Health of Professional Women.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVII, Issue XVII, 26 October 1901, Page 810

Health of Professional Women.

A prominent physician gives a severe blow to the tneorists who maintain that woman's proper place is home, and the woman who has a husband and family to look after is better off than her self-supporting sister. Hi a recent interview the doctor .-.ays in estimating the difference in health between the professional woman and the woman who has a house and family. that the balance is in favour of the professional woman. A large insurance company in NewYork, which insures women, makes the same statement. “The level of health among the self-supporting women is much higher than it is among the women of the so-called leisure class, in spite of the strain upon health that the work entails. This is perhaps due to the self-sup-porting woman realising that her health is her best capital, and that she must give it the best of care to keep up her work and fulfil her responsibilities. The doctor finds that the trouble with the housekeeping women is often pressure of social demands, and that many of these women often lead a more wearing life than the self-sup-porting women. The girl behind the counter is the one whom the doctor considers suffers the most among self-supporting women.

The typewriters and stenographers have the best of it when it comes to health, and would easily do better if they would take a little more exercise. However, the health of women of all classes is a vast improvement over that of twenty years ago, nor is it because women have developed more will power to resist disease. Will power is good, the doctor says, but it doesn’t kill malignant germs or perform any other miracle. The fact is that women are healthier, and more exercise for the body, more diversion for the mind, better food and better clothes have made them so. The clothes question, the doctor, of course, considers from the hygienic point. The women of to-day are dressed better than their grandmothers or mothers were. They don't pinch their feet as they once did, and the latest corset the doctor considers the most sensible ever devised. The doctor is very enthusiastic, too. over the physical exercise that women now take.