These are so much fun ! Thanks for posting them.

Some years ago I was reading a social history book ("Conduct Unbecoming a Woman" by Regina Morantz-Sanchez, about the trials of a female gynecologist) and it appears that the debate about biking and the health of women was a popular subject in medical journals in the mid 1890s, too. Other than concern about damaging some organs/muscles, some doctors feared that, ...er..., women might derive pleasure from the bicycle seat! Talk about degenerates.

Out of curiosity, I tried to find the articles cited in the book but the library at the school I work does not have issues from the 1890s... If anyone is curious, too, and has access to 1895-1896 issues of the American Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics and the Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal, let me know.

Around the same years, Frances Willard (founder of the Women's Christian Temperance Union) wrote "Wheel within Wheel". There is an extract of this book about her learning to ride a bicycle, that "most mysterious animal": http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5038/