The American girl from fourteen to eighteen years of age has been sadly neglected in the most important and necessary part of her education.
Knowledge of unessentials and nursery physiology, along with a smattering of academic teachings, have held her apart from a true appreciation of her real value to herself and humanity. Physical exercise and moral admonition have been given her, but not advice nor instruction which was based upon the proper foundation—sex development.
Details of sex hygiene have been kept from her, and these, with the care of woman’s greatest jewel, maternal possibilities through a perfect sex growth, have all been left to chance and too often sad experience.
The girl is no longer completely protected by the old home influences. To-day she is out in the world alone, struggling for herself and frequently for others. The high-school girl seems to be left in the same whirlpool of moving men and things, and just now there are unpleasant revelations of the fact that she needs care and instruction more than her working sisters.
I have seen in private and hospital practice thousands of girls whose health was ruined for life through ignorance or false ideas concerning sex activities. The land is crowded with suffering wives and broken-down girls whose woeful conditions are due entirely to ignorance of sex hygiene and how to mentally and physically care for their sex development.
If I can, by my humble efforts, stop the future mothers from suffering, worry and ill health, from bringing their daughters up in a state of criminal prudery, I shall be proof against the slings and arrows of the fast-disappearing SHAM.
In these CONFIDENTIAL CHATS I tell in plain language and facts the things that, had they been told to the girls of the last generation, would have saved untold misery.
It is a pity that the facts and instruction which should come from a mother and a father (due quite largely to their own ignorance), must be sought elsewhere, but this being so, I intend that these Chats shall supply what prudery and ignorance have denied the girls of to-day.
William Lee Howard, M.D.
CONFIDENTIAL CHATS WITH GIRLS
The little buds on the rosebushes seen in the warm spring days and which later on in the early summer open to become the beautiful flowers, are controlled and governed in their development by the same laws of Nature that control your development from the little girl to a budding girl, and then into the full blossoming woman.
Every living thing upon this earth is given life, growth and development under laws that are the same for the girl, the woman, the flowers, the fishes, the little birds. The supreme Power which controls us and every living being has so regulated the way man, beasts, birds, fishes and even flowers are kept on the earth for the increase and progression of the world, that by a plain understanding of these laws we can live and produce better and better men and women from generation to generation.
If you will carefully think the matter over, you will soon realize that every living thing around us is the result of the mating of the male with the female. Roses marry and have little children just the same as a man and woman. The little pussy willow, which so early in the spring sends out its little babies in furry buds, had been married to a willow man the year before. The sweet grapes you eat in the autumn are the “fruit of the marriage” between a male grape and a female grape—that is, the seeds. The little chicks hovering and hiding around the proud mother hen have for their father the crowing cock.
Here is a good example of this absolute law of the supreme Power. If you take a few chickens, all females, and keep them shut up until they are young hens with no rooster ever disturbing their happiness, you can never hatch chicks from the eggs of these hens. You may put these eggs under a setting hen and she may sit there until the hens’ doomsday and no life is possible in these eggs. Now at the same time shut up chickens with a rooster, and when these chickens have grown to be hens you will be able to hatch chicks from their eggs. If you take the eggs from your first lot of hens and in a dark room examine their eggs, by the aid of a candle, you will see only a clear egg. Now if you take an egg from the lot of hens who have had the rooster for companionship and hold it up to a candle, in a dark room, you will be able to see a tiny black or brown spot about the size of a pin’s head. This is the vital spot, the male seed which, upon entering the vital principle of the female egg, at once begins to develop into a chick. Three weeks under the warm body of the setting hen causes the development of the chick from this tiny spot.
The little black spots you see in a mass of “frog spittle” are the vitalizing—the life-giving—seed from the bullfrog. These male seeds lie in the mass thrown out by the female frog. Placed in some quiet pool of warm water, warmed by the sun, the hatching goes on until the pollywogs are born. It is the same with the fishes, the turtles—every living thing—the male seed must enter the eggs of the female before life commences. The playful puppies, the fuzzy kittens, the butterflies, the bees are all brought to life by the same principle.
Always keep in your mind that no matter what the different ways of mating are, how the little flower children are born, how the puppies grow before birth and then come into the world; they all are God’s creations and made according to His laws. So being made according to God’s laws, and we as human beings having absolutely nothing to do with these laws, but are controlled by them, there can be nothing wrong, indelicate or shameful in knowing all about these matters.
In fact, before we can have full reverence for God and obey His laws, we must understand and know them, what they mean to us, how we are punished and warned for disobeying these laws and the fearful results following the abuse of our bodies and minds through ignorance of what our bodies require and God demands.
As I have told you, every living thing, from flowers up to babies, is produced by the meeting of the male seed with that of the female seed. Every female, flower or woman, has a place to keep and hold these seeds until they have grown to be babies of some kind.
Take the roses for example. When the big rose gets fully grown in the latter part of the summer, the little yellow dust you see in the center is the male seed. Botanists call these male flower seeds the pollen. At about the same time that the male rose is “going to seed” the female rose is ready to take this pollen into her receptacle. This male seed is carried to the female rose’s womb, the name of the organ in all females where the two kinds of seed meet and then grow into children.
The seed is carried into the rose’s womb by the wind, insects and birds. When it is once deposited, the rose’s womb closes tightly, and there the seeds of the two sexes remain and grow until in the spring you see the little babies in the buds. These gradually grow, as you know, from the little colorless buds to the small pink ones, and when the warm summer-time comes they burst open to become full-grown male or female flowers, and in the autumn these marry and the next spring become fathers and mothers themselves.
It is the same throughout all Nature. Nothing can become a living thing except through a marriage of the male with the female.
Let us take the little birds for another example. This will show you how the young bird comes from an egg and is born almost the same way that you and I were born—coming from an egg—for this is just what did occur in our case.
The female birds, and all female animals, have what we call ovaries, from the Latin ovum, meaning egg. These ovaries are placed, in the birds and all animals, in the deep region of the groin, above the womb in the animals which keep the eggs inside of themselves until the babies are born. Of course, the birds, fishes and all their kind, do not have a real womb, for the eggs are laid outside of their bodies in a nest of some kind. This nest outside corresponds to the nest—the womb—inside of the higher animals.
All eggs are formed in the ovaries; this is what the ovaries are for, and at first they are tiny little spots seen only through a microscope. At certain times, like the mating time of the birds, these eggs drop down from the ovaries, ready to meet the male seed. When this is accomplished the eggs at once begin to put on their shells, which, of course, are only to protect the little growing birds while the mother sits upon the eggs. As soon as the shell is formed the eggs are deposited in the nest, and here the patient mother sits and waits for the little ones to grow until ready to come out and see the wide world.
Then comes the pretty sight of the mother and father flying back and forth from the nest, carrying some big worm or bug to feed the hungry and crying babies. Both father and mother work like Trojans to keep the stomachs of their little children filled, and if you will watch a pair of robins trying to feed their nestful of children, you will say that they are the greediest little things you ever saw.
And they have to be kept crammed with worms and bugs, because their growth is rapid and they must get strength enough to fly and take care of themselves before cold weather comes and to get away from cats, snakes and other animals which want them for food.
And is it not a wonderful fact to contemplate when we know that these little birds will fly a thousand miles to a warm climate for the winter, and will fly the thousand miles on their return in the spring and find their old tree, limb and identical spot where their old home was? If these little birds are watched over by such wonderful laws, what must be the care, laws and rules by which we are governed?
As the little birds come from a shell, after being developed through the warmth of the mother’s body, just so do we, after lying in our mother’s nest—the womb—come to be born, after we have been warmed and developed for nine months. So you see that what I said about the laws of God being the same for every living thing is the absolute truth.
The Springtime of the girl is when she commences to have her eggs form in the ovaries and drop into her womb. She commences to bud at about the age of fourteen years, and like the delicate buds of the flowers, if care is not taken to protect her growth, ill-health follows and she may so ruin herself that, when she marries, she is unable to be a mother.
While it takes only one spring and summer to make a full-grown flower, or even a robin, the girl needs twelve or fifteen years after she is born to get into her budding age. And her future health, morals and happiness all depend upon how the first four or five years of the budding age is lived. And to live so that she will reach the highest development of woman, the girl must understand all the laws of God and live according to these laws.
It is my purpose in these Chats to show you these laws, as well as to plainly point out to you how man and woman have constantly been disobeying God’s words and how we are suffering in consequence of our ignorance and disobedience.
Your ovaries are in place when you are born. Of course they are tiny things and not developed. They remain inactive for many years after you are born. But at about ten years of age the blood commences to flow through them and they gradually develop, like the flower buds, until they reach their ripeness. Of course this development varies in different girls according to their nationality; those from the southern countries developing earlier than those from a more rigid climate. About fourteen years of age is the average age in this country.
When the ovaries are developed the womb has also grown, so that every month it gets rid of blood that accumulates there. But at this period the womb is a very tender organ, delicate, not fully fastened to the ligaments from which it hangs, and any rough play, strain or carelessness at the time of menstruation may ruin you for life.
Every girl should be proud of this budding process and care for it with a heart full of thankfulness. Just see how the little budding trees and flowers are cared for by a good gardener, how careful he is to assist Nature, how by this reverence and thought the wild flowers are brought under cultivation and by the means of the pure soil in which they are planted, by protecting them from frost and harsh treatment, what beautiful blossoms, scents and radiance results.
The laws of God make the wonderful growth and development possible, but man, by acknowledging these laws and abiding by them, is able to increase the beauty and usefulness of all growths.
It is just so with us. If we acknowledge the beneficent order which controls us, if we reverently study to understand God’s intentions, then we are aided in all we do to perfect our own development, moral beauty and health. The reward we receive is in having children follow us who have benefited by our reverential and knowing efforts. It is only by such an attitude towards Nature that we progress. Shame of our God-given gifts, studied ignorance of all His laws, the ignoring of our powers for reproducing our kind, all mean a going backwards in civilization. Disease, sin and debasement is certain to follow, and does follow, for most of the misery, disease and poverty is due to our past attitude in ignoring the details of the blossoming period of girls, by allowing the process to go on, paying no attention to the soil—associations and environments—of either the girl or the boy.
Everything in nature moves in cycles—that is, moves in regular periods. The stars, the planets, the sun, the earth, the moon, the tides, the seasons, all go and return at certain fixed intervals. Growths of all kinds on this earth have their periods of birth, development, death. The active periods of every living thing is taken up with reproductive occurrences, or the getting ready for reproduction. The female dog has her regular periods when she is ready to be a happy mother, so do the pretty deer, the squirrels, the fishes, everything. When the fishes’ regular period comes around in the spring, we call it the spawning time, with the birds the pretty name of mating. With the woman we call it the menstrual period, from the Latin word meaning monthly.
A pure, honest woman, honest to herself and her God, can see nothing but a wonderful provision of God for keeping the earth populated and the opportunities for bringing man to a nearer understanding of his Maker.
We need no orthodox religion to make man feel the essence of God within him when he understands the laws under which he lives, and how by his own efforts he can improve his powers and give greater ones to those who have received his blood through a pure woman.
Such is every good and intelligent man’s thoughts, his inner feelings, but only through a woman’s understanding of her greater powers in this respect can we hope to bring future generations to a higher plane.