Appropriate Female Education

It may be well to mention two or three details, which are so importantthat no system of _appropriate_ female education, separate or mixed,can neglect them. They have been implied throughout the whole of thepresent discussion, but not distinctly enunciated. One is, that duringthe period of rapid development, that is, from fourteen toeighteen,[33] a girl should not study as many hours a day as a boy."In most of our schools," says a distinguished physiological authoritypreviously quoted, "the hours are too many for both boys and girls.From a quarter of nine or nine, until half-past two, is with us(Philadelphia schools for girls) the common schooltime in privateseminaries. The usual recess is twenty minutes or half an hour, and itis not filled by enforced exercise. In certain schools,--would it werethe rule,--ten minutes' recess is given after every hour. To thesehours, we must add the time spent in study out of school. This, forsome reason, nearly always exceeds the time stated by teachers to benecessary; and most girls between the age of thirteen and seventeenthus expend two or three hours. Does any physician believe that it isgood for a growing girl to be so occupied seven or eight hours a day?or that it is right for her to use her brains as long a time as themechanic employs his muscles? But this is only a part of the evil. Themultiplicity of studies, the number of teachers,--each eager to getthe most he can out of his pupil,--the severer drill of our day, andthe greater intensity of application demanded, produce effects on thegrowing brain, which, in a vast number of cases, can be onlydisastrous. Even in girls of from fourteen to eighteen, such as crowdthe normal school in Philadelphia, this sort of tension and thisvariety of study occasion an amount of ill-health which is sadlyfamiliar to many physicians."[34]
Experience teaches that a healthy and growing boy may spend six hoursof force daily upon his studies, and leave sufficient margin forphysical growth. A girl cannot spend more than four, or, inoccasional instances, five hours of force daily upon her studies, andleave sufficient margin for the general physical growth that she mustmake in common with a boy, and also for constructing a reproductiveapparatus. If she puts as much force into her brain education as aboy, the brain or the special apparatus will suffer. Appropriateeducation and appropriate co-education must adjust their methods andregimen to this law.
Another detail is, that, during every fourth week, there should be aremission, and sometimes an intermission, of both study and exercise.Some individuals require, at that time, a complete intermission frommental and physical effort for a single day; others for two or threedays; others require only a remission, and can do half work safely fortwo or three days, and their usual work after that. The diminishedlabor, which shall give Nature an opportunity to accomplish herspecial periodical task and growth, is a physiological necessity forall, however robust they may seem to be. The apportionment of studyand exercise to individual needs cannot be decided by general rules,nor can the decision of it be safely left to the pupil's caprice orambition. Each case must be decided upon its own merits. Theorganization of studies and instruction must be flexible enough toadmit of the periodical and temporary absence of each pupil, withoutloss of rank, or necessity of making up work, from recitation, andexercise of all sorts. The periodical type of woman's way of work mustbe harmonized with the persistent type of man's way of work in any successful plan of co-education.
The keen eye and rapid hand of gain, of what Jouffroy callsself-interest well understood, is sometimes quicker than the brain andwill of philanthropy to discern and inaugurate reform. An illustrationof this statement, and a practical recognition of the physiologicalmethod of woman's work, lately came under my observation. There is anestablishment in Boston, owned and carried on by a man, in which tenor a dozen girls are constantly employed. Each of them is given andrequired to take a vacation of three days every fourth week. It isscarcely necessary to say that their sanitary condition isexceptionally good, and that the aggregate yearly amount of work whichthe owner obtains is greater than when persistent attendance and laborwas required. I have never heard of any female school, public orprivate, in which any such plan has been adopted; nor is it likelythat any similar plan will be adopted so long as the communityentertain the conviction that a boy's education and a girl's educationshould be the same, and that the same means the boy's. What is knownin England as the Ten-hour Act, which Mr. Mundella and Sir JohnLubbock have recently carried through Parliament, is a step in asimilar direction. It is an act providing for the special protectionof women against over-work. It does not recognize, and probably wasnot intended to recognize, the periodical type of woman'sorganization. It is founded on the fact, however, which law has beenso slow to acknowledge, that the male and female organization are notidentical

Difficult Problem Of The Appropriate Co-Education Of The Sexes

If, then, the identical co-education of the sexes is condemned both byphysiology and experience, may it not be that their _special andappropriate co-education_ would yield a better result than theirspecial and appropriate _separate_ education? This is a most importantquestion, and one difficult to resolve. The discussion of it must bereferred to those who are engaged in the practical work ofinstruction, and the decision will rest with experience. Physiologyadvocates, as we have seen, the special and appropriate education ofthe sexes, and has only a single word to utter with regard to simpleco-education, or juxtaposition in education.
That word is with regard to the common belief in the danger ofimproprieties and scandal as a part of co-education. There is somedanger in this respect; but not a serious or unavoidable one.Doubtless there would be occasional lapses in a double-sexed college;and so there are outside of schoolhouses and seminaries of learning.Even the church and the clergy are not exempt from reproach in suchthings. There are sects, professing to commingle religion and love,who illustrate the dangers of juxtaposition even in things holy. "Nophysiologist can well doubt that the holy kiss of love in such casesowes all its warmth to the sexual feeling which consciously orunconsciously inspires it, or that the mystical union of the sexeslies very close to a union that is nowise mystical, when it does notlead to madness."[31] There is less, or certainly no more danger inhaving the sexes unite at the repasts of knowledge, than, as Plautusbluntly puts it, having he wits and she wits recline at the repasts offashion. Isolation is more likely to breed pruriency than comminglingto provoke indulgence. The virtue of the cloister and the cellscarcely deserves the name. A girl has her honor in her own keeping.If she can be trusted with boys and men at the lecture-room and inchurch, she can be trusted with them at school and in college. JeanPaul says, "To insure modesty, I would advise the education of thesexes together; for two boys will preserve twelve girls, or two girlstwelve boys, innocent amidst winks, jokes, and improprieties, merelyby that instinctive sense which is the forerunner of matured modesty.But I will guarantee nothing in a school where girls are alonetogether, and still less when boys are." A certain amount ofjuxta-position is an advantage to each sex. More than a certain amountis an evil to both. Instinct and common sense can be safely left todraw the line of demarcation. At the same time it is well to rememberthat juxtaposition may be carried too far. Temptations enough besetthe young, without adding to them. Let learning and purity go hand inhand.
There are two considerations appertaining to this subject, which,although they do not belong to the physiology of the matter, deserveto be mentioned in this connection. One amounts to a practicalprohibition, for the present at least, of the experiment of thespecial and appropriate co-education of the sexes; and the other is aninherent difficulty in the experiment itself. The former can beremoved whenever those who heartily believe in the success of theexperiment choose to get rid of it; and the latter by patient andintelligent effort.
The present practical prohibition of the experiment is the poverty ofour colleges. Identical co-education can be easily tried with theexisting organization of collegiate instruction. This has been tried,and is still going on in separate and double-sexed schools of allsorts, and has failed. Special and appropriate co-education requiresin many ways, not in all, re-arrangement of the organization ofinstruction; and this will cost money and a good deal of it. HarvardCollege, for example, rich as it is supposed to be, whose banner, touse Mr. Higginson's illustration, is the red flag that the bulls offemale reform are just now pitching into,--Harvard College could notundertake the task of special and appropriate co-education, in such away as to give the two sexes a fair chance, which means the _best_chance, and the only chance it ought to give or will ever give,without an endowment, additional to its present resources, of from oneto two millions of dollars; and it probably would require the largerrather than the smaller sum. And this I say advisedly. By which Imean, not with the advice and consent of the president and fellows ofthe college, but as an opinion founded on nearly twenty years'personal acquaintance, as an instructor in one of the departments ofthe university, with the organization of instruction in it, and uponthe demands which physiology teaches the special and appropriateeducation of girls would make upon it. To make boys half-girls, andgirls half-boys, can never be the legitimate function of any college.But such a result, the natural child of identical co-education, issure to follow the training of a college that has not the pecuniarymeans to prevent it. This obstacle is of course a removable one. Itis only necessary for those who wish to get it out of the way to puttheir hands in their pockets, and produce a couple of millions. Theoffer of such a sum, conditioned upon the liberal education of women,might influence even a body as soulless as the corporation of HarvardCollege is sometimes represented to be.
The inherent difficulty in the experiment of special and appropriateco-education is the difficulty of adjusting, in the same institution,the methods of instruction to the physiological needs of each sex; tothe persistent type of one, and the periodical type of the other; tothe demand for a margin in metamorphosis of tissue, beyond what studycauses, for general growth in one sex, and to a larger margin in theother sex, that shall permit not only general growth, but also theconstruction of the reproductive apparatus. This difficulty can onlybe removed by patient and intelligent effort. The first step in thedirection of removing it is to see plainly what errors or dangers liein the way. These, or some of them, we have endeavored to point out."Nothing is so conducive to a right appreciation of the truth as aright appreciation of the error by which it is surrounded."[32] Whenwe have acquired a belief of the facts concerning the identicaleducation, the identical co-education, the appropriate education, andthe appropriate co-education of the sexes, we shall be in a conditionto draw just conclusions from them.
The intimate connection of mind and brain, the correlation of mentalpower and cerebral metamorphosis, explains and justifies thephysiologist's demand, that in the education of girls, as well as ofboys, the machinery and methods of instruction shall be carefullyadjusted to their organization. If it were possible, they should beadjusted to the organization of each individual. None doubt theimportance of age, acquirement, idiosyncrasy, and probable career inlife, as factors in classification. Sex goes deeper than any or all ofthese. To neglect this is to neglect the chief factor of the problem.Rightly interpreted and followed, it will yield the grandest results.Disregarded, it will balk the best methods of teaching and the geniusof the best teachers. Sex is not concerned with studies as such.These, for any thing that appears to the contrary physiologically, maybe the same for the intellectual development of females as of males;but, as we have seen, it is largely concerned about an appropriate wayof pursuing them. Girls will have a fair chance, and women the largestfreedom and greatest power, now that legal hinderances are removed,and all bars let down, when they are taught to develop and are willingto respect their own organization. How to bring about this developmentand insure this respect, in a double-sexed college, is one of theproblems of co-education.
It does not come within the scope of this essay to speculate upon theways--the regimen, methods of instruction, and other details ofcollege life,--by which the inherent difficulties of co-education maybe obviated. Here tentative and judicious experiment is better thanspeculation. It would seem to be the part of wisdom, however, to makethe simplest and least costly experiment first; that is, to discardthe identical separate education of girls as boys, and to ascertainwhat their appropriate separate education is, and what it willaccomplish. Aided by the light of such an experiment, it would becomparatively easy to solve the more difficult problem of the appropriate co-education of the sexes.

Identical Education Of The Sexes

The identical education of the sexes has borne the fruit which we havepointed out. Their identical co-education will intensify the evils ofseparate identical education; for it will introduce the element ofemulation, and it will introduce this element in its strongest form.It is easy to frame a theoretical emulation, in which results only arecompared and tested, that would be healthy and invigorating; but suchtheoretical competition of the sexes is not at all the sort of steady,untiring, day-after-day competition that identical co-educationimplies. It is one thing to put up a goal a long way off,--five or sixmonths or three or four years distant,--and tell boys and girls, eachin their own way, to strive for it, and quite a different thing toput up the same goal, at the same distance, and oblige each sex to runtheir race for it side by side on the same road, in daily competitionwith each other, and with equal expenditure of force at all times.Identical co-education is racing in the latter way. The inevitableresults of it have been shown in some of the cases we have narrated.The trial of it on a larger scale would only yield a larger number ofsimilar degenerations, weaknesses, and sacrifices of noble lives. Puta boy and girl together upon the same course of study, with the samelofty ideal before them, and hold up to their eyes the dailyincitements of comparative progress, and there will be awakened withinthem a stimulus unknown before, and that separate study does notexcite. The unconscious fires that have their seat deep down in therecesses of the sexual organization will flame up through everytissue, permeate every vessel, burn every nerve, flash from the eye,tingle in the brain, and work the whole machine at highest pressure.There need not be, and generally will not be, any low or sensualdesire in all this elemental action. It is only making youth work overthe tasks of sober study with the wasting force of intense passion. Ofcourse such strenuous labor will yield brilliant, though temporary,results. The fire is kept alive by the waste of the system, and soonburns up its source. The first sex to suffer in this exhilarating andcostly competition must be, as experience shows it is, the one thathas the largest amount of force in readiness for immediate call; andthis is the female sex. At the age of development, Nature mobilizesthe forces of a girl's organization for the purpose of establishing afunction that shall endure for a generation, and for constructing anapparatus that shall cradle and nurse a race. These mobilized forces,which, at the technical educational period, the girl possesses andcontrols largely in excess of the boy, under the passionate stimulusof identical co-education, are turned from their divinely-appointedfield of operations, to the region of brain activity. The result is amost brilliant show of cerebral pyrotechnics, and degenerations thatwe have described.
That undue and disproportionate brain activity exerts a sterilizinginfluence upon both sexes is alike a doctrine of physiology, and aninduction from experience. And both physiology and experience alsoteach that this influence is more potent upon the female than upon themale. The explanation of the latter fact--of the greater aptitude ofthe female organization to become thus modified by excessive brainactivity--is probably to be found in the larger size, more complicatedrelations, and more important functions, of the female reproductiveapparatus. This delicate and complex mechanism is liable to be abortedor deranged by the withdrawal of force that is needed for itsconstruction and maintenance. It is, perhaps, idle to speculate uponthe prospective evil that would accrue to the human race, should suchan organic modification, introduced by abnormal education, be pushedto its ultimate limit. But inasmuch as the subject is not onlygermain to our inquiry, but has attracted the attention of a recentwriter, whose bold and philosophic speculations, clothed in forciblelanguage, have startled the best thought of the age, it may be well toquote him briefly on this point. Referring to the fact, that, in ourmodern civilization, the cultivated classes have smaller families thanthe uncultivated ones, he says, "If the superior sections andspecimens of humanity are to lose, relatively, their procreative powerin virtue of, and in proportion to, that superiority, how is cultureor progress to be propagated so as to benefit the species as a whole,and how are those gradually amended organizations from which we hopeso much to be secured? If, indeed, it were ignorance, stupidity, anddestitution, instead of mental and moral development, that were the_sterilizing_ influences, then the improvement of the race would go onswimmingly, and in an ever-accelerating ratio. But since theconditions are exactly reversed, how should not an exactly oppositedirection be pursued? How should the race _not_ deteriorate, whenthose who morally and physically are fitted to perpetuate it are(relatively), by a law of physiology, those least likely to doso?"[27] The answer to Mr. Greg's inquiry is obvious. If the cultureof the race moves on into the future in the same rut and by the samemethods that limit and direct it now; if the education of the sexesremains identical, instead of being appropriate and special; andespecially if the intense and passionate stimulus of the identicalco-education of the sexes is added to their identical education,--thenthe sterilizing influence of such a training, acting with tenfold moreforce upon the female than upon the male, will go on, and the racewill be propagated from its inferior classes.[28] The stream of lifethat is to flow into the future will be Celtic rather than American:it will come from the collieries, and not from the peerage.Fortunately, the reverse of this picture is equally possible. The raceholds its destinies in its own hands. The highest wisdom will securethe survival and propagation of the fittest. Physiology teaches thatthis result, the attainment of which our hopes prophecy, is to besecured, not by an identical education, or an identical co-educationof the sexes, but by _a special and appropriate education, that shallproduce a just and harmonious development of every part_.
Let one remark be made here. It has been asserted that the chiefreason why the higher and educated classes have smaller families thanthe lower and uneducated is, that the former criminally prevent ordestroy increase. The pulpit,[29] as well as the medical press, hascried out against this enormity. That a disposition to do this thingexists, and is often carried into effect, is not to be denied, andcannot be too strongly condemned. On the other hand, it should beproclaimed, to the credit and honor of our cultivated women, and as areproach to the identical education of the sexes, that many of thembear in silence the accusation of self-tampering, who are denied theoft-prayed-for trial, blessing, and responsibility of offspring. As amatter of personal experience, my advice has been much more frequentlyand earnestly sought by those of our best classes who desired to knowhow to obtain, than by those who wished to escape, the offices ofmaternity.
The experiment of the identical co-education of the sexes has been seton foot by some of our Western colleges. It has not yet been triedlong enough to show much more than its first fruits, viz., its resultswhile the students are in college; and of these the only obvious onesare increased emulation, and intellectual development and attainments.The defects of the reproductive mechanism, and the friction of itsaction, are not exhibited there; nor is there time or opportunity incollege for the evils which these defects entail to be exhibited.President Magoun of Iowa College tells us, that, in the institutionover which he presides, "Forty-two young men and fifty-three youngladies have pursued college courses;" and adds, "Nothing needs to besaid as to the control of the two sexes in the college. The youngladies are placed under the supervision of a lady principal andassistant as to deportment, and every thing besides recitations (inwhich they are under the supervision of the same professors and otherteachers with the young men, reciting with them); and one simple ruleas to social intercourse governs every thing. The moral and religiousinfluences attending the arrangement have been most happy."[30] Fromthis it is evident that Iowa College is trying the identicalco-education of the sexes; and the president reports the happy moraland religious results of the experiment, but leaves us ignorant of itsphysiological results. It may never have occurred to him, that a classof a hundred young ladies might graduate from Iowa College or AntiochCollege or Michigan University, whose average health during theircollege course had appeared to the president and faculty as good asthat of their male classmates who had made equal intellectual progresswith them, upon whom no scandal had dropped its venom, who might bepresented to the public on Commencement Day as specimens of as goodhealth as their uneducated sisters, with roses in their cheeks asnatural as those in their hands, the major part of whom might,notwithstanding all this, have physical defects that a physiologistcould easily discover, and that would produce, sooner or later, moreor less of the sad results we have previously described. Aphilanthropist and an intelligent observer, who has for a long timetaken an active part in promoting the best education of the sexes, andwho still holds some sort of official connection with a collegeoccupied with identical co-education, told the writer a few monthsago, that he had endeavored to trace the post-college history of thefemale graduates of the institution he was interested in. His objectwas to ascertain how their physique behaved under the stress,--thewear and tear of woman's work in life. The conclusion that resultedfrom his inquiry he formulated in the statement, that "theco-education of the sexes is intellectually a success, physically afailure." Another gentleman, more closely connected with a similarinstitution of education than the person just referred to, has arrivedat a similar conclusion. Only a few female graduates of colleges haveconsulted the writer professionally. All sought his advice two, three,or more years after graduation; and, in all, the difficulties underwhich they labored could be distinctly traced to their college orderof life and study, that is, to identical co-education. If physicianswho are living in the neighborhood of the present residences of thesegraduates have been consulted by them in the same proportion with him,the inference is inevitable, that the ratio of invalidism among femalecollege graduates is greater than even among the graduates of ourcommon, high, and normal schools. All such observations as these,however, are only of value, at present, as indications of the drift ofidentical co-education, not as proofs of its physical fruits, or oftheir influence on mental force. Two or three generations, at least,of the female college graduates of this sort of co-education must comeand go before any sufficient idea can be formed of the harvest it willyield. The physiologist dreads to see the costly experiment tried. Theurgent reformer, who cares less for human suffering and human lifethan for the trial of his theories, will regard the experiment withequanimity if not with complacency.

Boys Schools And Girls Schools

Obedient to the American educational maxim, that boys' schools and girls' schools are one, and that the one is the boys' school, thefemale schools have copied the methods which have grown out of therequirements of the male organization. Schools for girls have beenmodelled after schools for boys. Were it not for differences of dressand figure, it would be impossible, even for an expert, after visitinga high school for boys and one for girls, to tell which was arrangedfor the male and which for the female organization. Our girls'schools, whether public or private, have imposed upon their pupils aboy's regimen; and it is now proposed, in some quarters, to carry thisprinciple still farther, by burdening girls, after they leave school,with a quadrennium of masculine college regimen. And so girls are tolearn the alphabet in college, as they have learned it in thegrammar-school, just as boys do. This is grounded upon the suppositionthat sustained regularity of action and attendance may be as safelyrequired of a girl as of a boy; that there is no physical necessityfor periodically relieving her from walking, standing, reciting, orstudying; that the chapel-bell may call her, as well as him, to adaily morning walk, with a standing prayer at the end of it,regardless of the danger that such exercises, by deranging the tidesof her organization, may add to her piety at the expense of herblood; that she may work her brain over mathematics, botany,chemistry, German, and the like, with equal and sustained force onevery day of the month, and so safely divert blood from thereproductive apparatus to the head; in short, that she, like herbrother, develops health and strength, blood and nerve, intellect andlife, by a regular, uninterrupted, and sustained course of work. Allthis is not justified, either by experience or physiology. Thegardener may plant, if he choose, the lily and the rose, the oak andthe vine, within the same enclosure; let the same soil nourish them,the same air visit them, and the same sunshine warm and cheer them;still, he trains each of them with a separate art, warding from eachits peculiar dangers, developing within each its peculiar powers, andteaching each to put forth to the utmost its divine and peculiar giftsof strength and beauty. Girls lose health, strength, blood, and nerve,by a regimen that ignores the periodical tides and reproductiveapparatus of their organization. The mothers and instructors, thehomes and schools, of our country's daughters, would profit byoccasionally reading the old Levitical law. The race has not yet quiteoutgrown the physiology of Moses.
Co-education, then, signifies in common acceptation identicalco-education. This identity of training is what many at the presentday seem to be praying for and working for. Appropriate education ofthe two sexes, carried as far as possible, is a consummation mostdevoutly to be desired; identical education of the two sexes is acrime before God and humanity, that physiology protests against, andthat experience weeps over. Because the education of boys has met withtolerable success, hitherto,--but only tolerable it must beconfessed,--in developing them into men, there are those who wouldmake girls grow into women by the same process. Because a gardener hasnursed an acorn till it grew into an oak, they would have him cradle agrape in the same soil and way, and make it a vine. Identicaleducation, or identical co-education, of the sexes defrauds one sex orthe other, or perhaps both. It defies the Roman maxim, whichphysiology has fully justified, _mens sana in corpore sano_. Thesustained regimen, regular recitation, erect posture, daily walk,persistent exercise, and unintermitted labor that toughens a boy, andmakes a man of him, can only be partially applied to a girl. Theregimen of intermittance, periodicity of exercise and rest, workthree-fourths of each month, and remission, if not abstinence, theother fourth, physiological interchange of the erect and recliningposture, care of the reproductive system that is the cradle of therace, all this, that toughens a girl and makes a woman of her, willemasculate a lad. A combination of the two methods of education, acompromise between them, would probably yield an average result,excluding the best of both. It would give a fair chance neither to aboy nor a girl. Of all compromises, such a physiological one is theworst. It cultivates mediocrity, and cheats the future of itsrightful legacy of lofty manhood and womanhood. It emasculates boys,stunts girls; makes semi-eunuchs of one sex, and agenes of the other.
The error which has led to the identical education of the two sexes,and which prophecies their identical co-education in colleges anduniversities, is not confined to technical education. It permeatessociety. It is found in the home, the workshop, the factory, and inall the ramifications of social life. The identity of boys and girls,of men and women, is practically asserted out of the school as much asin it, and it is theoretically proclaimed from the pulpit and therostrum. Woman seems to be looking up to man and his development, asthe goal and ideal of womanhood. The new gospel of female developmentglorifies what she possesses in common with him, and tramples underher feet, as a source of weakness and badge of inferiority, themechanism and functions peculiar to herself. In consequence of thiswide-spread error, largely the result of physiological ignorance,girls are almost universally trained in masculine methods of livingand working as well as of studying. The notion is practically foundeverywhere, that boys and girls are one, and that the boys make theone. Girls, young ladies, to use the polite phrase, who are aboutleaving or have left school for society, dissipation, or self-culture,rarely permit any of Nature's periodical demands to interfere withtheir morning calls, or evening promenades, or midnight dancing, orsober study. Even the home draws the sacred mantle of modesty soclosely over the reproductive function as not only to cover but tosmother it. Sisters imitate brothers in persistent work at all times.Female clerks in stores strive to emulate the males by unremittinglabor, seeking to develop feminine force by masculine methods. Femaleoperatives of all sorts, in factories and elsewhere, labor in the sameway; and, when the day is done, are as likely to dance half the night,regardless of any pressure upon them of a peculiar function, as theirfashionable sisters in the polite world. All unite in pushing thehateful thing out of sight and out of mind; and all are punished bysimilar weakness, degeneration, and disease.
There are two reasons why female operatives of all sorts are likely tosuffer less, and actually do suffer less, from such persistent work,than female students; why Jane in the factory can work more steadilywith the loom, than Jane in college with the dictionary; why the girlwho makes the bed can safely work more steadily the whole yearthrough, than her little mistress of sixteen who goes to school. Thefirst reason is, that the female operative, of whatever sort, has, asa rule, passed through the first critical epoch of woman's life: shehas got fairly by it. In her case, as a rule, unfortunately there aretoo many exceptions to it, the catamenia have been established; thefunction is in good running order; the reproductive apparatus--theengine within an engine--has been constructed, and she will not becalled upon to furnish force for building it again. The femalestudent, on the contrary, has got these tasks before her, and mustperform them while getting her education; for the period of femalesexual development coincides with the educational period. The samefive years of life must be given to both tasks. After the function isnormally established, and the apparatus made, woman can labor mentallyor physically, or both, with very much greater persistence andintensity, than during the age of development. She still retains thetype of periodicity; and her best work, both as to quality and amount,is accomplished when the order of her labor partakes of the rhythmicorder of her constitution. Still the fact remains, that she can domore than before; her fibre has acquired toughness; the system isconsolidated; its fountains are less easily stirred. It should bementioned in this connection, what has been previously adverted to,that the toughness and power of after life are largely in proportionto the normality of sexual development. If there is error then, theorganization never fully recovers. This is an additional motive for astrict physiological regimen during a girl's student life, and, justso far, an argument against the identical co-education of the sexes.The second reason why female operatives are less likely to suffer, andactually do suffer less, than school-girls, from persistent workstraight through the year, is because the former work their brainsless. To use the language of Herbert Spencer, "That antagonism betweenbody and brain which we see in those, who, pushing brain-activity toan extreme, enfeeble their bodies,"[25] does not often exist in femaleoperatives, any more than in male. On the contrary, they belong to theclass of those who, in the words of the same author, by "pushingbodily activity to an extreme, make their brains inert."[26] Hencethey have stronger bodies, a reproductive apparatus more normallyconstructed, and a catamenial function less readily disturbed byeffort, than their student sisters, who are not only younger thanthey, but are trained to push "brain-activity to an extreme." Givegirls a fair chance for physical development at school, and they willbe able in after life, with reasonable care of themselves, to answerthe demands that may be made upon them.

Healthful And Necessary Movement Of The Human Race Towards Progress

Guided by the laws of development which we have found physiology toteach, and warned by the punishments, in the shape of weakness anddisease, which we have shown their infringement to bring about, and ofwhich our present methods of female education furnish innumerableexamples, it is not difficult to discern certain physiologicalprinciples that limit and control the education, and, consequently,the co-education of our youth. These principles we have learned tobe, three for the two sexes in common, and one for the peculiaritiesof the female sex. The three common to both, the three to which bothare subjected, and for which wise methods of education will provide inthe case of both, are, 1st, a sufficient supply of appropriatenutriment. This of course includes good air and good water andsufficient warmth, as much as bread and butter; oxygen and sunlight,as much as meat. 2d, Mental and physical work and regimen soapportioned, that repair shall exceed waste, and a margin be left fordevelopment. This includes out-of-door exercise and appropriate waysof dressing, as much as the hours of study, and the number and sort ofstudies. 3d, Sufficient sleep. This includes the best time forsleeping, as well as the proper number of hours for sleep. It excludesthe "murdering of sleep," by late hours of study and the crowding ofstudies, as much as by wine or tea or dissipation. All these guide andlimit the education of the two sexes very much alike. The principleor condition peculiar to the female sex is the management of thecatamenial function, which, from the age of fourteen to nineteen,includes the building of the reproductive apparatus. This imposes uponwomen, and especially upon the young woman, a great care, acorresponding duty, and compensating privileges. There is only afeeble counterpart to it in the male organization; and, in his moralconstitution, there cannot be found the fine instincts and quickperceptions that have their root in this mechanism, and correlate itsfunctions. This lends to her development and to all her work arhythmical or periodical order, which must be recognized and obeyed."In this recognition of the chronometry of organic process, there isunquestionably great promise for the future; for it is plain that theobservance of time in the motions of organic molecules is as certainand universal, if not as exact, as that of the heavenly bodies."[24]Periodicity characterizes the female organization, and developesfeminine force. Persistence characterizes the male organization, anddevelops masculine force. Education will draw the best out of each byadjusting its methods to the periodicity of one and the persistence ofthe other.
Before going farther, it is essential to acquire a definite notion ofwhat is meant, or, at least, of what we mean in this discussion, bythe term co-education. Following its etymology, _con-educare_, itsignifies to draw out together, or to unite in education; and thisunion refers to the time and place, rather than to the methods andkinds of education. In this sense any school or college may utilizeits buildings, apparatus, and instructors to give appropriateeducation to the two sexes as well as to different ages of the samesex. This is juxtaposition in education. When the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology teaches one class of young men chemistry, andanother class engineering, in the same building and at the same time,it co-educates those two classes. In this sense it is possible thatmany advantages might be obtained from the co-education of the sexes,that would more than counterbalance the evils of crowding largenumbers of them together. This sort of co-education does not excludeappropriate classification, nor compel the two sexes to follow thesame methods or the same regimen.
Another signification of co-education, and, as we apprehend, the onein which it is commonly used, includes time, place, government,methods, studies, and regimen. This is identical co-education. Thismeans, that boys and girls shall be taught the same things, at thesame time, in the same place, by the same faculty, with the samemethods, and under the same regimen. This admits age and proficiency,but not sex, as a factor in classification. It is against theco-education of the sexes, in this sense of identical co-education,that physiology protests; and it is this identity of education, theprominent characteristic of our American school-system, that hasproduced the evils described in the clinical part of this essay, andthat threatens to push the degeneration of the female sex stillfarther on. In these pages, co-education of the sexes is used in itscommon acceptation of identical co-education.
Let us look for a moment at what identical co-education is. The lawhas, or had, a maxim, that a man and his wife are one, and that theone is the man. Modern American education has a maxim, that boys'schools and girls' schools are one, and that the one is the boys'school. Schools have been arranged, accordingly, to meet therequirements of the masculine organization. Studies have been selectedthat experience has proved to be appropriate to a boy's intellectualdevelopment, and a regimen adopted, while pursuing them, appropriateto his physical development. His school and college life, his methodsof study, recitations, exercises, and recreations, are ordered uponthe supposition, that, barring disease or infirmity, punctualattendance upon the hours of recitation, and upon all other duties intheir season and order, may be required of him continuously, in spiteof ennui, inclement weather, or fatigue; that there is no week in themonth, or day in the week, or hour in the day, when it is a physicalnecessity to relieve him from standing or from studying,--fromphysical effort or mental labor; that the chapel-bell may safely callhim to morning prayer from New Year to Christmas, with the assurance,that, if the going does not add to his stock of piety, it will notdiminish his stock of health; that he may be sent to the gymnasium andthe examination-hall, to the theatres of physical and intellectualdisplay at any time,--in short, that he develops health and strength,blood and nerve, intellect and life, by a regular, uninterrupted, andsustained course of work. And all this is justified both by experienceand physiology.

A Consideration Of The Co-Education Of The Sexes

Let us quote the authority of such an acute and sagacious observer asDr. Maudsley, in support of the physiological and pathological viewsthat have been here presented. Referring to the physiologicalcondition and phenomena of the first critical epoch, he says, "In thegreat mental revolution caused by the development of the sexual systemat puberty, we have the most striking example of the intimate andessential sympathy between the brain, as a mental organ, and otherorgans of the body. The change of character at this period is not byany means _limited to the appearance of the sexual feelings_, andtheir sympathetic ideas, but, when traced to its ultimate reach, willbe found to extend to the highest feelings of mankind, social, moral,and even religious."[21] He points out the fact that it is very easyby improper training and forced work, during this susceptible period,to turn a physiological into a pathological state. "The great mentalrevolution which occurs at puberty may go beyond its physiologicallimits in some instances, and become pathological." "The time of thismental revolution is at best a trying period for youth." "The monthlyactivity of the ovaries, which marks the advent of puberty in women,has a notable effect upon the mind and body; wherefore it may becomean important cause of mental and physical derangement."[22] Withregard to the physiological effects of arrested development of thereproductive apparatus in women, Dr. Maudsley uses the following plainand emphatic language: "The forms and habits of mutilated men approachthose of women; and women, whose ovaries and uterus remain for somecause in a state of complete inaction, approach the forms and habitsof men. It is said, too, that, in hermaphrodites, the mentalcharacter, like the physical, participates equally in that of bothsexes. While woman preserves her sex, she will necessarily be feeblerthan man, and, having her special bodily and mental characters, willhave, to a certain extent, her own sphere of activity; where she hasbecome thoroughly masculine in nature, or hermaphrodite inmind,--when, in fact, she has pretty well divested herself of hersex,--then she may take his ground, and do his work; but she will havelost her feminine attractions, and probably also her chief femininefunctions."[23] It has been reserved for our age and country, by itsmethods of female education, to demonstrate that it is possible insome cases to divest a woman of her chief feminine functions; inothers, to produce grave and even fatal disease of the brain andnervous system; in others, to engender torturing derangements andimperfections of the reproductive apparatus that imbitter a lifetime.Such, we know, is not the object of a liberal female education. Suchis not the consummation which the progress of the age demands.Fortunately, it is only necessary to point out and prove the existenceof such erroneous methods and evil results to have them avoided. Thatthey can be avoided, and that woman can have a liberal education thatshall develop all her powers, without mutilation or disease, up to theloftiest ideal of womanhood, is alike the teaching of physiology andthe hope of the race.
In concluding this part of our subject, it is well to remember thestatement made at the beginning of our discussion, to the followingeffect, viz., that it is not asserted here, that improper methods ofstudy and a disregard of the reproductive apparatus and its functions,during the educational life of girls, are the _sole_ causes of femalediseases; neither is it asserted that _all_ the female graduates ofour schools and colleges are pathological specimens. But it isasserted that the number of these graduates who have been permanentlydisabled to a greater or less degree, or fatally injured, by thesecauses, is such as to excite the _gravest alarm_, and to demand theserious attention of the community.
The preceding physiological and pathological data naturally open theway to a consideration of the co-education of the sexes.

Leading The Male And Female Youth Alike

Miss G---- worked her way through New-England primary, grammar, andhigh schools to a Western college, which she entered with credit toherself, and from which she graduated, confessedly its first scholar,leading the male and female youth alike. All that need be told of hercareer is that she worked as a student, continuously andperseveringly, through the years of her first critical epoch, and fora few years after it, without any sort of regard to the periodicaltype of her organization. It never appeared that she studied excessively in other respects, or that her system was weakened whilein college by fevers or other sickness. Not a great while aftergraduation, she began to show signs of failure, and some years laterdied under the writer's care. A post-mortem examination was made,which disclosed no disease in any part of the body, except in thebrain, where the microscope revealed commencing degeneration.
This was called an instance of death from over-work. Like thepreceding case, it was not so much the result of over-work as ofun-physiological work. She was unable to make a good brain, that couldstand the wear and tear of life, and a good reproductive system thatshould serve the race, at the same time that she was continuouslyspending her force in intellectual labor. Nature asked for aperiodical remission, and did not get it. And so Miss G---- died, notbecause she had mastered the wasps of Aristophanes and the MécaniqueCéleste, not because she had made the acquaintance of Kant andKölliker, and ventured to explore the anatomy of flowers and thesecrets of chemistry, but because, while pursuing these studies, whiledoing all this work, she steadily ignored her woman's make. Believingthat woman can do what man can, for she held that faith, she strovewith noble but ignorant bravery to compass man's intellectualattainment in a man's way, and died in the effort. If she had aimed atthe same goal, disregarding masculine and following feminine methods,she would be alive now, a grand example of female culture, attainment,and power.
These seven clinical observations are sufficient to illustrate thefact that our modern methods of education do not give the femaleorganization a fair chance, but that they check development, andinvite weakness. It would be easy to multiply such observations, fromthe writer's own notes alone, and, by doing so, to swell this essayinto a portly volume; but the reader is spared the needlessinfliction. Other observers have noticed similar facts, and haveurgently called attention to them.
Dr. Fisher, in a recent excellent monograph on insanity, says, "A fewexamples of injury from _continued_ study will show how mental strainaffects the health of young girls particularly. Every physician could,no doubt, furnish many similar ones."
"Miss A---- graduated with honor at the normal school after severalyears of close study, much of the time out of school; never attendedballs or parties; sank into a low state of health at once withdepression. Was very absurdly allowed to marry while in this state,and soon after became violently insane, and is likely to remain so."
"Miss A---- graduated at the grammar school, not only first, but_perfect_, and at once entered the normal school; was very ambitiousto sustain her reputation, and studied hard out of school; was slow tolearn, but had a retentive memory; could seldom be induced to go toparties, and, when she did go, studied while dressing, and on the way;was assigned extra tasks at school, because she performed them sowell; was a _fine healthy girl in appearance_, but broke downpermanently at end of second year, and is now a victim of hysteria anddepression."
"Miss C----, of a nervous organization, and quick to learn; her healthsuffered in normal school, so that her physician predicted insanity ifher studies were not discontinued. She persevered, however, and is nowan inmate of a hospital, with hysteria and depression."
"A certain proportion of girls are predisposed to mental or nervousderangement. The same girls are apt to be quick, brilliant, ambitious,and persistent at study, and need not stimulation, but repression. Forthe sake of a temporary reputation for scholarship, they risk theirhealth at the _most susceptible period_ of their lives, and break down_after the excitement of school-life has passed away_. For _sexualreasons_ they cannot compete with boys, whose out-door habits stillfurther increase the difference in their favor. If it was a questionof school-teachers instead of school-girls, the list would be long ofyoung women whose health of mind has become bankrupt by a_continuation_ of the mental strain commenced at school. Any method ofrelief in our school-system to these over-susceptible minds should bewelcomed, even at the cost of the intellectual supremacy of woman inthe next generation."[17]
The fact which Dr. Fisher alludes to, that many girls break down notduring but _after_ the excitement of school or college life, is animportant one, and is apt to be overlooked. The process by which thedevelopment of the reproductive system is arrested, or degeneration ofbrain and nerve-tissue set a going, is an insidious one. At itsbeginning, and for a long time after it is well on in its progress, itwould not be recognized by the superficial observer. A class of girlsmight, and often do, graduate from our schools, higher seminaries,and colleges, that appear to be well and strong at the time of theirgraduation, but whose development has already been checked, and whosehealth is on the verge of giving way. Their teachers have knownnothing of the amenorrhoea, menorrhagia, dysmenorrhoea, or leucorrhoeawhich the pupils have sedulously concealed and disregarded; and thecunning devices of dress have covered up all external evidences ofdefect; and so, on graduation day, they are pointed out by theirinstructors to admiring committees as rosy specimens of both physicaland intellectual education. A closer inspection by competent expertswould reveal the secret weakness which the labor of life that they areabout to enter upon too late discloses.
The testimony of Dr. Anstie of London, as to the gravity of the evilsincurred by the sort of erroneous education we are considering, isdecided and valuable. He says, "For, be it remembered, the epoch ofsexual development is one in which an enormous addition is being madeto the expenditure of vital energy; besides the continuous processesof growth of the tissues and organs generally, the sexual apparatus,with its nervous supply, is making _by its development heavy demands_upon the nutritive powers of the organism; and it is scarcely possiblebut that portions of the nervous centres, not directly connected withit, should proportionally suffer in their nutrition, probably throughdefective blood supply. When we add to this the abnormal strain thatis being put on the brain, in many cases, by a forcing plan of mentaleducation, we shall perceive a source not merely of exhaustiveexpenditure of nervous power, but of secondary irritation of centreslike the medulla oblongata that are probably already somewhat loweredin power of vital resistance, and proportionably _irritable_."[18] Alittle farther on, Dr. Anstie adds, "But I confess, that, with me, theresult of close attention given to the pathology of neuralgia has beenthe ever-growing conviction, that, next to the influence of neuroticinheritance, there is no such frequently powerful factor in theconstruction of the neuralgic habit as mental warp of a certain kind,the product of an unwise education." In another place, speaking of theliability of the brain to suffer from an unwise education, andreferring to the sexual development that we are discussing in thesepages, he makes the following statement, which no intelligentphysician will deny, and which it would be well for all teachers whocare for the best education of the girls intrusted to their charge toponder seriously. "I would also go farther, and express the opinion,that peripheral influences of an extremely powerful and _continuous_kind, where they concur with one of those critical periods of life atwhich the central nervous system is relatively weak and unstable, canoccasionally set going a non-inflammatory centric atrophy, which maylocalize itself in those nerves upon whose centres the morbificperipheral influence is perpetually pouring in. Even such influencesas the psychical and emotional, be it remembered, must be consideredperipheral."[19] The brain of Miss G----, whose case was related a fewpages back, is a clinical illustration of the accuracy of thisopinion.
Dr. Weir Mitchell, one of our most eminent American physiologists, hasrecently borne most emphatic testimony to the evils we have pointedout: "Worst of all," he says, "to my mind, most destructive in everyway, is the American view of female education. The time taken for themore serious instruction of girls extends to the age of eighteen, andrarely over this. During these years, they are undergoing such organicdevelopment as renders them remarkably sensitive." ... "To show moreprecisely how the growing girl is injured by the causes justmentioned" (forced and continued study at the sexual epoch) "wouldcarry me upon subjects unfit for full discussion in these pages; butno thoughtful reader can be much at a loss as to my meaning." ..."To-day the American woman is, to speak plainly, physically unfit forher duties as woman, and is, perhaps, of all civilized females, theleast qualified to undertake those weightier tasks which tax soheavily the nervous system of man. She is not fairly up to what Natureasks from her as wife and mother. How will she sustain herself underthe pressure of those yet more exacting duties which now-a-days she iseager to share with the man?"[20]
In our schools it is the ambitious and conscientious girls, those whohave in them the stuff of which the noblest women are made, thatsuffer, not the romping or lazy sort; and thus our modern ways ofeducation provide for the "non-survival of the fittest." A speakertold an audience of women at Wesleyan Hall not long ago, that he onceattended the examination of a Western college, where a girl beat theboys in unravelling the intracacies of Juvenal. He did not report theconsumption of blood and wear of brain tissue that in her college wayof study correlated her Latin, or hint at the possibility of arresteddevelopment. Girls of bloodless skins and intellectual faces may beseen any day, by those who desire the spectacle, among the scholars ofour high and normal schools,--faces that crown, and skins that cover,curving spines, which should be straight, and neuralgic nerves thatshould know no pain. Later on, when marriage and maternity overtakethese girls, and they "live laborious days" in a sense not intended byMilton's line, they bend and break beneath the labor, like loadedgrain before a storm, and bear little fruit again. A training thatyields this result is neither fair to the girls nor to the race.

The Present Methods Of Educating Girls

A closer analogy than this, however, exists between these humanindividuals and the eunuchs of Oriental civilization. Except thesecretary of the treasury, in the cabinet of Candace, queen ofEthiopia, who was baptized by Philip and Narses, Justinian's general,none of that class have made any impression on the world's life, thathistory has recorded. It may be reasonably doubted if arresteddevelopment of the female reproductive system, producing a class ofagenes,[16] not epicenes, will yield a better result of intellectualand moral power in the nineteenth century, than the analogous class ofOrientals exhibited. Clinical illustrations of this type of arrestedgrowth might be given, but my pen refuses the ungracious task.
Another result of the present methods of educating girls, and onedifferent from any of the preceding, remains to be noticed. Schoolsand colleges, as we have seen, require girls to work their brains withfull force and sustained power, at the time when their organizationperiodically requires a portion of their force for the performance ofa periodical function, and a portion of their power for the buildingup of a peculiar, complicated, and important mechanism,--the enginewithin an engine. They are required to do two things equally well atthe same time. They are urged to meditate a lesson and drive a machinesimultaneously, and to do them both with all their force. Their organizations are expected to make good sound brains and nerves byworking over the humanities, the sciences, and the arts, and, at thesame time, to make good sound reproductive apparatuses, not onlywithout any especial attention to the latter, but while all availableforce is withdrawn from the latter and sent to the former. It is notmaterialism to say, that, as the brain is, so will thought be. Withoutdiscussing the French physiologist's dictum, that the brain secretesthought as the liver does bile, we may be sure, that without brainthere will be no thought. The quality of the latter depends on thequality of the former. The metamorphoses of brain manifest, measure,limit, enrich, and color thought. Brain tissue, including bothquantity and quality, correlates mental power. The brain ismanufactured from the blood; its quantity and quality are determinedby the quantity and quality of its blood supply. Blood is made fromfood; but it may be lost by careless hemorrhage, or poisoned bydeficient elimination. When frequently and largely lost or poisoned,as I have too frequent occasion to know it often is, it becomesimpoverished,--anemic. Then the brain suffers, and mental power islost. The steps are few and direct, from frequent loss of blood,impoverished blood, and abnormal brain and nerve metamorphosis, toloss of mental force and nerve disease. Ignorance or carelessnessleads to anemic blood, and that to an anemic mind. As the blood, sothe brain; as the brain, so the mind.
The cases which have hitherto been presented illustrate some of theevils which the reproductive system is apt to receive in consequenceof obvious derangement of its growth and functions. But it may, andoften does, happen that the catamenia are normally performed, and thatthe reproductive system is fairly made up during the educationalperiod. Then force is withdrawn from the brain and nerves andganglia. These are dwarfed or checked or arrested in theirdevelopment. In the process of waste and repair, of destructive andconstructive metamorphosis, by which brains as well as bones are builtup and consolidated, education often leaves insufficient margin forgrowth. Income derived from air, food, and sleep, which shouldlargely, may only moderately exceed expenditure upon study and work,and so leave but little surplus for growth in any direction; or, whatmore commonly occurs, the income which the brain receives is all spentupon study, and little or none upon its development, while that whichthe nutritive and reproductive systems receive is retained by them,and devoted to their own growth. When the school makes the same steadydemand for force from girls who are approaching puberty, ignoringNature's periodical demands, that it does from boys, who are notcalled upon for an equal effort, there must be failure somewhere.Generally either the reproductive system or the nervous systemsuffers. We have looked at several instances of the former sort offailure; let us now examine some of the latter.
Miss F---- was about twenty years old when she completed her technicaleducation. She inherited a nervous diathesis as well as a large dowerof intellectual and æsthetic graces. She was a good student, andconscientiously devoted all her time, with the exception of ordinaryvacations, to the labor of her education. She made herself mistress ofseveral languages, and accomplished in many ways. The catamenialfunction appeared normally, and, with the exception of occasionalslight attacks of menorrhagia, was normally performed during the wholeperiod of her education. She got on without any sort of seriousillness. There were few belonging to my clientele who required lessprofessional advice for the same period than she. With the ending ofher school life, when she should have been in good trim and wellequipped, physically as well as intellectually, for life's work,there commenced, without obvious cause, a long period of invalidism.It would be tedious to the reader, and useless for our presentpurpose, to detail the history and describe the protean shapes of hersufferings. With the exception of small breasts, the reproductivesystem was well developed. Repeated and careful examinations failed todetect any derangement of the uterine mechanism. Her symptoms allpointed to the nervous system as the _fons et origo mali_. Firstgeneral debility, that concealed but ubiquitous leader of innumerablearmies of weakness and ill, laid siege to her, and captured her. Thencame insomnia, that worried her nights for month after month, and madeher beg for opium, alcohol, chloral, bromides, any thing that wouldbring sleep. Neuralgia in every conceivable form tormented her, mostfrequently in her back, but often, also, in her head, sometimes in hersciatic nerves, sometimes setting up a tic douloureux, sometimescausing a fearful dysmenorrhoea and frequently making her head achefor days together. At other times hysteria got hold of her, and madeher fancy herself the victim of strange diseases. Mental effort of theslightest character distressed her, and she could not bear physicalexercise of any amount. This condition, or rather these varyingconditions, continued for some years. She followed a careful andsystematic regimen, and was rewarded by a slow and gradual return ofhealth and strength, when a sudden accident killed her, and terminatedher struggle with weakness and pain.
Words fail to convey the lesson of this case to others with any thinglike the force that the observation of it conveyed its moral to thoseabout Miss F----, and especially to the physician who watched hercareer through her educational life, and saw it lead to its logicalconclusion of invalidism and thence towards recovery, till life ended.When she finished school, as the phrase goes, she was considered to bewell. The principal of any seminary or head of any college, judgingby her looks alone, would not have hesitated to call her rosy andstrong. At that time the symptoms of failure which began to appearwere called signs of previous overwork. This was true, but not so muchin the sense of overwork as of erroneously-arranged work. While astudent, she wrought continuously,--just as much during eachcatamenial week as at other times. As a consequence, in hermetamorphosis of tissue, repair did little more than make up waste.There were constant demands of force for constant growth of the systemgenerally, equally constant demands of force for the labor ofeducation, and periodical demands of force for a periodical function.The regimen she followed did not permit all these demands to besatisfied, and the failure fell on the nervous system. Sheaccomplished intellectually a good deal, but not more than she mighthave done, and retained her health, had the order of her educationbeen a physiological one. It was not Latin, French, German,mathematics, or philosophy that undermined her nerves; nor was itbecause of any natural inferiority to boys that she failed; norbecause she undertook to master what women have no right to learn: shelost her health simply because she undertook to do her work in a boy'sway and not in a girl's way.
Let us learn the lesson of one more case. These details may betedious; but the justification of their presence here are theimportance of the subject they illustrate and elucidate, and thenecessity of acquiring a belief of the truth of the facts of femaleeducation.

Intellectual, Moral, And Aesthetic Half Of Education

It may not be unprofitable to give the history of one more case ofthis sort. Miss E---- had an hereditary right to a good brain and tothe best cultivation of it. Her father was one of our ripest andbroadest American scholars, and her mother one of our most accomplished American women. They both enjoyed excellent health. Their daughter had a literary training,--an intellectual, moral, and æsthetic half of education, such as their supervision would be likelyto give, and one that few young men of her age receive. Her health didnot seem to suffer at first. She studied, recited, walked, worked,stood, and the like, in the steady and sustained way that is normal tothe male organization. She _seemed_ to evolve force enough to acquirea number of languages, to become familiar with the natural sciences,to take hold of philosophy and mathematics, and to keep in goodphysical case while doing all this. At the age of twenty-one shemight have been presented to the public, on Commencement Day, by thepresident of Vassar College or of Antioch College or of MichiganUniversity, as the wished-for result of American liberal female culture. Just at this time, however, the catamenial function began toshow signs of failure of power. No severe or even moderate illnessovertook her. She was subjected to no unusual strain. She was onlyfollowing the regimen of continued and sustained work, regardless ofNature's periodical demands for a portion of her time and force, when,without any apparent cause, the failure of power was manifested bymoderate dysmenorrhoea and diminished excretion. Soon after this thefunction ceased altogether; and up to this present writing, a periodof six or eight years, it has shown no more signs of activity than anamputated arm. In the course of a year or so after the cessation ofthe function, her head began to trouble her. First there was headache,then a frequent congested condition, which she described as a "rushof blood" to her head; and, by and by, vagaries and forebodings anddespondent feelings began to crop out. Coincident with this mentalstate, her skin became rough and coarse, and an inveterate acnecovered her face. She retained her appetite, ability to exercise andsleep. A careful local examination of the pelvic organs, by an expert,disclosed no lesion or displacement there, no ovaritis or otherinflammation. Appropriate treatment faithfully persevered in wasunsuccessful in recovering the lost function. I was finally obliged toconsign her to an asylum.
The arrest of development of the reproductive system is most obviousto the superficial observer in that part of it which the milliner iscalled upon to cover up with pads, and which was alluded to in thecase of Miss D----. This, however, is too important a matter to bedismissed with a bare allusion. A recent writer has pointed out thefact and its significance with great clearness. "There is anothermarked change," says Dr. Nathan Allen, "going on in the femaleorganization at the present day, which is very significant ofsomething wrong. In the normal state, Nature has made ample provisionin the structure of the female for nursing her offspring. In order tofurnish this nourishment, pure in quality and abundant in quantity,she must possess a good development of the sanguine and lymphatictemperament, together with vigorous and healthy digestive organs.Formerly such an organization was very generally possessed by Americanwomen, and they found but little difficulty in nursing their infants.It was only occasionally, in case of some defect in the organization,or where sickness of some kind had overtaken the mother, that itbecame necessary to resort to the wet-nurse or to feeding by hand. Andthe English, the Scotch, the German, the Canadian French, and theIrish women now living in this country, generally nurse theirchildren: the exceptions are rare. But how is it with our Americanwomen who become mothers? To those who have never considered thissubject, and even to medical men who have never carefully looked intoit, the facts, when correctly and fully presented, will be surprising.It has been supposed by some that all, or nearly all, our Americanwomen could nurse their offspring just as well as not; that thedisposition only was wanting, and that they did not care about havingthe trouble or confinement necessarily attending it. But this is agreat mistake. This very indifference or aversion shows somethingwrong in the organization as well as in the disposition: if thephysical system were all right, the mind and natural instincts wouldgenerally be right also. While there may be here and there cases ofthis kind, such an indisposition is not always found. It is a fact,that large numbers of our women are anxious to nurse their offspring,and make the attempt: they persevere for a while,--perhaps for weeksor months,--and then fail.... There is still another class that cannotnurse at all, _having neither the organs nor nourishment_ requisiteeven to make a beginning.... Why should there be such a differencebetween the women of our times and their mothers or grandmothers? Whyshould there be such a difference between our American women and thoseof foreign origin residing in the same locality, and surrounded by thesame external influences? The explanation is simple: they have not theright kind of organization; there is a want of proper development ofthe lymphatic and sanguine temperaments,--a marked deficiency in theorgans of nutrition and secretion. You cannot draw water without good,flowing springs. _The brain and nervous system have, for a long time,made relatively too large a demand upon_ the organs of digestion andassimilation, while the exercise and _development of certain othertissues in the body have been sadly neglected_.... In consequence ofthe great neglect of physical exercise, and the _continuousapplication to study_, together with various other influences, largenumbers of our American women have altogether an undue predominanceof the nervous temperament. If only here and there an individual werefound with such an organization, not much harm comparatively wouldresult; but, when a majority or nearly all have it, the evil becomesone of no small magnitude."[15] And the evil, it should be added, isnot simply the inability to nurse; for, if one member suffers, all themembers suffer. A woman, whether married or unmarried, whether calledto the offices of maternity or relieved from them, who has beendefrauded by her education or otherwise of such an essential part ofher development, is not so much of a woman, intellectually and morallyas well as physically, in consequence of this defect. Her nervoussystem and brain, her instincts and character, are on a lower plane,and incapable of their harmonious and best development, if she ispossessed, on reaching adult age, of only a portion of a breast and anovary, or none at all.
When arrested development of the reproductive system is nearly orquite complete, it produces a change in the character, and a loss ofpower, which it is easy to recognize, but difficult to describe. Asthis change is an occasional attendant or result of amenorrhoea, whenthe latter, brought about at an early age, is part of an early arrest,it should not be passed by without an allusion. In these cases, whichare not of frequent occurrence at present, but which may be evolved byour methods of education more numerously in the future, the systemtolerates the absence of the catamenia, and the consequentnon-elimination of impurities from the blood. Acute or chronicdisease, the ordinary result of this condition, is not set up, but,instead, there is a change in the character and development of thebrain and nervous system. There are in individuals of this class lessadipose and more muscular tissue than is commonly seen, a coarserskin, and, generally, a tougher and more angular make-up. There is acorresponding change in the intellectual and psychical condition,--adropping out of maternal instincts, and an appearance of Amazoniancoarseness and force. Such persons are analogous to the sexless classof termites. Naturalists tell us that these insects are divided intomales and females, and a third class called workers and soldiers, whohave no reproductive apparatus, and who, in their structure andinstincts, are unlike the fertile individuals.

The Delicacy Of American Girls

Illustrations of this sort might be multiplied but these three aresufficient to show how an abnormal method of study and work may anddoes open the flood-gates of the system, and, by letting blood out,lets all sorts of evil in. Let us now look at another phase; formenorrhagia and its consequences are not the only punishments thatgirls receive for being educated and worked just like boys. Nature'smethods of punishing men and women are as numerous as their organs andfunctions, and her penalties as infinite in number and gradation asher blessings.
Amenorrhoea is perhaps more common than menorrhagia. It often happens,however, during the first critical epoch, which is isochronal with thetechnical educational period of a girl, that after a few occasions ofcatamenial hemorrhage, moderate perhaps but still hemorrhage, whichare not heeded, the conservative force of Nature steps in, and savesthe blood by arresting the function. In such instances, amenorrhoea isa result of menorrhagia. In this way, and in others that we need notstop to inquire into, the regimen of our schools, colleges, and sociallife, that requires girls to walk, work, stand, study, recite, anddance at all times as boys can and should, may shut the uterineportals of the blood up, and keep poison in, as well as open them, andlet life out. Which of these two evils is worse in itself, and whichleaves the largest legacy of ills behind, it is difficult to say. Letus examine some illustrations of this sort of arrest.
Miss D---- entered Vassar College at the age of fourteen. Up to thatage, she had been a healthy girl, judged by the standard of Americangirls. Her parents were apparently strong enough to yield her a fairdower of force. The catamenial function first showed signs of activityin her Sophomore Year, when she was fifteen years old. Its appearanceat this age[13] is confirmatory evidence of the normal state of herhealth at that period of her college career. Its commencement wasnormal, without pain or excess. She performed all her college dutiesregularly and steadily. She studied, recited, stood at the blackboard,walked, and went through her gymnastic exercises, from the beginningto the end of the term, just as boys do. Her account of her regimenthere was so nearly that of a boy's regimen, that it would puzzle aphysiologist to determine, from the account alone, whether the subjectof it was male or female. She was an average scholar, who maintained afair position in her class, not one of the anxious sort, that areambitious of leading all the rest. Her first warning was faintingaway, while exercising in the gymnasium, at a time when she shouldhave been comparatively quiet, both mentally and physically. Thiswarning was repeated several times, under the same circumstances.Finally she was compelled to renounce gymnastic exercises altogether.In her Junior Year, the organism's periodical function began to beperformed with pain, moderate at first, but more and more severe witheach returning month. When between seventeen and eighteen years old,dysmenorrhoea was established as the order of that function.Coincident with the appearance of pain, there was a diminution ofexcretion; and, as the former increased, the latter became moremarked. In other respects she was well; and, in all respects, sheappeared to be well to her companions and to the faculty of thecollege. She graduated before nineteen, with fair honors and a poorphysique. The year succeeding her graduation was one ofsteadily-advancing invalidism. She was tortured for two or three daysout of every month; and, for two or three days after each season oftorture, was weak and miserable, so that about one sixth or fifth ofher time was consumed in this way. The excretion from the blood, whichhad been gradually lessening, after a time substantially stopped,though a periodical effort to keep it up was made. She now sufferedfrom what is called amenorrhoea. At the same time she became pale,hysterical, nervous in the ordinary sense, and almost constantlycomplained of headache. Physicians were applied to for aid: drugs wereadministered; travelling, with consequent change of air and scene, wasundertaken; and all with little apparent avail. After this experience,she was brought to Boston for advice, when the writer first saw her,and learned all these details. She presented no evidence of localuterine congestion, inflammation, ulceration, or displacement. Theevidence was altogether in favor of an arrest of the development ofthe reproductive apparatus, at a stage when the development was nearlycomplete. Confirmatory proof of such an arrest was found in examiningher breast, where the milliner had supplied the organs Nature shouldhave grown. It is unnecessary for our present purpose to detail whattreatment was advised. It is sufficient to say, that she probablynever will become physically what she would have been had hereducation been physiologically guided.
This case needs very little comment: its teachings are obvious. MissD---- went to college in good physical condition. During the fouryears of her college life, her parents and the college facultyrequired her to get what is popularly called an education. Naturerequired her, during the same period, to build and put inworking-order a large and complicated reproductive mechanism, a matterthat is popularly ignored,--shoved out of sight like a disgrace. Shenaturally obeyed the requirements of the faculty, which she could see,rather than the requirements of the mechanism within her, that shecould not see. Subjected to the college regimen, she worked four yearsin getting a liberal education. Her way of work was sustained andcontinuous, and out of harmony with the rhythmical periodicity of thefemale organization. The stream of vital and constructive forceevolved within her was turned steadily to the brain, and away from theovaries and their accessories. The result of this sort of educationwas, that these last-mentioned organs, deprived of sufficientopportunity and nutriment, first began to perform their functions withpain, a warning of error that was unheeded; then, to cease togrow;[14] next, to set up once a month a grumbling torture that madelife miserable; and, lastly, the brain and the whole nervous system,disturbed, in obedience to the law, that, if one member suffers, allthe members suffer, became neuralgic and hysterical. And so MissD---- spent the few years next succeeding her graduation in conflictwith dysmenorrhoea, headache, neuralgia, and hysteria. Her parentsmarvelled at her ill-health; and she furnished another text for theoften-repeated sermon on the delicacy of American girls.

Male And Female Skeletons

The next case is drawn from different social surroundings. Earlyassociations and natural aptitude inclined Miss B---- to the stage;and the need of bread and butter sent her upon it as a child, at whatage I do not know. At fifteen she was an actress, determined to do herbest, and ambitious of success. She strenuously taxed muscle and brain at all times in her calling. She worked in a man's sustainedway, ignoring all demands for special development, and essaying firstto dis-establish, and then to bridle, the catamenia. At twenty she waseminent. The excitement and effort of acting periodically produced thesame result with her that a recitation did under similar conditionswith Miss A----. If she had been a physiologist, she would have knownhow this course of action would end. As she was an actress, and not aphysiologist, she persisted in the slow suicide of frequenthemorrhages, and encouraged them by her method of professionaleducation, and later by her method of practising her profession. Shetried to ward off disease, and repair the loss of force, by consultingvarious doctors, taking drugs, and resorting to all sorts ofexpedients; but the hemorrhages continued, and were repeated atirregular and abnormally frequent intervals. A careful localexamination disclosed no local disturbance. There was neitherulceration, hypertrophy, or congestion of the os or cervix uteri; nodisplacement of any moment, of ovarian tenderness. In spite of all herdifficulties, however, she worked on courageously and steadily in aman's way and with a woman's will. After a long and discouragingexperience of doctors, work, and weaknesses, when rather over thirtyyears old, she came to Boston to consult the writer, who learned atthat time the details just recited. She was then pale and weak. Amurmur in the veins, which a French savant, by way of dedication tothe Devil, christened _bruit de diable_, a baptismal name that sciencehas retained, was audible over her jugulars, and a similar murmur overher heart. Palpitation and labored respiration accompanied and impededeffort. She complained most of her head, which felt "queer," would notgo to sleep as formerly, and often gave her turns, in which there wasa mingling of dizziness, semi-consciousness, and fear. Her educationand work, or rather method of work, had wrought out for her anemia andepileptiform attacks. She got two or three physiological lectures,was ordered to take iron, and other nourishing food, allow time forsleep, and, above all, to arrange her professional work in harmonywith the rhythmical or periodical action of woman's constitution. Shemade the effort to do this, and, in six months, reported herself inbetter health--though far from well--than she had been for six years before.
This case scarcely requires analysis in order to see how it bears onthe question of a girl's education and woman's work. A gifted andhealthy girl, obliged to get her education and earn her bread at thesame time, labored upon the two tasks zealously, perhaps over-much,and did this at the epoch when the female organization is busy withthe development of its reproductive apparatus. Nor is this all. She labored continuously, yielding nothing to Nature's periodical demand for force. She worked her engine up to highest pressure, just as muchat flood-tide as at other times. Naturally there was not nervous powerenough developed in the uterine and associated ganglia to restrainthe laboring orifices of the circulation, to close the gates; and theflood of blood gushed through. With the frequent repetition of theflooding, came inevitably the evils she suffered from,--Nature'spenalties. She now reports herself better; but whether convalescencewill continue will depend upon her method of work for the future.
Let us take the next illustration from a walk in life different fromeither of the foregoing. Miss C---- was a bookkeeper in a mercantilehouse. The length of time she remained in the employ of the house, andits character, are a sufficient guaranty that she did her work well.Like the other clerks, she was at her post, _standing_, duringbusiness hours, from Monday morning till Saturday night. The femalepelvis being wider than that of the male, the weight of the body, inthe upright posture, tends to press the upper extremities of thethighs out laterally in females more than in males. Hence the formercan stand less long with comfort than the latter. Miss C----, however,believed in doing her work in a man's way, infected by the notuncommon notion that womanliness means manliness. Moreover, she wouldnot, or could not, make any more allowance for the periodicity of herorganization than for the shape of her skeleton. When about twentyyears of age, perhaps a year or so older, she applied to me for advicein consequence of neuralgia, back-ache, menorrhagia, leucorrhoea, andgeneral debility. She was anemic, and looked pale, care-worn, andanxious. There was no evidence of any local organic affection of thepelvic organs. "Get a woman's periodical remission from labor, ifintermission is impossible, and do your work in a woman's way, notcopying a man's fashion, and you will need very little apothecary'sstuff," was the advice she received. "I _must_ go on as I am doing,"was her answer. She tried iron, sitz-baths, and the like: of coursethey were of no avail. Latterly I have lost sight of her, and, fromher appearance at her last visit to me, presume she has gone to aworld where back-ache and male and female skeletons are unknown.

A Healthy, Bright, Intelligent Girl - Entered A Female School

The following case illustrates one of the ways in which our presentschool methods of teaching girls generate a menorrhagia and itsconsequent evils. Miss A----, a healthy, bright, intelligent girl,entered a female school, an institution that is commonly but oddlycalled a _seminary_ for girls, in the State of New York, at the age offifteen. She was then sufficiently well-developed, and had a goodcolor; all the functions appeared to act normally, and the catameniawere fairly established. She was ambitious as well as capable, andaimed to be among the first in the school. Her temperament was whatphysiologists call nervous,--an expression that does not denote afidgety make, but refers to a relative activity of the nervous system.She was always anxious about her recitations. No matter how carefullyshe prepared for them, she was ever fearful lest she should trip alittle, and appear to less advantage than she hoped. She went toschool regularly every week, and every day of the school year, just asboys do. She paid no more attention to the periodical tides of herorganization than her companions; and that was none at all. Sherecited standing at all times, or at least whenever a standingrecitation was the order of the hour. She soon found, and this historyis taken from her own lips, that for a few days during every fourthweek, the effort of reciting produced an extraordinary physicalresult. The attendant anxiety and excitement relaxed the sluices ofthe system that were already physiologically open, and determined ahemorrhage as the concomitant of a recitation. Subjected to theinflexible rules of the school, unwilling to seek advice from any one,almost ashamed of her own physique, she ingeniously protected herselfagainst exposure, and went on intellectually leading her companions,and physically defying nature. At the end of a year, she went homewith a gratifying report from her teachers, and pale cheeks and avariety of aches. Her parents were pleased, and perhaps a littleanxious. She is a good scholar, said her father; somewhat over-workedpossibly; and so he gave her a trip among the mountains, and a week ortwo at the seashore. After her vacation she returned to school, andrepeated the previous year's experience,--constant, sustained work,recitation and study for all days alike, a hemorrhage once a monththat would make the stroke oar of the University crew falter, and abrilliant scholar. Before the expiration of the second year, Naturebegan to assert her authority. The paleness of Miss A's complexionincreased. An unaccountable and uncontrollable twitching of arhythmical sort got into the muscles of her face, and made her handsgo and feet jump. She was sent home, and her physician called, who atonce diagnosticated chorea (St. Vitus' dance), and said she hadstudied too hard, and wisely prescribed no study and a long vacation.Her parents took her to Europe. A year of the sea and the Alps, ofEngland and the Continent, the Rhine and Italy, worked like a charm.The sluiceways were controlled, the blood saved, and color and healthreturned. She came back seemingly well, and at the age of eighteenwent to her old school once more. During all this time not a word hadbeen said to her by her parents, her physician, or her teachers, aboutany periodical care of herself; and the rules of the school did notacknowledge the catamenia. The labor and regimen of the school soonbrought on the old menorrhagic trouble in the old way, with theaddition of occasional faintings to emphasize Nature's warnings. Shepersisted in getting her education, however, and graduated atnineteen, the first scholar, and an invalid. Again her parents weregratified and anxious. She is overworked, said they, and wondered whygirls break down so. To insure her recovery, a second and longertravel was undertaken. Egypt and Asia were added to Europe, and nearlytwo years were allotted to the cure. With change of air and scene herhealth improved, but not so rapidly as with the previous journey. Shereturned to America better than she went away, and married at the ageof twenty-two. Soon after that time she consulted the writer onaccount of prolonged dyspepsia, neuralgia, and dysmenorrhoea, whichhad replaced menorrhagia. Then I learned the long history of hereducation, and of her efforts to study just as boys do. Her attentionhad never been called before to the danger she had incurred while atschool. She is now what is called getting better, but has the delicacyand weaknesses of American women, and, so far, is without children.
It is not difficult, in this case, either to discern the cause of thetrouble, or to trace its influence, through the varying phases ofdisease, from Miss A----'s school-days, to her matronly life. She waswell, and would have been called robust, up to her first criticalperiod. She then had two tasks imposed upon her at once, both of whichrequired for their perfect accomplishment a few years of time and alarge share of vital force: one was the education of the brain, theother of the reproductive system. The schoolmaster superintended thefirst, and Nature the second. The school, with puritanicinflexibility, demanded every day of the month; Nature, kinder thanthe school, demanded less than a fourth of the time,--a seventh or aneighth of it would have probably answered. The schoolmaster might haveyielded somewhat, but would not; Nature could not. The pupil,therefore, was compelled to undertake both tasks at the same time.Ambitious, earnest, and conscientious, she obeyed the visible powerand authority of the school, and disobeyed, or rather ignorantlysought to evade, the invisible power and authority of herorganization. She put her will into the education of her brain, andwithdrew it from elsewhere. The system does not do two things well atthe same time. One or the other suffers from neglect, when the attemptis made. Miss A---- made her brain and muscles work actively, anddiverted blood and force to them when her organization demandedactive work, with blood and force for evolution in another region. Atfirst the schoolmaster seemed to be successful. He not only made hispupil's brain manipulate Latin, chemistry, philosophy, geography,grammar, arithmetic, music, French, German, and the wholeextraordinary catalogue of an American young lady's school curriculum,with acrobatic skill; but he made her do this irrespective of theperiodical tides of her organism, and made her perform herintellectual and muscular calisthenics, obliging her to stand, walk,and recite, at the seasons of highest tide. For a while she got onnicely. Presently, however, the strength of the loins, that evenSolomon put in as a part of his ideal woman, changed to weakness.Periodical hemorrhages were the first warning of this. As soon as lossof blood occurred regularly and largely, the way to imperfectdevelopment and invalidism was open, and the progress easy and rapid.The nerves and their centres lacked nourishment. There was more wastethan repair,--no margin for growth. St. Vitus' dance was a warning notto be neglected, and the schoolmaster resigned to the doctor. A longvacation enabled the system to retrace its steps, and recover forcefor evolution. Then the school resumed its sway, and physiologicallaws were again defied. Fortunately graduation soon occurred, andunintermitted, sustained labor was no longer enforced. The menorrhagiaceased, but persistent dysmenorrhoea now indicates the neuralgicfriction of an imperfectly developed reproductive apparatus. Doubtlessthe evil of her education will infect her whole life.

During The Educational Life Of Girls

Clinical observation confirms the teachings of physiology. The sickchamber, not the schoolroom; the physician's private consultation, notthe committee's public examination; the hospital, not the college,the workshop, or the parlor,--disclose the sad results which modernsocial customs, modern education, and modern ways of labor, haveentailed on women. Examples of them may be found in every walk oflife. On the luxurious couches of Beacon Street; in the palaces ofFifth Avenue; among the classes of our private, common, and normalschools; among the female graduates of our colleges; behind thecounters of Washington Street and Broadway; in our factories,workshops, and homes,--may be found numberless pale, weak, neuralgic,dyspeptic, hysterical, menorrhagic, dysmenorrhoeic girls and women,that are living illustrations of the truth of this brief monograph. Itis not asserted here that improper methods of study, and a disregardof the reproductive apparatus and its functions, during theeducational life of girls, are the sole causes of female diseases;neither is it asserted that all the female graduates of our schoolsand colleges are pathological specimens. But it is asserted that thenumber of these graduates who have been permanently disabled to agreater or less degree by these causes is so great, as to excite thegravest alarm, and to demand the serious attention of the community.If these causes should continue for the next half-century, andincrease in the same ratio as they have for the last fifty years, itrequires no prophet to foretell that the wives who are to be mothersin our republic must be drawn from trans-atlantic homes. The sons ofthe New World will have to re-act, on a magnificent scale, the oldstory of unwived Rome and the Sabines.
We have previously seen that the blood is the life, and that the lossof it is the loss of so much life. Deluded by strange theories, andgroping in physiological darkness, our fathers' physicians were toooften Sangrados. Nourishing food, pure air, and hæmatized blood werestigmatized as the friends of disease and the enemies ofconvalescence. Oxygen was shut out from and carbonic acid shut intothe chambers of phthisis and fever; and veins were opened, that thecurrents of blood and disease might flow out together. Happily, thosedays of ignorance, which God winked at, and which the race survived,have passed by. Air and food and blood are recognized as Nature'srestoratives. No physician would dare, nowadays, to bleed either manor woman once a month, year in and year out, for a quarter of acentury continuously. But girls often have the courage, or theignorance, to do this to themselves. And the worst of it is, that theorganization of our schools and workshops, and the demands of sociallife and polite society, encourage them in this slow suicide. It hasalready been stated that the excretory organs, by constantlyeliminating from the system its effete and used material, the measureand source of its force, keep the machine in clean, healthy, andworking order, and that the reproductive apparatus of woman uses theblood as one of its agents of elimination. Kept within natural limits,this elimination is a source of strength, a perpetual fountain ofhealth, a constant renewal of life. Beyond these limits it is ahemorrhage, that, by draining away the life, becomes a source ofweakness and a perpetual fountain of disease.

Laid Up Forexpenditure During The Waking Hours

is a most important physiological factor. Our schools are as apt infrightening it away as our churches are in inviting it. Sleep is theopportunity for repair. During its hours of quiet rest, when muscularand nervous effort are stilled, millions of microscopic cells are busyin the penetralia of the organism, like coral insects in the depths ofthe sea, repairing the waste which the day's study and work havecaused. Dr. B.W. Richardson of London, one of the most ingenious andaccomplished physiologists of the present day, describes the labor ofsleep in the following language: "During this period of natural sleep,the most important changes of nutrition are in progress: the body isrenovating, and, if young, is actually growing. If the body beproperly covered, the animal heat is being conserved, and laid up forexpenditure during the waking hours that are to follow; therespiration is reduced, the inspirations being lessened in theproportion of six to seven, as compared with the number made when thebody is awake; the action of the heart is reduced; the voluntarymuscles, relieved of all fatigue, and with the extensors more relaxedthan the flexors, are undergoing repair of structure, and recruitingtheir excitability; and the voluntary nervous system, dead for thetime to the external vibration, or, as the older men called it,'stimulus' from without, is also undergoing rest and repair, so that,when it comes again into work, it may receive better the impressionsit may have to gather up, and influence more effectively the musclesit may be called upon to animate, direct, control."[11] An Americanobserver and physiologist, Dr. William A. Hammond, confirms the viewsof his English colleague. He tells us that "the state of generalrepose which accompanies sleep is of especial value to the organism,in allowing the nutrition of the nervous tissue to go on at a greaterrate than its destructive metamorphosis." In another place he adds,"For the brain, there is no rest except during sleep." And, again, hesays, "The more active the mind, the greater the necessity for sleep;just as with a steamer, the greater the number of revolutions itsengine makes, the more imperative is the demand for fuel."[12] Thesestatements justify and explain the instinctive demand for sleep. Theyalso show why it is that infants require more sleep than children, andchildren than middle-age folk, and middle-age folk than old people.Infants must have sleep for repair and rapid growth; children, forrepair and moderate growth; middle-age folk, for repair withoutgrowth; and old people, only for the minimum of repair. Girls, betweenthe ages of fourteen and eighteen, must have sleep, not only forrepair and growth, like boys, but for the additional task ofconstructing, or, more properly speaking, of developing and perfectingthen, a reproductive system,--the engine within an engine. The bearingof this physiological fact upon education is obvious. Work of theschool is work of the brain. Work of the brain eats the brain away.Sleep is the chance and laboratory of repair. If a child's brain-workand sleep are normally proportioned to each other, each night willmore than make good each day's loss. Clear heads will greet eachwelcome morn. But if the reverse occurs, the night will not repair theday; and aching heads will signalize the advance of neuralgia,tubercle, and disease. So Nature punishes disobedience.
It is apparent, from these physiological considerations, that, inorder to give girls a fair chance in education, four conditions atleast must be observed: first, a sufficient supply of appropriatenutriment; secondly, a normal management of the catamenial functions,including the building of the reproductive apparatus; thirdly, mentaland physical work so apportioned, that repair shall exceed waste, anda margin be left for general and sexual development; and fourthly,sufficient sleep. Evidence of the results brought about by a disregardof these conditions will next be given.