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EVERY GIRL'S BOOK




EVERY GIRL'S BOOK

BY

GEORGE F. BUTLER, M. D.

1912

THE ABBOTT PRESS

RAVENSWOOD

CHICAGO




Copyright 1912

THE ABBOTT PRESS

CHICAGO




PUBLISHER'S NOTES

This is the second of a series of books on "How to Live," by Dr.
George F. Butler. These books range from childhood to old age. The boy
and the girl, the young man and young woman, the young husband and
young wife, middle-aged people, and old people are instructed in these
books in matters of the utmost importance to their health and
happiness. The first in this series was "Every Boy's Book." These two
books are especially intended for boys and girls from ten to fourteen
years of age, but every father and mother should read them, so they,
too, can know the truth about these great sex facts, and be prepared
to answer children's questions--now sometimes troublesome.




CONTENTS

 Chapter                                                          Page
      I. How the Story Began                                         1
     II. What the Bee Wanted of Elsie's Nose                        10
    III. The Husbands and Wives of Plants                           21
     IV. The Papa and Mamma Parts of the Plants                     34
      V. The First Life on Earth                                    43
     VI. Where Baby Animals Come From                               54
    VII. Where Baby Girls Come From                                 62




PREFACE

The greatest duty of mankind lies in the proper uprearing of our
children. The fact is recognized, but is the duty fulfilled?
Do we rear our children as we should? There is but one answer:
We fail. Teaching them many things for their good, we yet keep
from them ignorantly, foolishly, with a hesitancy and neglect
unpardonable--knowledge, the possession of which is essential for
their future welfare.

The first necessity for well-being is a healthy mind in a healthy
body. We can give our children that, if we will, by teaching them all
about the body, its source of life, its different functions, and its
care. The child should grow to maturity knowing that the human body
is something fine, something that accomplishes good, something to be
proud of in every way. Above all should the child be taught all
concerning the process of reproduction, just as it is taught the
action of the stomach or of the brain. By so doing, we can produce a
better and healthier and happier generation to follow ours. By what
strange and mistaken impulse in the past such absolutely required
teaching has been so studiously withheld is beyond all comprehension.

We want the best for our children. We want them to grow up with right
thoughts and habits, yet we keep from them the knowledge without which
their thoughts and habits will surely be imperiled when there arises
in them the generative instinct, which has its effect upon both male
and female youth alike.

We give them no information as to sexual matters; and, when it comes
to them, it is too often but in the way of half-truths, mysterious,
exciting to the imagination, and dangerous.

Yet how simple and natural the giving of this information might be
made; and how easily the child might be safeguarded! Mankind has
demands which must be gratified. We have hunger; we have thirst; we
have the impulse of reproduction. Each is right and natural. There
should be no difference in the consideration of either of these wants.
All about them the child should be taught, from the beginning, so that
all will be natural and right and commonplace and a matter of course
long before the age is reached when the sexual instinct is developed.

Is not this reason? Is it not healthful, logical, common sense? Is it
not the wholesome and right and proper view?

Nature is devoted to reproduction. From the cell to the flower, and so
on upward, the creatures of the world are but renewing themselves, and
the learning of this is the greatest and most beautiful of all
studies. All this the child can be taught.

Elementary biology, or the study of subjects of what we call zoology
and botany combined, can be made the most attractive of studies to any
child who has learned to read. The boy or girl may be taught that the
trees and flowers are living things that are beautiful and are male
and female. The child may be shown how the bees carry the pollen from
flower to flower, and how other plants and flowers are produced in
that way.

He can be taught the wonder of seed, and its consequences. He can be
shown the birds in their mating, and the marvel of the egg, and why it
can produce a chicken. And thus the child, boy or girl, may be led on,
through the gradations, to a study of the human body, and how
reproduction is provided for there as in the bodies of all other
living things, vegetable or animal.

Before the child, boy or girl, has reached the age of ten, long before
the sex instinct has been aroused, the sexual lesson will have been
learned innocently and thoroughly and, when the change comes, it will
be as no bewildering, exciting thing, but something anticipated, and
received with a sense of understanding and responsibility.

This knowledge almost unknowingly acquired as a child, will mean
health of mind and of body, and the avoidance of what may result most
evilly.

How is sexual instruction given now? In tens of thousands of
instances--no doubt in the majority--not at all. Lectures to youth of
either sex are given sometimes, but only when they have reached what
is called "the age of understanding."

Here is where parents err, and seriously. The teaching has been
deferred too long. The young of either sex, long before puberty, have
acquired some knowledge of the mystery--which should have been no
mystery at all--and late teaching, however sound and wise, but gives
an added and inviting direction to the subject suddenly made to assume
a new and startling importance. It arouses curiosity, and more. It may
sometimes be harmful.

As for the youth never taught at all, those who acquire their
knowledge only through accidental sources--usually incapable, and too
often vicious--their case could not be worse. They are unprepared for
one of the tests and demands for life. Their parents are guilty.

There is nothing impure in nature. To guard the children, to prepare
them for every phase of life, is the parents' duty. The child is pure,
and to the child all things are pure. Teach the child, simply as a
matter of course, all about the ways of reproduction, and to the boy
or girl purity will remain when the age of sexual sway and impulse
comes. This is the only law in the case. Let it be followed, and the
generation to follow will be clearer, wiser, and healthier than is the
present one.

It is my hope that this "Every Girl's Book" (with "Every Boy's Book"
which preceded it) will afford the means so long needed and desired
for teaching children what they should be taught. I have tried to tell
the story of sex naturally, in a clear and simple way, from the
development of life, and of life's relations, from protoplasm all
through organic life up to mankind. Its teachings should result in
wide promotion of the innocence of knowledge which is better,
infinitely, than the imperiling innocence of ignorance.

                                             George F. Butler, M. D.

  Chicago, Ill.
    July 1, 1912.




I

HOW THE STORY BEGAN


Her name was Elsie and she was asleep in a cozy nook in the woods,
which was the beginning of it all.

Many strange things may happen to a little girl who falls asleep in
the woods, but there never happened to any other little girl, either
asleep or awake, in the woods or at home, a more important thing than
that which had its start for Elsie while she lay there under the green
boughs beside a bubbling spring of crystal-clear water, the scent of
pines and flowers sweetening the still air. A robin redbreast whistled
melodiously for "rain, rain, rain," and the cows in the pasture, who
do not like rain as well as they do sunshine, lifted up their voices
in protest, calling "oo-oo-ohh