What professions did women choose about 150 years ago, and what were they most often sick with?

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The main cause of female mortality in the old days was pregnancy and childbirth, but women were "sick" not only with them. There were a number of purely female works - and they were accompanied by their own set of diseases.

Housemaid

It is in the cinema that the maids are mostly busy serving tea and coffee on silver trays. In fact, their range of responsibilities was broader the poorer the family they worked for - that is, the fewer other servants there were. The maids took out the chamber pots, made the beds, served breakfast, lunch, and dinner on heavy trays (the strength of the hands was highly valued in the maid), helped girls and women dress, scrubbed grates, swept, and so on.

The most dangerous of the maid's activities was waxing the floors. This was done on my knees, sometimes for hours and, of course, often. Large mansions and floors were abundant. Regular long kneeling provoked in the maids the displacement of the kneecaps and painful chronic inflammation of the knee joint, sometimes even to the point of losing the ability to walk. In Britain, where scrubbed floors in mansions were especially fond of, chronic inflammation of the knee was called the "maid's knee".

Laundress

Another purely female work was washing clothes and clothes for money. Before the invention of automatic washing machines and special products, this was physically hard work. Washing the stains, soaping and rubbing them for a long time, was tiring, even when the woman did it only for her family. At the laundresses, the skin on their hands was erased and cracked, it and nails were eaten away by lye. To squeeze out a portion of washed clothes or bed linen, strong hands were required - otherwise, either you would not wring out properly, or you would twist the joints of the wrists.

They washed by bending over the trough, spending several hours a day at a slope. This caused the displacement of the vertebrae. White linen was boiled, turned blue to remove the yellow tint. The steam not only made the skin of the face wet and red, but also badly affected the bronchi. Wet clothes weighed much more than dry ones, lifting the weight after the vertebrae “crawled” from standing in an incline was very dangerous, but inevitable, and many women earned themselves herniated discs during several years of such a “career”. For many, the constant carrying of weights caused the uterus to prolapse.

Nurse

Another purely female profession associated with heavy work was the work of a nurse. Caregivers were hired for the paralyzed, for the elderly, weakened people, for the seriously ill. They were required to help patients to relieve their natural need or to wash them, if the need coped involuntarily, wash the patients and turn them regularly if they are not able to do it themselves, help them walk if necessary, supporting them with their body, follow the doctor's instructions, and on the little things - feed, drink, comb, cut nails on hands and feet, comfort with a kind word.

It is clear that the nurses often ripped off their backs. In addition, throughout the nineteenth century, tuberculosis was rampant in Europe and Russia, and nurses often looked after patients in a dying state. Of course, they contracted a fatal disease themselves. I must say, apart from tuberculosis, nothing has changed in the work of a nurse, including the need to move and lift people weighing fifty kilograms or more.

Seamstress

Unlike tailors, a seamstress was considered a low-skilled specialist - although it was impossible to "freebie" at such a job, for a straight line, a strong seam, a right hand and a good eye were required. The seamstress's work was very low paid, and in order to provide herself with a roof over her head (a tiny room), a small amount of food and candles, the seamstress worked from early morning until late at night, without changing her posture for hours, without raising her head lowered over sewing, not being able to walk and breathe.

As a result, the seamstress's posture received not only stagnation of blood in the pelvis (and all the associated troubles, from varicose veins of the legs to inflammatory processes), but also a gradual displacement of the cervical vertebrae. Painful in itself, it led to constriction of the vessels, and problems with the vessels, together with constant eye strain, gave a rapid deterioration in vision. Still young women were almost blind.

It is not surprising that many seamstresses were tempted by the offers of ladies' men, became mistresses of young gentlemen for gifts and money - this made it possible to reduce the working day and see at least something other than a needle and thread. But from a connection with a man, a child was inevitably born, a lover with gifts immediately dissolved, and now two had to be fed. Some seamstresses honestly drove themselves to the point of exhaustion at work, others threw children into orphanages - although they knew what a high mortality rate there was, others went out of desperation to sell their bodies.

Nanny

While the governors worked with the children for several hours a day, nannies were expected to be present around the clock, most often with several children at the same time: noble, merchant, and bourgeois families were large and, moreover, demanded a completely different level of childcare than such peasant families with many children. The nanny had to literally be torn apart, dressing, undressing, occupying, separating, feeding the children. The nannies often slept in fits and starts, because in such a large children's company someone was sure to either be sick, or suffered from enuresis, or just today saw a nightmare.

Prolonged, constant sleep deprivation caused neuroses and hallucinations, so that nannies often had strange habits, and their superstitiousness went off scale, even considering that they came from very simple families. I must say that in our time, constant sleep deprivation is no longer the lot of nannies, but of mothers, but in general it remains relevant precisely as a common female problem.

In the past, women not only had diseases, but also sometimes treated women with dung, wine and leather substitutes for husbands.