Young Woman's Guide to Excellence

<h5 id="id00759">DOSING AND DRUGGING.</h5> <p id="id00760" style="margin-top: 2em">Tendency of young women to dosing and drugging. "Nervousness." Qualms of the stomach. Eating between our meals—its mischiefs. Evils of direct dosing. What organs are injured. Confectionery. The danger from quacks and quackery.</p> <p id="id00761" style="margin-top: 2em">Fallen as human nature—our physical nature with the rest—now is, there are seasons in the lives of almost all of us, when we are either ill, or fear we shall be so. And young women, as well as others, have their seasons of debility, and their fears, and even their sick days. They have their colds, their coughs, their sick headaches, their indigestions, and their consumptions. Above all—and more frequently by far than almost any thing else—they have those undefinable and indescribable feelings of ennui, which, for want of a better name, are called, in their various forms, "nervousness."</p> <p id="id00762">When the unpleasant sensations to which I have just alluded, are referred to the region of the stomach, and only produce a few qualms, young women are not, in general, so apt to take medicine, as to eat something to keep down their bad feelings—as a bit of seed-cake, a little fruit, some cloves or cinnamon, or a piece of sugar.</p> <p id="id00763">This, though better than to take medicine, is yet a very bad practice; for although momentary relief is secured in this way, it never fails to increase the unpleasant sensations in the end. I ought to say somewhere—and I know of no better place than this—that the habit of eating between our regular meals, even the smallest thing whatever; is of very mischievous tendency; and this for several reasons. First—the stomach needs its seasons of entire rest; but those persons who eat between their meals seldom give any rest to their stomachs, except during the night. Secondly—eating things in this way injures the general appetite. Thirdly—the habit is apt to increase in strength, and is difficult to break. Fourthly—it does not afford relief, except for a very short time. On the contrary, as I have already intimated, it increases the trouble in the end.</p> <p id="id00764">This eating of such simple things, I have said, is quite bad enough; but there are errors which are worse. Such is the habit of taking an extra cup of tea or coffee—extra, either as respects the number of cups or the strength. Now tea and coffee-and sometimes either of them—are very apt to afford, like eating a little food, a temporary relief. Indeed, the sufferer often gains so long a respite from her sufferings, that the narcotic beverage which she takes is supposed to be the very medicine needed, and the very one adapted to her case. The like erroneous conclusion is often made after using, with the same apparent good effect, certain hot herb teas. Yet, I repeat it, such medicinal mixtures usually—perhaps I should say always—aggravate the complaint in the end, by deranging still more the powers and functions of the stomach, and debilitating still more the cerebral and nervous system.</p> <p id="id00765">Different and various are the external applications made to the head, in these circumstances; but all, usually, with the same success; they only produce a little temporary relief. The same may be said of the use of smelling bottles—containing, as I believe they usually do, ammonia or hartshorn, cologne water, camphor, &amp;c. The manner in which these operate to produce mischief, is, however, very different from that of the former. They irritate the nasal membrane, and dry it, if they do not slowly destroy its sensibility. They also, in some way, affect seriously the tender brain. In any event, they ought seldom to be used by the sick or the well. Nor is this all. They are <i>inhaled</i>—to irritate and injure the lining membrane of the lungs.</p> <p id="id00766">Trifling as it may seem to many, I never find that a young woman keeps a cologne bottle in her dressing room, or a smelling bottle about her—or perfumes her clothes—or is in the habit of eating, every now and then, a little coriander, or fennel, or cloves, or cinnamon—without trembling for her safety. Persisting long in this habit, she will as inevitably injure her brain and nervous system, her lungs or her stomach—ay, and her teeth too—as she continues the habit. I never knew a young woman who had used any of these things, year after year, for a long series of years, whose system was not already suffering therefrom; and if I were fond of giving or receiving challenges, I should not hesitate to challenge the whole world to produce a single instance of the kind. In the very nature of things it cannot be. Such persons may tell us they are well, when we make an attack upon their habits; but take them when off their guard, and we hear, at times, quite a different story.</p> <p id="id00767">In regard to the daily, or even the occasional use of the stronger drugs of the apothecary's shop—whether this <i>shop</i> is found in the family or elsewhere—I would fain hope many of our young women may claim an entire immunity. It seems to me to be enough, that they should spoil their breath, their skin, their stomachs and their nerves, with perfumes, aromatic seeds and spices, confectionary, and the like, without adding thereto the more active poisons—as laudanum, camphor, picra, antimony, &amp;c.</p> <p id="id00768">The mention of the word confectionary, in the last paragraph, brings to my mind a congregated host of evils which befall young women, as the legitimate consequences of its use. Some may suppose that the class of young women for whom I am writing, have little to do with confectionary; that they have risen above it. Would that it were so! But that it is not, many a teacher of young ladies' boarding schools, female seminaries, &amp;c.—to say nothing of parents—might abundantly testify.</p> <p id="id00769">That they are very often the dupes of the quacks and quackery with which our age abounds—or at least, that they take many of the pills, and cough drops, and bitters, and panaceas of the day—I will not believe. Much as they err to their own destruction, I trust they have not yet sunk so low as this.</p> <h2 id="id00770" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XXIX.</h2> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />