The Young Woman's Book of Health (1850)
AUTHOR: Alcott, William Andrus
---. Rose in Bloom
Alcott, William. Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and Powders
---. Gift Book for Young Ladies
---. Vegetable Diet
---. The Young House-keeper, or, Thoughts on Food and Cookery
---. The Young Mother
Beecher, Catharine Esther. Woman's Profession as Mother and Educator
Child, Lydia Maria. The Family Nurse
---. The Girl's Own Book
Dodds, Susanna Way. “Curing by Hygiene”
---. Race Culture
Graham, Sylvester. The Aesculapian Tablets of the Nineteenth Century
---. A Lecture on Epidemic Diseases
---. Lectures on the Science of Human Life
Jackson, James Caleb. American Womanhood
---. Consumption
---. The Training of Children
Kellogg, John Harvey. The Crippled Colon
---. The Hygienic Family Physician
---. Man, the Masterpiece
---. Plain Facts for Old and Young
---. Practical Manual of Health and Temperance
---. “Social Purity”
---. The Stomach
Mussey, Reuben Dimond. Health: Its Friends and Its Foes
Nichols, Mary Sargeant Gove. Agnes Morris
---. Lectures to Women on Anatomy and Physiology
Nichols, Thomas Low. “The Diseases of Women”
---. Esoteric Anthropology
---. “Health Maxims”
---. Nichols' Health Manual
Shew, Joel. Consumption
---. The Water-Cure Manual
---. William Lambe, Water and Vegetable Diet
Stow, Marietta. “Grand Triennial Conclave”
Trall, Russell Thacher. Home Treatment for Sexual Abuses
---. Pathology of the Reproductive Organs
Trine, Ralph Waldo. The Power that Wins
White, Ellen Gould Harmon. Counsels on Health and Instruction to Medical Missionary Workers
White, Ellen Gould Harmon. Testimonies for the Church
White, Ellen Gould Harmon. The Ministry of Healing
SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):
As William Alcott remarks in the “Preface,” the book is dedicated to “that sex through whose instrumentality sin and disease came upon the world, and through whose obedience to the divine law, as an efficient instrument, they are, in the end, to be removed” (4). For Alcott, women's health is thus a far-reaching moral issue. His advice has to be read within the framework of this Christian morality. Much of the book treats illnesses and ailments, from cancer to sterility, from menstruation to hemorrhoids, from hysteria to nymphomania, and their prevention or treatment. Some sections touch on the question of diet (particularly 77-100). Here, Alcott repeats what he has been saying throughout his writings, namely that:
- food “should be simple” and “not be very difficult of digestion” (86);
- “salted pork, beef, fish, butter, &c., as well as [...] pickles, sauces, preserves, jams, jellies, sweetmeats, and gravies” (90) should be avoided;
- “flesh or fish, to young women,” are not “at all necessary,” and they should relish “bread, rice, and milk” instead (92);
- “animal food is more frequently diseased than vegetable” foods (94);
- with the exception of “salt, and, perhaps, ginger and cinnamon, all condiments, properly so called, should be considered as medicine”; accordingly, “pepper, spice, mustard, saleratus, vinegar, saltpetre, ketchup, and the like” should be avoided (97);
- “beer, tea, coffee, chocolate, &c.” are likewise detrimental to health (97);
- food must be prepared carefully and “should not be injured by cookery” (97).
For Alcott, “[f]arinaceous food, — bread of various kinds, arrowroot, sage, tapioca, rice, and potatoes, — with mild sub-acid fruits, and milk, is the best. Animal food, especially salted animal food, and old salted butter, should be avoided as carefully as if they were rank poison” (217). With respect to dress, Alcott repeats his advice, that it should be as loose as possible and made of materials favorable to ventilation: “that dress is best which is at once the lightest, loosest, and of the most porous material” (70).