Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/248

242 often due to late rising; if the girl has not time enough to dress and to eat, it is not the dressing that is hurried.

With the usual five-hour high-school session the girl needs at recess a proper luncheon. If the school has a lunch counter where only suitable food is provided, then it is well, but in case the luncheon comes from home the teacher often wonders whether the mothers are accessory to the mince and lemon pies and the fruit cakes that make the daughters unfit for study. At the end of the long session the girl comes home with little appetite or power of digestion. In a working-man's family dinner was served more than an hour before, and the plateful of food that has been kept warm for the daughter is hardly palatable; probably she makes her meal chiefly out of the dessert. It is tremendously worth while for the mother to preside personally at this meal of her daughter and always to have tempting, nourishing and easily digestible food ready for her when she comes home from school.

The blame for a high-school girl's dyspepsia is often attributed to the one-session system; and under that system a bad order of things is easy, as we have seen. On the other hand, with one session very much better conditions are possible than with two if the best use is made of the time out of school. It ought to be possible for the greater part of the pupils to work under better conditions at home than in most schoolrooms; and when they are in school until four there is little time for being out of doors in the sunlight during most of the school year.

The girl who is insufficiently nourished craves abnormal things and eats sweets and sours in unsuitable proportions. With all these sins against her digestion much of her food is not assimilated. Very often the waste is not properly eliminated; the girl does not realize that this condition is a menace to her health and so her whole system is poisoned. Constipation is a disease and the cause of many others; it is entirely incompatible with perfect health or good work in school.

At least one strong article has been written—by a physician—to maintain that women's mode of dress is a sufficient cause of all their physical distress. Undoubtedly it has been responsible for great injury, though present conditions are much improved, so far as tight or long clothing is concerned. We appreciate, however, that women are still handicapped when we see how their ordinary clothing hampers them in gymnastic work. Just at present school girls expose themselves to the cold in a way unsuitable to this climate. Even in winter they go to school bareheaded, in lingerie waists with light undergarments, cotton hose and low shoes. The toughening process is valuable to a certain extent, but such exposure as this means an expensive strain upon vitality. School girls are notably careless of wet clothing and wet feet. Mothers have difficulty in persuading them to overshoes and rain-coats, and teachers find them unwilling to go home when skirts and stockings