Maternity: or, The bearing and nursing of children : Including female education and beauty.
- Orson S. Fowler
- Date:
- 1868
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Maternity: or, The bearing and nursing of children : Including female education and beauty. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
65/238 page 59
![eyes and hair others other colors ; and so on to the whole end of tastes, for most of which there is indeed ao accounting. How could he ever have fancied hei, for I could not V9 says one ; and the latter thinks the same of the tastes of the former. Yet is there no fixed standard of female beauty? Thei3 is, and our principle develops it. She is most beautiful who is capaci- tated to bear the best children. All in woman as such, which ever does or ever can excite the normal admiration or love of man, is indices of maternity. But, you ask, what have ruby lips, a sweet mouth, fine teeth, a sweet breath, flowing tresses, expressive eyes, alabaster skin, finely-moulded limbs, an enchanting form, and this whole round of feminine charms to do with their making fine mothers ? Much every way. No woman can bear an exqui- sitely-organized child, without being exquisitely organ- ized herself, in accordance with that great hereditary law, that like begets like ; and all these are but so many signs of such exquisiteness. Such women are fine-grained and susceptible, and will bear highly-or- ganized children. Does not beauty in a child enhance its excellence, and does not beauty in the mother pro- mote beauty in her offspring? Tell me not, then, that these—that any other elements of female beauty—bear no necessary reference to the female function. That men, in genera], admire a full development of the pelvis in woman, is too apparent to require a moment's argumentation. Why ? Solely because it indicates a large female apparatus, which, other things being equal, of course contributes materially to child- bearing. It surely contributes to the nourishment of the embryc, the importance cf which has just been](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21024273_0065.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
