strong antiseptic solutions. This will result in killing the sensitiveness of the terminal nerves and end in depriving themselves of the pleasure with which a wise Providence endowed the procreative act. If the element of s.e.xual incompetency enters the home of a young couple, it is the beginning of the end and each chapter of the story will be a worse h.e.l.l than the one just ended. The wise husband will see that its cause will not be tolerated or begun in his family.

If pregnancy should unwittingly occur they do not hesitate to adopt drastic means to "bring themselves around." They will procure some prescription which may have gone the rounds as a "marvel" but which always fortunately fails when they need it most. Thus they subject their system to the shock of violent medication and lay up for themselves in the future untold miseries. If these means fail, they go to "a woman whom they know" who "brings them around." If these young wives only knew what they were doing they could not be bought at any price to submit to such surgical tragedies. The least probable result will be that when the time arrives and circ.u.mstances are opportune to have a baby, and when it is their dearest wish to be a mother, they will discover that they no longer possess the ability to conceive. Many homes have been rendered childless in just this way. You cannot violate the laws of nature without paying the penalty in some way, and it is usually a sad reckoning.

WHAT THE WOMAN WITH FEMALE DISEASE SHOULD DO.--To those wives who are suffering with "female weakness," or who are in poor health without apparent or known cause, I would strongly advise a visit to their family physician or to an expert in diseases of women. Tell him exactly how you feel and submit to a thorough examination. Most of the diseases of women are readily curable, and if treated right all the symptoms which have rendered life miserable will disappear. It may be stated with the strongest emphasis, however, that no treatment from an advertising concern, or any patent medicine ever made, will in any sense cure any of these ailments. Every cent invested in any of these nostrums is money wasted. Medicine by the mouth is never necessary to affect a cure of the actual ailment. A physician will doubtless prescribe a tonic for your general rundown condition. But even this would totally fail if the cause of the ill health was not removed, and this necessitates an examination and special local treatment. For any advertising concern to a.s.sert that it can tell what ails a patient by simply filling out a symptom blank is utter nonsense. It is worse. It is obtaining money under false pretenses, and should be punishable by imprisonment at hard labor for a long term.

CANCER IN WOMEN

My only object in referring to this disease is to direct the attention of women to its symptoms.

The only cure for cancer at the present time is the knife. If the disease can be reached it can be cured, if taken in hand early.

In women, cancer occurs most frequently in the breast and in the womb.

CANCER OF THE BREAST.--Of all the tumors which affect the breast, cancer is the most frequent. Any tumor in the breast of a woman forty years of age or more is quite likely to be a cancer. A tumor (or lump) which has remained small for years and then begins to grow rapidly has changed its type and become cancerous. Many such tumors change in this way during the "change of life." Any tumor of the breast, at any age, which remains despite effort to dissipate it should be removed by operation. A physician is not justified in a.s.suring a woman that a lump in the breast is harmless. It should be cut into and examined to positively decide its character. Early operation of tumors of the breast has greatly reduced the percentage of deaths from cancer.

CANCER OF THE WOMB.--Occasional slight hemorrhages becoming more frequent, and later more abundant and offensive, const.i.tute one of the first symptoms of cancer of the womb. Between the actual bleedings there is a discharge resembling dish-water. This discharge has a foul odor.

Pain is as a rule a late symptom. Sometimes a severe pain extending into the hip or abdomen is an early symptom but it is very infrequent. Every woman over thirty who has a persistent leucorrhea, or any irregularity of the menstrual function, should be examined for cancer.

WHAT EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW ABOUT CANCER.--Inasmuch as cancer is curable if taken early, every woman should take steps to be on the safe side.

If cancer is not taken early, it is certain death. A very large number die who could have been saved.