In the late 19th century, physicians had many anatomical reference textbooks focusing on obstetrics and gynecology, such as Theophilus Parvin’s The Science and Art of Obstetrics. At the same time, for the masses, there was a proliferation in what was called “guidebook literature”—what we call self-help books today. These books included how to behave in society, find a suitable mate, and raise children. Health and medical manuals for the layperson were very popular, particularly those that addressed those life stages that needed special guidance, such as menstruation, early marriage, and pregnancy. And if a woman wished to be chosen for marriage, considered at the time to be the highest honor of her life, followed swiftly by childbearing, there were plenty of books available at that time to help her.
The Mütter Museum’s Historical Medical Library contains an excellent example of these kinds of medical, spiritual, and behavioral advice compilations in 1890’s The ladies’ new medical guide; an instructor, counsellor, and friend by S. Pancoast, M.D. (and including Much Valuable Hygienic Instruction by C.C. Vanderbeck, M.D., PhD). As you peruse the pages, you can see how different this book is from our present-day textbooks and nonfiction books. For example, there are several poems, most unattributed, as well as a plethora of exclamation points in the book, which, to our current sensibilities, don’t typically belong in a “scientific treatise” or even a self-help book. There is also a great deal of Christian religious thought included, along with political opining on issues like suffrage; again, not something we would not expect to see in medical texts today. Much has changed since Pancoast and Vanderbeck wrote their 700-page tome on “everything women need to know.” It begins with detailed chapters on female, as well as male biology, but it starts to get interesting around Chapter XI, page 209, titled “Nature’s Institutes for the Procreation and Perpetuation of the Human Species,” part of which being “moral love and sexual passion.”
Now, let’s get to the important part: “When and Whom to Marry “(p. 236). According to the text, once a girl hits puberty (age 17 in the cold climates of the northern United States and Canada), which you’ll know by “certain physical aspects too palpable to the sight and senses to be misunderstood,” (p. 236), she’s ready to be married off. They do caution, though, that it might be best to wait until age 18, lest she is “immaturely developed” or “liable to hereditary affections (presumably genetic disorders) of any kind whatsoever” (p. 238). She also should be certain that “the man of her choice be equally developed in every manly attribute” (p. 238) and must be aware that if she waits too long to get married, she’ll risk “puny offspring” who will be more liable to “insanity” (p. 237). The author notes that the American woman is becoming more “...unhealthy, and that the tendency to disease and deformity is constantly increasing (p. 239). This is “according to Medical journals and the ordinary daily and weekly papers of the land,” though none are cited.
The book provides men with a few suggestions on how to be an acceptable husband, too. The authors state that if you grow a beard too early in puberty, it’s a sign that you’ve been masturbating too much, “for it is known that those who abandon themselves early to sexual indulgence have an earlier beard (p. 238).” It’s all quite poetic, sometimes literally so. More than a few pages feature poems, unattributed, of course, about selecting a suitable mate.
“The choice of a husband,” the authors note, “requires the coolest judgment and most vigilant sagacity.” As a sensible poet well advises:
‘Select that man
Whose blood and bones and muscle are so well joined
That they are not pipes for disease’s finger
To sound its horrid discord.’” (p. 241)
Another poem is introduced with “Love and virginity and beauty are the jewels of women, yet are not to be selfishly hoarded, but prudently dispensed and shared with some noble, manly heart and bosom.” Then:
‘List, lady, and be not coy, and be not cozened [deceived]
With that same vaunted name virginity
Beauty is nature’s coin, must not be hoarded,
But must be current, and the good thereof
Consist in the enjoyment of itself.
If you let slip the time, like a neglected rose,
It withers on the stock with languishing head.’
In Chapter XII, “Pregnancy or Gestation,” Pancoast and Vanderbeck return to the nitty-gritty of reproductive biology, going into detail even about the moments before, during, and after conception. “When the ovum or egg is expelled from the Graafian vesicle, it has attached to its surface a portion of the membrana granulosa. As the egg passes along the upper third of the tube, this layer of cells becomes divested. Should it now meet the male sperm, material changes take place. The spermatozoa readily penetrate the soft covering of the yelk [an older term for yolk].” (p.251)
The book continues in that vein through birth and congenital malformations before getting back to the “Women’s Sphere of Action” in Chapter XVII (p. 335).
Here, the authors spend a great deal of time insisting that women and men are equal. The text maligns other countries, such as Great Britain, for its “rule of thumb,” by which you couldn’t beat your wife with a stick bigger than your thumb.
Then we get to the issue of women’s suffrage. They admit that “Woman’s true orbit, especially, is the broadest enlargement of general humanity. As already asserted, the sexes are not only equal before God, but really and substantially so before the law and the world.” (p. 336) But in the next paragraph, the idea of suffrage is simply a bridge too far. While the “right of suffrage has been asked for women in certain quarters, [it has been] perhaps wisely withheld. Surely, no woman having a proper appreciation of her own sensitive, delicate and peculiar organism, would ever wish to unsex herself and degrade the very name of woman by an association with…the political machinery of party warfare. The denial of the right of suffrage should be regarded as a decided compliment to women’s better nature.” (p. 340) What women really want, they conclude, is not “to “have extended to them the right of suffrage,” but instead exert “influence [of] that quiet and silent kind.” (p. 340)
Once you have understood a woman’s place in society, it’s time to turn to “Physical Perfection” in Chapter XX. Here you’ll find extensive advice on skeletal, muscular, and other aspects of womanly perfection, with the Venus de Medici cited as “the example of what a female figure should be (p. 358).
So, ladies, you now know what to do, how to look, and how to act to be a desirable wife, mother, and upstanding member of 19th century society. And you can breathe a sigh of relief that both medicine and society have come a long way from Dr. Pancoast and Dr. Vanderbeck’s time and simply enjoy The Ladies’ Guide as a portal into a simpler but perhaps, darker time in the history of women’s medicine.
Cited
- Pancoast, S. & Vanderbeck, C. C. (1890) The ladies' new medical guide; an instructor, counsellor and friend. [Philadelphia, J. E. Potter & company] [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
- Theophilus Parvin. The Science and Art of Obstetrics. (Philadelphia: Lea Brothers & Company, 1886)
- The Victorian Web. n.d. “Advice to a Young Wife: Medical Advice Manuals in the Nineteenth Century.”