Sex efficiency through exercises : special physical culture for women / by Th. H. van de Velde ; [photos, by E. Steinemann].
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the need for preventing these gratuitous injuries—on all officialdom, everywhere : for such prevention would be the most important possible measure of social hygiene. Hospitals and private nursing homes would not necessarily meet with difficulties in applying and developing obstetric physical culture. It is largely a matter of organisation and of the appointment of gymnastic instructresses in charge, who would have the duty of arranging and supervising physical exercises for pregnant and convalescent women. Of course, establishments of any size will require more than one such gymnastic instructress. Not only hospitals, but general public health work must include obstetric physical culture. Health insurance and both public and private philanthropy have great possibilities of action here, and the field is still almost untilled. The necessary financial outlay would be more than recouped by the saving on invalidism which would ensue. And, from the wider social aspect, it would be a most lucrative invest- ment. The women's societies and leagues for the protection and promotion of women's special interests, especially among working women, will find this a fruitful subject for con- sideration, study and practice. The same is true of the various women's clubs for gymnastics and games : these, however, will naturally be better able to practise active exercises of contraction and relaxation than those of an even partly passive description. The purposes of pelvic exercise during both pregnancy and puerperal involution are twofold : they should exercise the body without strain or over-exertion. The distended abdominal muscles and the muscles of the pelvic floor must be kept in good condition, and the circulation of the blood stream, both throughout the whole body and particularly in its lower half, must be facilitated. Yet neither abdomen, pelvis nor organism in general must be at all overstrained, for pregnancy and the puerperium, although so natural, are almost half morbid and dangerous conditions for humanity to-day.