DOSING AND DRUGGING.
Tendency of young women to dosing and drugging. "Nervousness." Qualms
of the stomach. Eating between our meals--its mischiefs. Evils of
direct dosing. What organs are injured. Confectionery. The danger from
quacks and quackery.
Fallen as human nature--our physical nature with the rest--now is,
there are seasons in the lives of almost all of us, when we are either
ill, or fear we shall be so. And young women, as well as others, have
their seasons of debility, and their fears, and even their sick days.
They have their colds, their coughs, their sick headaches, their
indigestions, and their consumptions. Above all--and more frequently by
far than almost any thing else--they have those undefinable and
indescribable feelings of ennui, which, for want of a better name, are
called, in their various forms, "nervousness."
When the unpleasant sensations to which I have just alluded, are
referred to the region of the stomach, and only produce a few qualms,
young women are not, in general, so apt to take medicine, as to eat
something to keep down their bad feelings--as a bit of seed-cake, a
little fruit, some cloves or cinnamon, or a piece of sugar.
This, though better than to take medicine, is yet a very bad practice;
for although momentary relief is secured in this way, it never fails to
increase the unpleasant sensations in the end. I ought to say
somewhere--and I know of no better place than this--that the habit of
eating between our regular meals, even the smallest thing whatever; is
of very mischievous tendency; and this for several reasons. First--the
stomach needs its seasons of entire rest; but those persons who eat
between their meals seldom give any rest to their stomachs, except
during the night. Secondly--eating things in this way injures the
general appetite. Thirdly--the habit is apt to increase in strength,
and is difficult to break. Fourthly--it does not afford relief, except
for a very short time. On the contrary, as I have already intimated, it
increases the trouble in the end.
This eating of such simple things, I have said, is quite bad enough;
but there are errors which are worse. Such is the habit of taking an
extra cup of tea or coffee--extra, either as respects the number of
cups or the strength. Now tea and coffee-and sometimes either of
them--are very apt to afford, like eating a little food, a temporary
relief. Indeed, the sufferer often gains so long a respite from her
sufferings, that the narcotic beverage which she takes is supposed to
be the very medicine needed, and the very one adapted to her case. The
like erroneous conclusion is often made after using, with the same
apparent good effect, certain hot herb teas. Yet, I repeat it, such
medicinal mixtures usually--perhaps I should say always--aggravate the
complaint in the end, by deranging still more the powers and functions
of the stomach, and debilitating still more the cerebral and nervous
system.
Different and various are the external applications made to the head,
in these circumstances; but all, usually, with the same success; they
only produce a little temporary relief. The same may be said of the use
of smelling bottles--containing, as I believe they usually do, ammonia
or hartshorn, cologne water, camphor, &c. The manner in which these
operate to produce mischief, is, however, very different from that of
the former. They irritate the nasal membrane, and dry it, if they do
not slowly destroy its sensibility. They also, in some way, affect
seriously the tender brain. In any event, they ought seldom to be used
by the sick or the well. Nor is this all. They are _inhaled_--to
irritate and injure the lining membrane of the lungs.
Trifling as it may seem to many, I never find that a young woman keeps
a cologne bottle in her dressing room, or a smelling bottle about
her--or perfumes her clothes--or is in the habit of eating, every now
and then, a little coriander, or fennel, or cloves, or
cinnamon--without trembling for her safety. Persisting long in this
habit, she will as inevitably injure her brain and nervous system, her
lungs or her stomach--ay, and her teeth too--as she continues the
habit. I never knew a young woman who had used any of these things,
year after year, for a long series of years, whose system was not
already suffering therefrom; and if I were fond of giving or receiving
challenges, I should not hesitate to challenge the whole world to
produce a single instance of the kind. In the very nature of things it
cannot be. Such persons may tell us they are well, when we make an
attack upon their habits; but take them when off their guard, and we
hear, at times, quite a different story.
In regard to the daily, or even the occasional use of the stronger
drugs of the apothecary's shop--whether this _shop_ is found in the
family or elsewhere--I would fain hope many of our young women may
claim an entire immunity. It seems to me to be enough, that they should
spoil their breath, their skin, their stomachs and their nerves, with
perfumes, aromatic seeds and spices, confectionary, and the like,
without adding thereto the more active poisons--as laudanum, camphor,
picra, antimony, &c.
The mention of the word confectionary, in the last paragraph, brings to
my mind a congregated host of evils which befall young women, as the
legitimate consequences of its use. Some may suppose that the class of
young women for whom I am writing, have little to do with
confectionary; that they have risen above it. Would that it were so!
But that it is not, many a teacher of young ladies' boarding schools,
female seminaries, &c.--to say nothing of parents--might abundantly
testify.
That they are very often the dupes of the quacks and quackery with
which our age abounds--or at least, that they take many of the pills,
and cough drops, and bitters, and panaceas of the day--I will not
believe. Much as they err to their own destruction, I trust they have
not yet sunk so low as this.