Health of working girls : a handbook for welfare supervisors and others / by Beatrcie Webb.

  • Beatrice Webb
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Health of working girls : a handbook for welfare supervisors and others / by Beatrcie Webb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    driving the blood more frequently through the lungs and through the body, for the deficiency in oxygen. As the oxygen is absorbed from the air in the lungs an increased circulation of blood through the lungs helps matters. The appetite becomes poor, fickle, and fanciful. The girl does not care for plain foods, but craves for unusual or tasty things, often for vinegar or other acids, hence her demand for pickles. It is sometimes said that a girl is anaemic because she drinks vinegar, but the truth is that the girl drinks vinegar because she is anaemic, her stomach not being provided with good blood, and therefore being unable to supply effectually the gastric fluids needed for digestion. Headache is very common—a dull, steady, all-over ache lasting days or weeks, or even months; not bad enough to take a patient girl off work, but bad enough to destroy all her zest in life. Neuralgia and toothache are also common, the ill-nourished nerves needing little provocation to set up pain. The girl is always tired, gets up tired and goes to bed tired, even when the work is quite light. She is very sleepy, wakes heavy and sleepy even after a full night’s sleep, and is ready to fall asleep any minute of the day if quiet and sitting still. A mild degree of depression is frequent. Nothing seems to be worth while, everything is too much fag, life looks grey, and it is very hard to rouse up enough to enjoy anything. The one wish is to sit still and do nothing, not even talk! In the case of clerks in an office or responsible girls in a factory, loss of memory is often a serious trouble, and the girl is complained of as having lost her power to reckon quickly and correctly, and as having become stupid about understanding or carrying out orders. The above is a typical picture of an advanced case of anaemia, where the haemo¬ globin index of the blood may be not more than 50 or 60 per cent of the normal; but some or all of these indications, in greater or lesser degree, are found in girls whose red cells show a colour index of 70 or 80 per cent of the normal. The great outstanding cause of the anaemia of the young woman is constipation, a fact which a late famous physician
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