"gentility" (Kellogg 157). Just as exercise and proper diet were deemed important, so a clean mind was essential to good health. Accordingly, Kellogg cautioned against allowing girls and women to read such dangerous texts as those by Chaucer, Byron, Burns, Boccaccio, and Rabelais (161), which were bound to cause mental anguish, masturbation, and other ailments traceable to impurity of mind. Women pure enough to be married and allowed to bear children were cautioned against behavior that would inure to the detriment of the health and racial "stock," which it was to be women's most earnest desire to raise the quality of. Kellogg's view was that "moral as well as mental qualities are transmitted from parent to child," which is why vices such as self-injury were so strongly discouraged (Kellogg 166-7). Because the mother's influence on the developing child was so strong, she as advised to surround herself with only the most pure and cheerful thoughts. As for diet, if a woman ingested spicy foods, she would undoubtedly produce an infant in love with stimu
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