The Physical Training of Girls : Part 5

Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles
by C. W. Saleeby, M.D.

(Page 12 of 28)

Worry combines to work its effects with those of excessive mental application, excessive use of the eyes at short distances, and defective open-air amusement. The whole examination system is of course to be condemned, but most especially when its details are so devised as to pres. Therefore hardly upon girlhood at this critical and most to be protected period. Many years ago Herbert Spencer protested that we must acquaint ourselves with the laws of life, since these underlie all the activities of living beings. The time is now at hand when we should discover that education is a problem in applied biology, and that the so-called educator, whether he works destruction from some Board of Education or elsewhere, who knows and cares nothing about the laws of the life of the being with whom he deals, is simply an ignorant and dangerous quack.

What has been said about the reaction against excess in the physical education of girls applies very forcibly to excess in their mental education. We are undoubtedly coming upon a period when more and more will be heard of the injurious consequences of such ill-timed preparation for stupid examinations as has been referred to; and there will be not a few to sigh for the return to the bad old days which a certain type of mind always calls good. Here, again, we must find the golden mean, recognizing that the danger lies in excess, and especially in ill-timed excess. We should further discover that if we desire a girl to become a woman, and not an indescribable, we must provide for her a kind of higher education which should take into account the object at which we aim. It will be found that there are womanly concerns, of profound importance to a girl and therefore to an empire, which demand no less of the highest mental and moral qualities than any of the subjects in a man's curriculum, and the pursuit of which in reason does not compromise womanhood, but only ratifies and empowers it.

Muscles worth Developing. - When men and women are carefully compared, it is found that women, muscularly weaker as a whole, are most notably so as regards the arms, the muscles of respiration, and the muscles of the back. The muscles of the legs, and especially of the thighs, are relatively stronger. In these facts we can find some practical guidance. The muscles of all the limbs may be left comparatively out of account; whether naturally weak or naturally strong they are of subordinate importance. On the other hand, it is always worth while to cultivate the muscles of respiration, as it is always worth while to keep the heart in good order. Again, the weakness of the muscles of the back, and more especially in the case of the growing girl, is not a thing to be accepted as readily as the weakness of the biceps and the forearm muscles. Various observers find a proportion of between 85 per cent. and 90 per cent. of those suffering from lateral curvature of the spine to be girls, the great majority of these cases occurring between the ages of ten and fifteen.

Everywhere it is our duty to prevent such cases, and everywhere physical training will find only too abundant opportunities for endeavoring to correct them. It may be doubted perhaps whether we may rightly follow Havelock Ellis in attributing woman's liability to backache to the relative weakness of the muscles of the back, for we know how often this symptom depends upon not muscular but internal causes peculiar to woman. On the other hand, we may certainly follow Havelock Ellis when he says, regarding this lateral curvature of the spine, from which so many girls and women suffer: "There can be no doubt that defective muscular development of the back, occurring at the age of maximum development, and due to the conventional restraints on exercises involving the body, and also to the use of stays, which hamper the freedom of such movements, is here a factor of very great importance." We should not here concern ourselves with the details of practice, but the principle is to be laid down that perhaps second only in importance to the right development of the heart and the muscles of respiration is that of the muscles of the back.

Always, however, we are apt to judge by the obvious and to value it unduly. Nature makes the biceps and the muscles of the forearm naturally the weakest in woman compared with man, but it is just the bending of the elbow that makes a good show on a horizontal bar or rope; and so we devote too much time to the training of these muscles in our girls, with the results which make such creditable exhibitions at the end of the session, while we forget the muscles of the back, the right development of which is far more valuable, but does not lend itself to display.

In this connection it is to be added last, but not least, that special importance attaches in woman to those muscles which one may perhaps call the muscles of motherhood. It is common experience amongst physicians to find the appropriate muscularity defective at childbirth in women the muscles of whose limbs may have been very highly developed. Therefore Dr. Havelock Ellis, amongst other evidence, quotes that of a physician, who says: "In regard to this interesting and suggestive question, it does seem a fact that women who exercise all their muscles persistently meet with increased difficulties in parturition. It would certainly seem that excessive development of the muscular system is unfavorable to maternity. I hear from instructors in physical training, both in the United States and in England, of excessively tedious and painful confinements among their fellows - two or three cases in each instance only, but this within the knowledge of a single individual among his friends. I have also several such reports from the circus - perhaps exceptions. I look upon this as a not impossible result of muscular exertion in women, the development of muscle, muscular attachments, and bony frame leading to approximation to the male."

In his lectures ten years ago, the distinguished obstetrician, Sir Halliday Croom, now professor of Midwifery in the University of Edinburgh, used to criticize cycling on this score, not as regards its development of the muscles of the lower limbs, but as tending towards local rigidity unfavorable to childbirth. It may be doubted, perhaps, whether longer and wider experience of cycling by women warrants this criticism, but it is probably worth noting.

Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co., New York.
Copyright 1911 by Mitchell Kennerley.