THE PHYSIQUE OF AMERICAN WOMEN


I was talking the other day with a New York physician, long retired from
practice, who after an absence of a dozen years in Europe has returned
within a year to this country. He volunteered the remark, that nothing had
so impressed him since his return as the improved health of Americans. He
said that his wife had been equally struck with it; and that they had
noticed it especially among the inhabitants of cities, among the more
cultivated classes, and in particular among women.

It so happened, that within twenty-four hours almost precisely the same
remark was made to me by another gentleman of unusually cosmopolitan
experience, and past middle age. He further fortified himself by a similar
assertion made him by Charles Dickens, in comparing his second visit to
this country with his first. In answer to an inquiry as to what points of
difference had most impressed him, Dickens said, "Your people, especially
the women, look better fed than formerly."

It is possible that in all these cases the witnesses may have been led to
exaggerate the original evil, while absent from the country, and so may
have felt some undue reaction on their arrival. One of my informants went
so far as to express confidence that among his circle of friends in Boston
and in London a dinner party of half a dozen Americans would outweigh an
English party of the same number. Granting this to be too bold a statement,
and granting the unscientific nature of all these assertions, they still
indicate a probability of their own truth until refuted by facts on the
other side. They are further corroborated by the surprise expressed by
Huxley and some other recent Englishmen at finding us a race more
substantial than they had supposed.