Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/44

 condition exists, grace in motion is impossible, and personal beauty of all kinds is endangered. Three-fourths of those American women who grow old, fade, and wither before their time, owe their premature age to neglected or ill-treated disease of this character. Therefore they should make every effort by a careful hygiene to avoid them.

We have recently been consulted by several ladies from the Southern States for a peculiar condition of the system which they say is not unusual there, and which they attribute to the mental anxiety, the prostration of hopes, the losses, and the change in social condition, brought about by our civil war. This is a general relaxation of the muscular system. They were not emaciated, nor did they suffer any pain, or appear in bad health. But the muscles were soft and ill-defined, the gait shambling and irregular, and the motions awkward, and made with disproportionate effort of the will. They had taken quantities of the usual tonics without avail, and were almost in despair. We prescribed the daily use of electricity, medicated douche baths, warm and cold, friction, a regulated diet, and no medicine. These means, together with change of air, resulted satisfactorily in all from whom we have since heard.

Besides such general causes of relaxed and stooping figures, there are others which come strictly within the province of medicine. There are various diseases,