The CBB :: View topic - Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female

As for Joey and her later highly-strung behaviour, I think allowances must be made for her hormones. The poor girl was pregnant from the age of just over twenty, so most of her adult life she was awash with hormones; pregnant, post-natal, pregnant again. It's a wonder she managed at all!

You don't suppose this was on a par with ladies enjoying sitting on their bicycle saddles?

Please forgive my ignorance :oops:

but CFS?

Please forgive my ignorance :oops:

but CFS? And bike saddles?

I

ChubbyMonkey wrote:

Please forgive my ignorance :oops:

but CFS? And bike saddles?

I

A possibly apochryphal Victorian/Edwardian maiden lady who campaigned vociferously against 'self-abuse' (presumably in young ladies) only to discover that the delightful sensation she experienced when sitting on her penny-farthing type bike saddle was pretty much that obtained by -er 'self-abuse'. :shock:

No idea if it's true!

why does everyone seem to forget that Barbara Chester was supposed to be delicate when she arrived at the CS?

...when people go off to bed for a week with a cold.

I'm now wondering who would be the prime suspects for needing treatment for hysteria.

Going back to the 'highly strung' part of the discussion, back in Victorian times when (I assume upper class) ladies were diagnosed as hysterical they were sent to a doctor who would....er.....apply very mild electrical impulses to their "ladyparts" to cure them. These machines have since developed into products widely available from shops like Ann Summers!

Something really interesting that I read when I was writing was about the science of "climatology" which many doctors believed in at the time. Climatologists believed that pure air of the right type of air, wet or dry, cold or warm, could cure, or at least moderate, disease, so sanatoria were built in rural, mountainous or seaside areas.

Then there were also places called preventoria in the US during the first decades of the twentieth century. These institutions combined features of hospitals, sanatorium and schools and took in children whom they deemed to be "at risk," typically coming from families with one or both parents suffering from tuberculosis. The children would spend as much time as possible out doors in camp-like settings where they would receive their education, meals and rest. The Chalet School didn't go quite that far at least!

Doctors masturbating women as a cure for hysteria
This notion has been given extensive currency via Rachel Maines' The Technology of Orgasm (1998). The general consensus among a number of individuals working within the field of history of sexuality and medicine was that the practice, if it occurred at all, would have been confined to an extremely limited group, rather than as widespread as Maines seems to indicate. There were a number of problems with this book - not least citation to sources which don't necessarily support the arguments she's making with them - and this particular claim should be treated with extreme caution.

... the Tyrol CS proper's 'special status' as school for the fragile and possibly tubercular. Because isn't the USP of the CS proper that it has special care, proximity to the San etc etc?

Many of the girls there have parents undergoing treatment at the Sonnalpe, and the doctors at the Sonnalpe keep a watchful eye on them always. Lately, they opened an annexe up on the alm for specially delicate children. [...] And there is this to be said for it that could no be said of any English school: it is directly under the eye of doctors who watch over the girls, and look for any symptoms of trouble, so that they may be checked at once. Girls like yours are particularly well guarded, and the whole régime has been drawn up with an eye to strengthening the girls.

Does any girl start school at the Annexe, that we know of?

And the other two people who are coming [to the Annexe], and who are older than our three, are two little French girls who have never been to school in their lives, and know nothing about it.

In fact, I find myself wondering why EBD decided to invent the Annexe, apart from keeping Juliet and Grizel in the CS orbit? The only other real effect in terms of major plotting and character seems to be to keep Robin away from the school proper (and therefore from Joey) for long periods, but I'm not sure why EBD would have wanted that either... ?

And it turned out useful in the end, as there was a school up on the Sonnalpe ready-made when they had to leave the Chalet! They spent a few weeks up there in EXILE before Joey and co had to leave.

I wonder if the curriculum at the annexe was as rigourous as at the regular CS? Did they have the same proportion of girls going to University? !....

She was a thin – too thin – child of about thirteen. Eyes of lavender blue were set in a nervously-featured face that was too pale for health. She was tall for her years, and her jerky movements and continual twitchings bore out all he had said about her nerves.

I warn you candidly that unless something of the kind is done, you will find yourself with a nervous invalid on your hands before another two years are over. Neurasthenia is one of the most difficult troubles to cure – and one of the most trying to nurse. If Lavender is taken in time, I think six months will see the end of most of her troubles. [...] what she needs is the normal, heedless life of a normal, healthy child [...] Thirteen, isn’t she? Well, if you can give her that for the next five years, you ought to have a normal, happy girl as a niece when she is eighteen. I have told you the alternative.”

Didn't Anne Shirley always long to faint to prove that she was delicate and interesting whereas in actual fact she was healthy and robust? I can imagine EBD being a bit like that!

This is highly-strung and delicate as bad, not 'interesting' and Joey- or Robin-like. [...] Yet in some ways Lavender is a much more real portrait of someone whose mind and body are not in top form...

In some ways, you'd wonder why Joey and Robin don't suffer from a version of the same kind of thing. You could understand Joey being either massively self-centred and bossy, or a terrible hypochondriac, or very shy, from the isolated, frequently-ill, mostly-around-adults life she led before the CS was founded.

On the other hand, EBD specifically says more than once that Robin is too sweet natured to be spoiled by all the attention she receives. And she is naturally far more submissive than Joey. Is she ever involved in mischief or rule breaking at school?

Except tennis and a little climbing, she was unaccustomed to any strenuous exercise, and she found it harder and harder to keep up with the rest. She lagged behind, and her attempts at passing were so feeble, that the Games captain wondered if she were ‘playing up’. She shouted, “Lavender! Hit the ball, don’t spoon it! Send it out with a good tap. It won’t bite you!”

Wow! I'd never seen Lavender's portrayal so harshly before :shock:

I only have the white spine Armada 2-in-1 addition, though, which I suppose might explain it. It has always been one of my favourite books, I don't know that I want to read an uncut version now, if it can make - or try to make - people feel like that!

...the staff disliking her so much...

...I think that it is more common than the series itself might suggest, if that makes sense?

I think the staff are reasonably fair to Lavender - they moan about her in the staff room, which is fair enough, but they aren't too bad to her face.

“I can really find nothing - but nothing - to admire about that child. She has learnt no Latin, and it seems to me as if she is unlikely to learn any, for I have had her for two lessons, as our dear Hilda asked me to coach her so that she might work with her form, and she does not know a nominative from a verb - not even that!”

“Lavender Leigh is a conceited, ignorant, empty-headed child, who wants taking down a dozen pegs.'

I think part of the problem is that EBD really likes "flavour of the month" kind of villains - girls who feature as Bad Girls for one book and then fade away. You definitely get the sense that there are girls who are recurring problems, but unfortunately EBD seldom focuses on them for more than one book.

I enjoy the idea of a CS Head or games mistress having to deal with a Lois Sanger fake injury situation, because surely it wouldn't have remained a sort of running joke/source of irritation among the senior team, the way it seems to have for quite some time at Kingscote until it's accidentally revealed to a mistress?

I was going to say that if you faked an illness then you'd've been found out by whichever doctor was ordered to leave his patients and rush straight over to the school, but that might actually have encouraged people :lol:

With regards to faking an illness, I always found it odd that there weren't more!

it really annoys me they took her on that trip and then made poor Anne Seymour miss out on seeing the glacier because Robin needed a babysitter

Quote:

it really annoys me they took her on that trip and then made poor Anne Seymour miss out on seeing the glacier because Robin needed a babysitter

If I was Mr Seymour, and had presumably paid for the trip as an extra so that my daughter could see the glacier, I'd be decidedly miffed that she'd missed out in order to play nursemaid to some random child.

but I sometimes think that this total lack of any sense of being judged or weighed up by fee-paying parents is one of EBD's cosiest fantasy-fuelled CS moments!

Ted, who seems to be as physically fit as the next person, is hot and struggling for breath after her first "ramble", so anyone who was genuinely "delicate" would surely have struggled

According to Behind the Chalet School, she lost some of the pupils in her own school when the parents discovered that she wasn't teaching the pupils, but was leaving it to her unqualified mother.

I'm reminded of the 'old girls' in Reunion who couldn't cope with the walk that Len led - personally I think I'd have been tempted to shove her off the mountain had she taken me on such a route, and I'm relatively fit.

...personally I think I'd have been tempted to shove her off the mountain had she taken me on such a route, and I'm relatively fit.

Hadn't Grizel already heard Neil's voice nearby by then? Maybe she shoved Len over the cliff to get his attention!

Quote:

Hadn't Grizel already heard Neil's voice nearby by then? Maybe she shoved Len over the cliff to get his attention!

Now that would show initiative - thwarted by Deira in NZ and Joey at the Sonnalpe, but determined to get her man by hook or by crook (or by chucking her friend's eldest over the side....)

and Grizel saying, "But Joey, I am your daughter :)."

Yes, that walk seems like an unusually brainless thing for responsible Len to have done, and far too tough for at least some of a group of much older women, many of whom were completely unused to strenuous exercise on rough terrain.

Or maybe I'm just fat and lazy !

Come to that, if my mum had invited a load of old friends to stay when I was 16 I would not have been very impressed at being expected to spend my weekend taking them off on the said hikes!

Er, you forgot the chocolates, all of you.

Or she used the Baldric method (although his was for making coffee) :wink:

Maybe that was Len's attempt at rebellion- take the group on really difficult walks half of them weren't at all up for in the hope that they would protest to Joey and refuse to do any more, leaving Len and her sisters free to do whatever they wanted! :lol:

Sunglass wrote:

I think most of those Older Women were younger than I am. So obviously they were not old!!!

If Joey was 21 when she had the trips and they are what 16? 17? in Reunion most of them were only in their mid to late 30s - even the oldest ex Chalet school girls would only be in their early 40s.

Joey is given three delicate children - Margot, Charles and Phil - but we never really see her having to cope with their health problems, and it would have been a good way of showing a different side to her as an adult.

I don't think that I would have liked to read more about it. I turn to the CS for comfort - watching children potentially die wouldn't really bring that, I don't think!

Author:	JB [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 7:10 pm ]
Post subject:	Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
Health and delicacy are strong themes in the Chalet School from its beginnings and the school quickly forms links with the San which remain to the end of the series. The school has many pupils who have relatives in the San and Matron has been specially trained to deal with delicate girls. At the same time, physical activity is also important and we hear little of girls who are unable to take part in sports or long walks because of their health. Girls are, though, often sent to bed if they get their feet wet or spend a week in the school San with a cold. Neither does the school want to turn out girls who are “spineless jellyfish” with the staff believing that girls should not be protected from bad news eg Madmoiselle Lepattre’s illness. Joey Bettany is physically delicate in the early books but becomes sufficiently robust to bear 11 children (incl 3 multiple pregnancies), yet she remains highly strung and excitable. As adults, Joey and Madge are “dosed” by their husbands in stressful situations and often sent for a period of bed rest. Do you think EBD’s attitudes towards health were of the time or were they already somewhat dated? Are there contradictions in the ways health is treated at the CS? As a child, did you understand the concept of “delicate” or “highly strung” girls? Did you wish you could go to the San with a cold and stay away from school? How do you think a really delicate girl would cope eg someone who was unable to go for long walks? Thanks to Alison H and Emma A for this idea.

Author:	sealpuppy [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 8:02 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
A lot of it is certainly down to the time EBD was writing. My mother was born in 1911 and in her teens it was common practice to put a menstruating girl to bed - not sure how long for though! And they were forbidden to wash their hair during a period, so there was already a built-in expectation that young girls would have problems. The way the CS girls are always put into quarantine was also usual; on a beach just outside Poole, in Dorset, there used to be the remains of the Fever Hospital and two of my older aunts were sent there to get over (or not, presumably) scarlet fever. No antibiotics, so isolation made sense. When I started in the infants, in the late 40s, I was incensed to find I was considered far too healthy to warrant a spoonful of Virol (malt extract tonic for delicate children) and a lie-down after lunch. I've never got over that, but I doubt if they'd have let me read while resting so I'd probably have hated it! As for Joey and her later highly-strung behaviour, I think allowances must be made for her hormones. The poor girl was pregnant from the age of just over twenty, so most of her adult life she was awash with hormones; pregnant, post-natal, pregnant again. It's a wonder she managed at all! (Actually, the hormone thing is probably another reason why EBD and all the other writers made such a thing of outdoor activities and not allowing Grand Passions and crushes on prefects; a boarding school would be a heaving pit of pent up passion! Better to send them out for a walk than let the hormones go ape!) (And I would have thanked heaven fasting if someone had let me get out of hockey or netball, both of which I hated. I'm sure I could have convinced Matey that I was poorly!)

Author:	Nightwing [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 8:29 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
sealpuppy wrote: As for Joey and her later highly-strung behaviour, I think allowances must be made for her hormones. The poor girl was pregnant from the age of just over twenty, so most of her adult life she was awash with hormones; pregnant, post-natal, pregnant again. It's a wonder she managed at all! Actually, that's a really good point - it might also explain the incident with the weird sandwich fillings, if she was going through odd cravings at the time... (although reviewing the dates I think that must have been before she was pregnant with Cecil).

Author:	Mrs Redboots [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 8:32 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
Right up until the 1950s and the development of the streptomycins, TB was a huge risk. I've just been reading Jennifer Worth's latest, FAREWELL TO THE EAST END, and she tells some fearful stories about TB in the East End between the wars. Many children were sent to open-air schools (I've been reading up on them to fuel my latest drabble!), too, to try to ward off the illness. Certainly in the 1950s and early 1960s, if a family member came down with measles, mumps, chicken-pox or whooping-cough, and I think scarlet fever, the other children in the family had to stay at home until the "all clear" was given - I missed most of one spring term when first my brother and then my mother got mumps! Most of you will have read various GO novels mentioning health certificates - my parents had to sign one at the beginning of each term (certainly at my junior school; I have a feeling the practice was obsolescent by the time I went to boarding-school in 1963). Remember how in WINTER HOLIDAY, they look at the certificates: "If the above certificate cannot be signed, the pupil concerned may not return to school without permission." Also, minor illnesses were treated more seriously - you went to bed and stayed there, very often until your temperature had been normal for at least 24 hours, and then you were often kept at home for a day or two after that, to be sure you were quite better before going back to school or work. Hospitals, too, kept you in for longer, basically until you were pretty well better. So although EBD can be a bit over-the-top about illness (and does have some weird ideas), she isn't that far off the mark.

Author:	Cel [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 9:21 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
I always wondered about the many girls who are 'delicate' in a general sense, without ever seeming to have a specific diagnosis or complaint. What are the criteria for being delicate? I suppose in the case of someone like Joey, it's a propensity for developing bad chest infections. But in other cases it seems to be just a physical fairylike daintiness, a la Verity...

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Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6795

Author:	ChubbyMonkey [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 9:25 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
I think the idea of cooling off Grand Passions plays into the cold baths, as well; I've heard it said that around the late Victorian period it was thought to be very good for health (and is, apparently, good for weight loss) but also that they thought it would "calm down" overexcited women. I agree that EBD deals with things a little inconsistently, though far less so in the earlier books - for example when they all fall asleep on the Mondscheinspitze due to the climb up (a feeling I could certainly emphasise with, having done it! Especially with the masses of milk at the top I don't know that I've ever found anything quite so sleep inducing) But then there have been a few occasions when I've longed for a nice, handsome doctor to take control and dose me and send me off to bed. It would be nice not to have to worry about situations so much! So it isn't necessarily all bad...

Author:	sealpuppy [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 9:39 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
Re cold baths, it might not be meant to regulate the unbecoming passions of young girls. My 'Family Health Book' published 1892, has this to say on the topic of 'Bathing, Physiological Effects...' When the body is moistened with a sponge wetted in cold water, or when effusion by the sponge or shower bath is effected, the skin immediately shrinks... As a result of this contraction... the nervous system among others participates in and is stimulated by the efflux, and communicating its impression of stimulus to the whole system, causes a more energetic action of the heart and bloodvessels and a consequent rush back to the surface. ...Reaction is known by the redness of surface, the glow, the thrill of comfort and warmth, which follow the bath... You don't suppose this was on a par with ladies enjoying sitting on their bicycle saddles? The same book has dire warnings about wearing your corsets too tight, along with scary drawings showing how it deforms the ribs. Works for me, I'm never tightening my stays again!

Author:	Nightwing [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 9:43 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
That makes sense to me, sealpuppy - weren't cold baths meant to give the girls "a healthy glow"?

Author:	JB [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 9:43 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
Sealpuppy wrote: Quote: You don't suppose this was on a par with ladies enjoying sitting on their bicycle saddles? I'm pretty sure that wasn't what Dr Jem or Matey were thinking. Now that would be a drabble and a half.

Author:	sealpuppy [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 9:44 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
I guess you're right, Nightwing, it's just that I can't bear the thought of cold baths myself!

Author:	Abi [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 9:47 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
This sounds like an interesting book, sealpuppy!! off to visit eBay I think there is something to be said for actually resting when you're ill. I think we'd end up with a lot fewer lingering illnesses, people being tired all the time. It might even help with the ever-increasing incidence of CFS - my sister has it and says if she'd taken more care of her health she probably wouldn't have it now.

Author:	ChubbyMonkey [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:01 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
Please forgive my ignorance but CFS? And bike saddles? I agree that rest when you're ill is probably all to the good; for starters, it would probably help stop the spread of swine flu! Whenever I'm feeling ill I always dream of a lovely Matey to look after me, tuck me up in crisp white sheets and bring me warmed milk.

Author:	cestina [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:13 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
CFS= Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, formerly known as ME (Myalgic Encephalitis). My son has had it for seven years now. It's horrible. I went to a lecture by a Professor of Neurology who is also a CFS sufferer. He has formed the view that it is exactly because we do not pay enough attention to the body's signals that we are ill and need to rest to recover properly that a chronic state develops in certain people following a virus or other trigger. So bedrest not such a bad idea at all. When I was a child there were no antibiotics in general use other than penicillin which was not then widely prescribed. Infections were a serious matter and you stayed in bed, the doctor came to you - none of this going out in the cold and sitting around in surgery waiting rooms. Our health certificates in the 1950s had to be signed by the family doctor - I can remember trekking to his house at the end of every holiday for the signature.

Author:	Abi [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:13 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
ChubbyMonkey wrote: Please forgive my ignorance but CFS? Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, very similar to ME. My sister can't lift heavy things, walk for long distances or do a lot of jobs or anything. She's a lot better than she was - when she first had it three years ago the only way she could get out of the house was to get into the car, Mum would drive her round for 10-15 minutes, then she'd be tired and have to come home. Now she is really excited about the prospect of getting a three-hour-a-week job, which she thinks she could actually sustain. It's a really debilitating thing - before she got it, she was doing a four year Physics course and heading for a First. But she had headaches, was sick a lot - just little things like that. Then she had a couple of fevery flu-ey things and then a big allergic reaction. Then she was ill during a hospital placement and basically is still recovering. Hence me feeling strongly about looking after one's health!

Author:	ChubbyMonkey [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:16 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
I'm sorry to hear about your son, cestina, and your sister Abi. It sounds absolutely horrible and certainly a good reason why we should all look after ourselves more!

Author:	sealpuppy [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:21 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
ChubbyMonkey wrote: Please forgive my ignorance but CFS? And bike saddles? I A possibly apochryphal Victorian/Edwardian maiden lady who campaigned vociferously against 'self-abuse' (presumably in young ladies) only to discover that the delightful sensation she experienced when sitting on her penny-farthing type bike saddle was pretty much that obtained by -er 'self-abuse'. No idea if it's true!

Author:	Alison H [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:32 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
CFS - chronic fatigue syndrome. I think EBD's ideas were already somewhat dated and in some ways belong more to the "bring out the smelling salts" Victorian era, but at a time when many illnesses weren't as easily treated as they are now and some infectious illnesses which are now rare were still rife, the over-protectiveness would have made a lot more sense than it does now. Our local isolation hospital only closed down ... I forget whether it was in the '80s or the '90s, but it wasn't long ago and it was certainly going strong in EBD's day. But, as ever, there's a class element to it too: working-class girls wouldn't have been going for a lie-down in the middle of the day or going to bed early because they'd got a bit wet in the rain, and I think that's why it grates on me when people go off to bed for a week with a cold. There's also the issue of many girls having relatives at the San at a time when heredity was often thought to be a major cause of TB. TB would have been the main killer in Britain when EBD was growing up, and even when I was a kid in the 1980s we still got doctors going on about how the polluted air of an industrial city caused ENT problems and we'd be better getting away from it (although that generally meant a day in Blackpool rather than moving to the Alps!). That would also have contributed to the concern about health. Cel, I've always wondered what makes someone "delicate" as well! None of them actually seem to have a medical condition as such. & why does everyone seem to forget that Barbara Chester was supposed to be delicate when she arrived at the CS?

Author:	Elle [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:32 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
sealpuppy wrote: ChubbyMonkey wrote: Please forgive my ignorance but CFS? And bike saddles? I A possibly apochryphal Victorian/Edwardian maiden lady who campaigned vociferously against 'self-abuse' (presumably in young ladies) only to discover that the delightful sensation she experienced when sitting on her penny-farthing type bike saddle was pretty much that obtained by -er 'self-abuse'. No idea if it's true! All that happens when I sit on my bike is that my bum starts to ache! Nothing delightful about that!

Author:	Torri [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:33 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
Ooh, I totally wrote an anthropology paper on the treatment of health and disease in children's literature last year - with a focus on the Chalet School!! Something really interesting that I read when I was writing was about the science of "climatology" which many doctors believed in at the time. Climatologists believed that pure air of the right type of air, wet or dry, cold or warm, could cure, or at least moderate, disease, so sanatoria were built in rural, mountainous or seaside areas. Then there were also places called preventoria in the US during the first decades of the twentieth century. These institutions combined features of hospitals, sanatorium and schools and took in children whom they deemed to be "at risk," typically coming from families with one or both parents suffering from tuberculosis. The children would spend as much time as possible out doors in camp-like settings where they would receive their education, meals and rest. The Chalet School didn't go quite that far at least! There was a correlation between TB mortality and access to good food. During World War II, the south of France suffered food shortages and a rise in tuberculosis mortality, but that Brittany experienced a decline in tuberculosis mortality and food supplies had been relatively good.

Author:	JB [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:38 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
Alison H wrote: Quote: why does everyone seem to forget that Barbara Chester was supposed to be delicate when she arrived at the CS? That really irritates me too. The staff have known Barbara since she was a small child and, in any case, Matey would surely have been told about a delicate new girl? We had two TB sanatoria in this area (plenty of fresh air, although you'd hardly say it was dry in the Lake District). One was about 5 minutes away and was in use as a general hospital until the 1980s. It had small rooms and glassed in veranda, which I imagine would have been open when it was used for TB patients. The other hospital was about half an hour away, right on the edge of Morecambe Bay. I worked with someone in the 1980s (she was in her 40s) whose mother had been a patient there when my colleague was a child.

Author:	Nightwing [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 10:44 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
Delicate to me conjures up two different pictures. One is the type of person who is more easily susceptible to illness - I know there's one or two people I work with who actually come down with every single cold that so much as looks at them, and I can only imagine it would be worse in the days before readily available medicine! The other is more to do with looks - very small and/or thin girls who would probably feel the cold a lot more than people like 'big Sophie Hamel'!

Author:	JayB [ Wed Oct 28, 2009 11:28 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
Quote: ...when people go off to bed for a week with a cold. I suppose it was as much to try to stop the infection spreading by isolating the affected people, as any feeling that a cold was a serious illness. Having from time to time worked with people who insisted on coming to work with streaming colds, I can imagine how unpleasant it would have been for everyone to be surrounded day and night by sneezing, coughing, runny nosed girls and mistresses. Take 'em all off to San, I say. We seem to have come full circle where childhood diseases are concerned. As has been said, quarantine for mumps, etc. was enforced. Then when I and my siblings were growing up (mid 1950s-mid 1970s) measles, mumps etc were things that everyone caught. You just stayed off school while you had spots/felt poorly but otherwise didn't generally bother much. (It actually used to be thought desirable for young girls to have German measles, as it was known then, so that they wouldn't get it as adults when there might be a chance they could be pregnant.) Now we're back at the point where measles is regarded as a (potentially) serious illness that children are immunised against.

Author:	Lesley [ Thu Oct 29, 2009 6:38 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
German measles (rubella) has always been a fairly mild disease though - and my Dad can remember being very popular with the neighbourhood girls when he contracted it as a boy! Measles is completely different - it's always been more serious and can have very serious and even tragic consequences.

Author:	Lulie [ Thu Oct 29, 2009 9:17 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
Going back to the 'highly strung' part of the discussion, back in Victorian times when (I assume upper class) ladies were diagnosed as hysterical they were sent to a doctor who would....er.....apply very mild electrical impulses to their "ladyparts" to cure them. These machines have since developed into products widely available from shops like Ann Summers! Personally I would have thought using those machines would have caused great "overexcitement" in hysterical ladies - unless that was the intention. A certain kind of overexcitement would cure the "hysteria"???

Author:	ChubbyMonkey [ Thu Oct 29, 2009 9:53 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
I'd heard that, Lulie, but I didn't want to post because I wasn't entirely sure it was true. New branch for the San, perhaps? It might explain why the school stayed so close all those years... and the number of doctors who meet their wife after an accident. Something is needed to calm the nerves! I'm now wondering who would be the prime suspects for needing treatment for hysteria.

Author:	JB [ Thu Oct 29, 2009 10:29 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
Chubby Monkey wrote: Quote: I'm now wondering who would be the prime suspects for needing treatment for hysteria. Perhaps that explains why Joey became so highly strung.

Author:	Alison H [ Thu Oct 29, 2009 10:38 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
Casualty 1909 (British TV series about the East London Hospital in, obviously, 1909) featured a lady getting that sort of treatment .

Author:	sealpuppy [ Thu Oct 29, 2009 11:10 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
Lulie wrote: Going back to the 'highly strung' part of the discussion, back in Victorian times when (I assume upper class) ladies were diagnosed as hysterical they were sent to a doctor who would....er.....apply very mild electrical impulses to their "ladyparts" to cure them. These machines have since developed into products widely available from shops like Ann Summers! It's horrific to think how many poor women were dismissed as hysterical when actually suffering from serious or fatal illnesses. My forthcoming Victorian mystery has a character going to Bath (in 1858) to see a Medical Galvanist; she has electrical treatment but it's hands and feet in buckets with electrical pulses running through. Sadly, attaching electrodes to her lady parts didn't seem appropriate, though probably more fun!

Author:	JS [ Thu Oct 29, 2009 11:46 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
Quote: Going back to the 'highly strung' part of the discussion, back in Victorian times when (I assume upper class) ladies were diagnosed as hysterical they were sent to a doctor who would....er.....apply very mild electrical impulses to their "ladyparts" to cure them. These machines have since developed into products widely available from shops like Ann Summers! I wrote a feature on vibration therapy once and discovered during the research that doctors were very pleased when the devices were invented as previously they had to do it manually - which apparently they found quite a chore. The idea was to get to some point of 'release', apparently.

Author:	Mrs Redboots [ Thu Oct 29, 2009 1:50 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
Torri wrote: Something really interesting that I read when I was writing was about the science of "climatology" which many doctors believed in at the time. Climatologists believed that pure air of the right type of air, wet or dry, cold or warm, could cure, or at least moderate, disease, so sanatoria were built in rural, mountainous or seaside areas. While the air quality won't, alas, cure illnesses, I do know that I feel much better when I'm in the Alps, always really well up there. And think of the difference between the rather bracing North Sea coast and the rather relaxing Channel coast. I have a young friend who has struggled along with flu for a couple of weeks now, and I said to her that she ought to go to Frinton for a week, to brace her up and help her get properly better! It probably would, too - not curing her flu, but helping her recover from the after-effects. Quote: Then there were also places called preventoria in the US during the first decades of the twentieth century. These institutions combined features of hospitals, sanatorium and schools and took in children whom they deemed to be "at risk," typically coming from families with one or both parents suffering from tuberculosis. The children would spend as much time as possible out doors in camp-like settings where they would receive their education, meals and rest. The Chalet School didn't go quite that far at least! They were called Open-air schools here, and lasted until the start of the war, and the sites were used for things like Scout camps for quite some time afterwards. I'm assuming in my current drabble (plug, plug) that the Annexe was a bit like that. And actually even as late as the 1980s there was at least one school for "frail" children in Lambeth - I remember a classmate of my daughter's saying goodbye because he'd got a place in it. Not quite sure what the criteria for being frail were, though - in his case, I rather think asthma.

Author:	Cosimo's Jackal [ Thu Oct 29, 2009 5:32 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
Afraid the medics maturbating 'hysterical' women is generally discredited, along with Queen Victoria refusing to believe lesbianism was possible and piano legs in skirts - this is from Lesley Anne Hall's excellent history of sexuality website: Quote: Doctors masturbating women as a cure for hysteria This notion has been given extensive currency via Rachel Maines' The Technology of Orgasm (1998). The general consensus among a number of individuals working within the field of history of sexuality and medicine was that the practice, if it occurred at all, would have been confined to an extremely limited group, rather than as widespread as Maines seems to indicate. There were a number of problems with this book - not least citation to sources which don't necessarily support the arguments she's making with them - and this particular claim should be treated with extreme caution. http://www.lesleyahall.net/ To go back to the topic, I think EBD has interestingly contradictory attitudes to highly-strung-ness and delicacy. On the one hand, she likes to present the CS girls as a jolly, healthy, crew, who are keen on games, go mildly nuts when they don't get enough outdoor exercise, and enjoy their food. But the CS is at one point at least primarily marketed as a school for the fragile (we see numerous new girls who are sent there for that reason, with and without relatives in the San for TB), so you'd expect a less technicolouredly healthy general impression, with a preponderance of genuinely frail girls who can't play games, need rather careful handling, spend a lot of time in the school sickbay, and possibly have to get sent to the San if their 'tendency' crystallises into actual disease. But we don't ever really see this, bar the odd reference to not pushing an individual girl for health reasons and that girl who someone thinks (in Shocks?) won't be chosen as prefect because she spends significant time every term in the school san - all we really see in terms of illness are colds, toothache and the usual infectious illnesses you'd expect in a school, the odd appendix or accident. Even Joey's frequent brushes with death aren't from some systemic illness, but from falling through ice, hypothermia etc. No one, even Robin, ever declines into TB and has to go to the San, given the number of girls who are suspected to have inherited a tendency. It's as if EBD backed off from the idea of writing a school full of frail girls, but compromised by giving an impression of general robust health only being maintained by Matey's eagle eye, lots of milk and rest and fresh air etc, and emergency hot baths and bed for the slightest excuse. It lets her have it both ways - the 'interestingness' of fragility, without the kind of morbid effect there would have been if the entire school was often ill. I think the fact that she created the Annexe for the 'genuinely fragile' as distinct from the 'ordinarily fragile' - near to the San, had the pure air of the Sonnalpe, special care etc etc - slightly problematises the Tyrol CS proper's 'special status' as school for the fragile and possibly tubercular. Because isn't the USP of the CS proper that it has special care, proximity to the San etc etc?

Author:	JayB [ Thu Oct 29, 2009 5:58 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
Quote: ... the Tyrol CS proper's 'special status' as school for the fragile and possibly tubercular. Because isn't the USP of the CS proper that it has special care, proximity to the San etc etc? But that wasn't the initial point of the school, was it? The School was there first, so nearness to the San wasn't part of the original marketing. I think English education and healthy mountain air in a cheap location were the original selling points. It was only after the San opened (and she had married Jem) that Madge was able to capitalise on the connection, by opening the Annexe. I think the whole nearness to San/special health care idea really only gets going in Switzerland, when there is no Annexe and the School is physically closer to the San than it ever has been before. Before that the idea was there, but much more in the background.

Author:	Cosimo's Jackal [ Thu Oct 29, 2009 6:28 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
It seems pretty well established by Lintons, if not earlier, though. When Mrs Linton's doctor is recommending her to send the girls there, it's very much part of his spiel: Quote: Many of the girls there have parents undergoing treatment at the Sonnalpe, and the doctors at the Sonnalpe keep a watchful eye on them always. Lately, they opened an annexe up on the alm for specially delicate children. [...] And there is this to be said for it that could no be said of any English school: it is directly under the eye of doctors who watch over the girls, and look for any symptoms of trouble, so that they may be checked at once. Girls like yours are particularly well guarded, and the whole régime has been drawn up with an eye to strengthening the girls. I hadn't particularly thought about it before, but when I was thinking about delicacy, it struck me that simply having a mini-CS for the really fragile has a slight effect of suggesting that those at the school proper are fine, otherwise they'd be at the Annexe as well. One wonders about over-protective or worried parents wanting their girls at the Annexe, rather than the main school, especially if they themselves were at the San for treatment and wanting their children close by? Does any girl start school at the Annexe, that we know of? In fact, I find myself wondering why EBD decided to invent the Annexe, apart from keeping Juliet and Grizel in the CS orbit? The only other real effect in terms of major plotting and character seems to be to keep Robin away from the school proper (and therefore from Joey) for long periods, but I'm not sure why EBD would have wanted that either... ?

Author:	ChubbyMonkey [ Thu Oct 29, 2009 6:37 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Health, Delicacy and the Highly Strung Female
I agree that she seems to have a bit of a mixed attitude to it, but I think that that's just EBD! And in practice, if not theory, it does seem to work; there's a good explanation for the connection to the San, but the reader doesn't have to deal with constant morbidness and no near death experiences/games/interesting story lines because all of the girls are constantly ill. And in fairness to EBD, later on in the series there must be just as many girls who have relations in the San as are thought to be delicate. I agree that the original USP was that it was an English education - which is what makes it so odd later on when it's mainly English girls, or presented as such!