Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/113

Rh female sex, that the instances are becoming rare, that the daughter of a mother who has died of consumption attains her thirtieth year. Too frequently she sinks into the grave ere she has passed more than a few summers beyond the bright period of womanhood. But this is by no means a necessary consequence. If the present generation of young persons, constitutionally liable to the disease in question, would successfully strive to keep it from developing itself in them, they would transmit to their offspring a predisposition to the disease in a less active form; and if they would, in turn, be equally as prudent as their parents, they might transmit the tendency in a still less active form to their offspring, so that, in a few generations, this destructive foe of the young, the pure, and the beautiful, would no longer occupy its present prominent place in our catalogue of diseases.

If any of our young readers can see the importance of the subject, viewed in this light, they cannot but feel more deeply than ever the duty that rests upon them to preserve their health for the sake of the happiness of others, and the general well-being of society. The consequences arising from abuse of health does not always rest with an individual; and a knowledge of this, if