Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/106

98 for prudence and care in these things is to be found in the fact, that, if no regard be paid to them, the health will be undermined, or destroyed altogether.

In “The Young Lady’s Friend,” a most excellent book, written by Mrs. Farrar, there is a chapter on the “Means of Preserving Health,” which we would particularly recommend to the attention of every young girl. By a careful perusal of that chapter, she will be able so fully to comprehend the laws of health, and to see the reason why an abuse of those laws necessarily brings disease, as to require no further argument from relatives and friends, to induce prudence and carefulness on her part.

Where a hereditary predisposition to consumption exists, as it always does, if that disease have manifested itself in either parent, the necessity for carefulness in regard to health is of more vital importance than if such predisposition did not exist. Abuse of health in others may lay the foundation for diseases that only entail suffering in after life; but abuse of health in these is almost sure to lead to premature death.

By some it is supposed and asserted, that whoever is born of consumptive parents will be sure to die of consumption; and that a large