Page:Guide to health.djvu/130

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118
A GUIDE TO HEALTH

very often to return to work almost immediately after child-birth.

How comes it, then, that women in towns and cities have to endure so much pain and suffering at the time of child-birth? And why is it that they have to receive special treatment before and after the delivery?

The answer is simple and obvious. The women in towns have to lead an unnatural life. Their food, their costume, their mode of life, in general, offend against the natural laws of healthy living. Further, besides becoming pregnant at a pemature age, they are the sad victims of men's lust even after pregnancy, as well as immediately after child-birth, so that conception again takes place at too short an interval. This is the state of utter misery and wretchedness in which lakhs of our young girls and women find themselves in our country to-day. To my mind, life under such conditions is little removed from the tortures of hell. So long as men continue to behave so monstrously, there can be no hope of happiness for our women. Many men put the blame on the women's shoulders; but it is none of our business here to weigh the relative guilt of man and woman in this matter. We are only concerned to recognise the existence of the evil, and to point out its cure. Let all married people realise, once for all, that, so long as sexual