fl|G Physiological Reasons 
■i* *J ' £lJ ❖ ?' Sah/s populi suprema lex. 
The Physiological Reasons Why 
AN ESSAY ON 
School Hygiene, with reference to the Physiological Relations 
of AGE and SEX to Mental and Physical Education, 
to which the Medical Society of the State of New 
York awarded the Prize foy 1875. 
7 
ALEXANDER HUTCHINS, A. M., M. D„ 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 
REPRINTED FROM THE 
BROOKLYN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION. 
W. W. SWAYNE, 216 FULTON STREET, BROOKLYN, N. Y. 
1875. PART I.—The Problem, ... ......... Page 5 
PART II.—The Material. 
Sex, . . “13 
Development, ........... “29 
PART III.—The Process, ...... .... "33 THE PHYSIOLOGICAL REASONS WHY. 
PART I.—THE PROBLEM. 
For what there is of excellence in 
the educational process, credit is to 
be given, without stint or reservation, 
to the educators; what is deficient, 
incomplete, injudicious or harmful, is 
not so much to be passed to the ac- 
count of the educators, as to the 
thoughtlessness,lack of discrimination, 
unwise ambition and avoidance of re- 
sponsibility on the part of the parents. 
The teacher, by the very exercise of 
his vocation, has always been in ad- 
vance of public sentiment, and, chafing 
under restraint, has never been per- 
mitted to act up to the full limits of 
his experience. Holding one ob- 
ject in clear view, he has wrought 
out the best mode of accomplishing 
his purpose, within the limits pre- 
scribed for him by his patrons. He 
has all along followed the up-hill 
track, over which all travel, jvho 
have provided a supply in excess 
of the demand. No more earnest, 
devoted, patient, sacrificing, absorbed, 
enthusiastic and intelligent workers 
gather around any labor, than they 
who wait on the ministry of teaching. 
The plans devised to accomplish the 
best results with the material, in the 
shortest time, are their unaided work. 
The relations of parent and teacher, 
employer and employed, bid defiance 
to the recognized laws of trade. Not 
only does the latter settle on the end 
he proposes,-and mature his plans to 
achieve it as far as possible, independ- 
ent of scrutiny or criticism, but the 
former hands over his offspring to be 
dealt with pro forma, heedless of end or 
plans. The consciousness that some- 
thing is being done, is the self-satify- 
ing assurance when the quarterly bills 
are audited and paid. The child con- 
forms to a curriculum during the pre- 
scribed hours, and goes to waste the 
remainder of the time, or he is handed 
over to the educator, body and soul, 
and school hours and home hours are 
dictated by another than the parent. 
Were it not that the school is reckoned 
among the proprieties of life by the 
better classes, and held as a relief 
from the exercise of home-police by 
the lower classes, the confidence with 
which these young immortals are handed over by their natural guard- 
ians, in blind, unquestioning, glad sub- 
missiveness, to the control and guid- 
ance of the teacher, would inspire the 
belief that the teacher is autocrat or 
saint, all-powerful or unerring. 
There is no uniformity in the educa- 
tional processes, and it is not pretend- 
ed that the best ideas have been reach- 
ed, but the discussions thereon are 
among educators, one with another, 
the conflict of clouds driven by the 
far-off tempests of the upper ether, too 
far off and of no concern to the count- 
ing house or the fireside. Some hard- 
fisted scientist or rapt visionary, now 
and then takes the floor to codify or 
amend ; but educator, scientist or vis- 
ionary are all of a piece to him of the 
ledger, the counter or the spade ; to 
her of the kitchen, the nursery or the 
boudoir. 
Schools exist,children abound; boys 
and girls, young men q,nd maidens, 
must be sent to the schools. Reckon- 
ing on the prevailing sentiment of the 
people, educational portals are thrown 
open, and there is no misplacing of 
confidence. They are thronged, they 
are crowded, they overflow. The poor 
take advantage of public institutions ; 
fashion and circumstances divide up 
the remainder. The thrust-out wait 
and the spoiled pet of fortune are yet 
to stand far out in the years, and 
looking back to wonder why they 
were treated thus and not differently ; 
why the process was so general and 
not particular ; why the individuality 
was not gathered up instead of merged 
into the mass; why the father’s 
fatherly and the mother’s motherly 
affection did not discover the tenden- 
cy and appropriate it fitly. 
The process and the parent are not 
in community of interest for the child. 
The process is the embodiment of one 
idea, to enable the child’s mind to ac- 
quire and use knowledge. The parent 
is, or ought to be, imbued with two 
responsibilities : care for the child’s 
mental training, and anxiety for his 
bodily vigor. The educational process 
contemplates so little beyond mental 
discipline and the acquisition of knowl- 
edge, that it is substantially a correct 
statement that this is all it intends to 
accomplish. The child’s school career 
is conformity to a curriculum. A heap 
of well-worn, thumbed, and dismem- 
bered books, attests the battle and the 
victory. There are notable excep- 
tions. That the exceptions are notable 
is the salient fact. The introduction of 
calisthenic exercises and military 
drill, and the establishment of gymna- 
siums have been a concession to out- 
side pressure. 
The routine of the teacher, and the 
indifference of the parent, have been 
confronted by the hygienist. He has 
disturbed the one and aroused the 
other. The private contract between 
the teacher and the parent is weaker 
now than formerly. The advent of the 
social scientist is thrusting the process 
into the ranks of those questions held 
to be germane to public economics. 
The State, as represented by the better 
qualified, is not simply to deal out 
charters, but, looking to the broader 
interests beyond, is to push routine 
and indifference to one side, and wise- 
ly lead the process along by the two- 
fold nature of the child. 
Vigorous health is no less a com- 
fort to the individual than essential to 
the interests of the State. Whatever 7 
influences depress the physical well- 
being of the people, not only lessen 
population, but diminish industry. 
The State thrives on an industrious, 
vigorous and increasing population. 
Good health and good morals live 
under the same roof, and intelligence 
is not a very distant neighbor. Good 
health has a firm grip on all the 
chances to prosperity, while infirmity 
of body insecurely slips away from 
all endeavor. Courage is strong, so 
far as the body is capable. 
The Scientist asserts that the educa- 
tional process which is to lead up the 
children into wise and effective ma- 
turity, whose intelligence is to carve 
out the riper civilization, shall not in- 
fringe on the conditions needful for 
the best physical development, because 
the health of the people is essential to 
the strength of the State. Being a 
student of processes as well as results, 
he is cxirious and inquisitive into the 
various modes by which it is proposed 
to unfold the intellectual capacities, 
but he demands that, while the body 
is developing, its best development 
shall not be interfeied with. A 
reformer as well, he is not to be 
stopped on his way by interesting 
speculations on the unity of spirit or 
the material nature of thought; it is 
sufficient that as the mind and body 
travel in company in this world, the 
education of the one is not to be at 
the expense of the other. The educa- 
tional process must take no averages. 
It must stop short of doing any harm. 
Physiologist, likewise, he knows that 
the brain “furnishes conditions neces- 
sary for the manifestation of mind,”* 
and, as the phenomena alone concern 
him, it does not matter whether the 
brain secretes thought or is the instru- 
ment of thought; but it is radical with 
him that the brain is a material part of 
a material body ; that one part of that 
body maybe cultivated at the expense 
of all the rest; that the highest co- 
ordinated development of the entire 
body constitutes the highest physical 
integrity, and so he insists that the 
process shall not interfere with this 
co-ordinated development. 
The child is a spiritual and material 
compound. No compend of moral 
maxims, no system of training, can 
prudently ignore this connection of 
mind and body. Apparently they 
come into the world together, but the 
history of their development is not 
the same. The former is capable of 
unlimited development, the latter ar- 
rives at a prescribed limit, and waste 
and repair are the conditions of its 
maturity. The former possesses un- 
limited possibilities of growth, with a 
reaching beyond into the unknown; 
the latter’s maturity is a constant ten- 
dency to decay, and within a limited 
period waste exceeds repair, and dis- 
solution follows. The former applies 
itself to its own culture; the latter is 
passively obedient to its own organic 
laws. 
This brain, whose function, accord- 
ing to the new terminology, is to cer- 
ebrate, furnishes conditions necessary 
to the manifestations ot mind, and 
these manifestations are made, not by 
the brain, which furnishes the neces- 
sary conditions, but by other parts of 
the body influenced by the brain. 
Intelligent action, the adaptation of 
means to ends, is bodily action in- 
* Clinical Lectures on the Principles and Practice of 
Medicine, by J. A. Bennett, M. D., F. R. S. E.,page 142. 8 
spired by the mind. Alienists are 
finding evidence of the physical causes 
of insanity.* The body, wisely di- 
rected or not, is alwavs the instrument, 
and, active or at rest, is still the instru- 
ment. As the . brain is but a portion 
of the body, dependent on the same 
nutritive processes by which the rest 
of the body is nourished, and as the 
brain furnishes no manifestations of 
the mind, save as it is connected with 
the general organism, and as the mind 
subserves to its purposes all parts of 
the organism, excepting those con- 
nected with organic life, it is more 
consonant with accuracy of statement 
to assert that the material nature (i. e., 
the body) furnishes the conditions 
necessary for the manifestation of the 
spiritual. Of course, this statement 
assigns to the body a position entirely 
subordinate to the mind, and places 
the culture of the spiritual on the 
higher level—a statement altogether 
in harmony with nature and revela- 
tion. 
But it is an ordinary inference that, 
being an instrument, the culture of 
the body is a means to the better cul- 
ture of the mind, and, further, that 
the highest bodily culture is the only 
condition consistent with the mani- 
festations of the broadest spiritual 
culture. Let this not be interpreted 
to mean that bodily strength is a 
synonym for bodily perfection. The 
athlete is a monstrosity of muscle. 
The wiry fingers of the pianist, 
trained to the most delicate manipu- 
lations, assume no supple strength to 
accomplish other labor. Special de- 
velopment neither necessitates nor 
assumes bodily soundness. The high- 
est bodily culture would include not 
only the trained capacity to do all 
that had ever been done as its best, 
but likewise the trained capacity to do 
what is capable of being done by the 
body. It need not be hinted that this 
is without the limits of human cul- 
ture, for life is too short for the culti- 
vation and experience that must ante- 
cede this training. No one life can 
wring out all the secrets of any one 
treasury of effort, whether of body or 
of mind. 
But, for the sake of contrast, this 
highest bodily culture is set over 
against that integrity of the body 
which furnishes the conditions best 
suited to the manifestations of mind. 
In one way or another, bodily unsound- 
ness will modify these manifesta- 
tions. And, still further, all along 
the upward track of the co-ordinated 
development of mind and body, the 
physical peculiarities, whether of or- 
ganization or disease, modify these 
manifestations. Legs are essential to 
running and eyes to seeing, and one 
born without legs would have as im- 
perfect conception of running as one 
born blind has of sensible things. 
That the child acts as his parent 
does, in many ways, is not the result 
of imitation, but because of similarity of 
structure. The serious objection to the 
intermarriage of relations, is that the 
physical defects of the parents are in- 
tensified in the offspring, and the men- 
tal imbecility is again the result of 
structure. 
As the body is the instrument of the 
mind, and the integrity of the body is 
essential to the best development of 
’•‘Insanity : Its dependence on physical disease, by J. 
P. Gray, M. D. Transactions of New York State Med. 
Soc., 1871. 
Pathology of Insanity, ditto 1874. 9 
the mind, the educational process that 
is to command the respectful attention 
of the scientist, is, on the one hand, to 
adapt the mental training to the con- 
ditions imposed by the peculiarities of 
the individual, and, on the other, to so 
conduct the mental training, that it 
shall not infringe on the conditions 
best suited to the development of the 
body. 
If a healthy child be subjected to 
mental training, the educator may 
properly assume that the child’s mind 
may be fitly and harmoniously discip- 
lined. Mental labor is not only 
brain work, and notoriously ex- 
hausting, but the conditions, under 
which study is pursued, are not the 
conditions suited to the best bodily 
vigor. “ Mental fatigue is only what 
the mind feels of an impaired state of 
the brain, whose reparative nutrition 
goes on undisturbed during sleep.”* 
So, if the educator is looking to the 
best future results, he must be aware 
that brain work will depress and ex- 
haust the healthiest child, and be skill- 
ful to know when rest is needed. 
In pressing the claim, that the harmo- 
nious development of the body, as the 
surety of healthful maturity, is not only 
essential to the best mental discipline, 
but should be held as of paramount 
importance, it is asserted that it is the 
duty of the parent to be watchful, lest 
the anxiety of the teacher, to properly 
fulfil his work, hinder or thwart this 
development. Excellent mental cul- 
ture may be associated with an infirm 
body, made so by the conditions under 
which that culture was acquired, but 
the comfort of the individual, and the 
interests of the State, would be en- 
hanced, if that same culture were com- 
bined with a vigorous body. “ Wher- 
ever a population is found generally 
weakly, stinted, scrofulous, there is 
found a corresponding type of brain, 
which cannot be trusted to do good 
work, which is capable more or less of 
madness, whether solitary or epidemic. 
It may be very active—it may be very 
quick at catching at new and grand 
ideas — all the more quick, perhaps, on 
account of its own secret ?nalaise and 
self-discontent; but it will be irritable, 
spasmodic, hysterical. It will be apt 
to mistake capacity for talk for capacity 
for action, excitement for earnestness, 
virulence for force, and, too often, cru- 
elty for justice. It will lose manful 
independence, individuality, original- 
ity, and when men act, they will act 
from the consciousness of personal 
weakness, like sheep rushing over a 
hedge, leaning against each other, ex- 
horting each other to be brave, and 
swaying about in mobs and masses.”* 
Better send a weak child to expand 
on the frontier and grow up a healthy 
man, than to college to ripen his mind 
and destroy his digestion. Better give 
a ruddy boy the benefit of a common- 
school discipline and then stop, if it is 
found that further school life pales his 
cheek and makes his elasticity droop. 
Knowledge is good, and mental dis- 
cipline, that enables one to take ad- 
vantage of favorable and turn unto- 
ward circumstance to the best ac- 
count, is also good; but excellent 
mental culture in a weak body is very 
much more helpless in the conflict of 
life, than average information in a 
strong body. 
* Health and Education, Rev. Chas. KingsleyJF L S 
F.G.S., p. 17. ’’ 
* Paget’s Surgical Pathology, p. 28. School education is conducted du- 
ring the years in which the body is 
being developed. The State makes 
provision that no child need fail ot 
gaining a discipline that the man, if 
so disposed or circumstanced, can im- 
prove on. That there are defects in 
the system is unquestionable, but it is 
also true that public sentiment will 
yet eradicate them by forcing the au- 
thorities to recognize the established 
laws of Hygiene. It is not probable 
that the great mass of the population 
will ever be better able, than now, to 
allow their children to remain in 
school, after they are old enough to 
be put in the way of earning their own 
living. The more favored classes, 
hereafter as now, are to be brought 
face to face with this problem of the 
co-ordinated development of mind and 
body, and running through a longer 
period of time. 
By the organization of the common 
school, and by charters to the higher 
institutions of learning, the State re- 
cognizes that the intelligence of the 
people is essential to its prosperity. 
No restriction need be placed on the 
extent of the mental training to which 
children may be subjected, save as the 
processes may interfere with the best 
development of the body. The power 
of the State to organize and charter, is 
itself a concession that the State should 
exercise such an oversight as shall in- 
sure proper use of its franchises. As 
has been shown, neither the teacher 
nor the parent can exercise impartial 
judgment. The State must have its 
laws and regulations framed by scien- 
tists, and it is from this class that those 
must be chosen to whom shall be 
delegated the authority to see that 
these regulations are judiciously en- 
forced. 
Something more than medical su- 
pervision of schools is needed. Prac- 
tically, this supervision would be lim- 
ited to the detection and removal of 
unhealthful influences. The educa- 
tional process is the object of the 
higher criticism, and this process is to 
be judged by its conformity, not to a 
theory of education, but to the physi- 
cal condition of the child. Some well- 
informed people believe that there are 
systems of school education to which 
no child can be righteously subjected— 
systems, from obedience to which, 
some exceptional cases may escape 
unscathed ; to which many are utterly 
unable to conform, and on which oth- 
ers, in a vain endeavor to obey, are 
wrecked. Of course, no board of edu- 
cation, no principal, no teacher, can be 
found, at whose doors these evils can 
be laid without remonstrance. If sin 
there be, somebody else is the sin- 
ner. Mere medical supervision woidd 
not meet this issue. The experience 
of the physician, the training of the 
physiologist, and familiarity with the 
work of the educator, are a trinity of 
accomplishment and skill, alone com- 
petent to arbitrate between the re- 
morseless energy of the teacher and 
the passive indifference of the parent. 
But this problem of the co-ordinat- 
ed development of mind and body 
will not come under State super- 
vision, nor will it be subjected to any 
competent or authoritative scrutiny 
until the importance thereof has been 
sown, and grown, and blossomed, and 
fruited in public sentiment. The 
average of the State is the average of 
the people. Laws follow, and do not anticipate public opinion. They are 
but public opinion formulated. If 
the child is to be dealt with wisely by 
the teacher, the parent has first to com- 
prehend the child. When the parent 
feels the importance of making every 
step of the child tend towards a health- 
ful maturity, and that “to be is to be 
well,” according to the Roman maxim, 
when he comprehends that the har- 
monious development of the body can 
be interfered with by injudicious pro- 
cesses of mental training, the child’s 
education will not, thenceforth, be un- 
conditionally delegated to another; 
will cease to be submission to custom, 
and will assume its proper place as a 
duty to be conscientiously and intelli- 
gently fulfilled. The good sense of 
the people will then find expression in 
the State. 
Though so little is known of the 
laws of human production, yet it is 
recognized that each child is, in his 
physical organization, by the infinite 
complexity of transmission, the re- 
sultant of his ancestry. This original 
organization, by the myriad influences 
that are to affect its development, is to 
sustain in maturity certain peculiari- 
ties, which are to distinguish it from 
every other. The mental processes, 
and the mental manifestations, are 
not only affected, but controlled, by 
these peculiarities of the physical 
organization. Indeed, following out 
the line of modern investigation, it 
has been boldly asserted by a distin- 
guished alienist, that the extraordinary 
excellence which has been ascribed to 
genius is related to special forms of 
insanity.* 
But this problem of the co-ordinat- 
ed development of mind and body 
awaits solution, that the educational 
processes, suited to the conditions im- 
posed by sex, may be satisfactorily 
differentiated. Public sentiment has 
been assailed by two criticisms op- 
posite in character. The one asserts 
that the higher education of woman 
must be conducted in accordance with 
the laws of her physical organization, 
in order that that organization may 
be harmoniously, and, therefore, best 
developed. The other claims that her 
organization interposes, no hindrance 
to her education being conducted in 
precise identity with the other sex. 
Many side issues have been discussed 
with great acerbity, but this statement 
of the two conflicting opinions touches 
the essential basis of discussion. It 
is a question of fact, to be submitted 
to experience, or to be judged by the 
facts of science. Experiences differ, 
and individual cases count for but 
little. It is too serious a question to 
be submitted to experience, if the laws 
of her organization are sufficiently 
well-defined to decide it in advance of 
experience. It is a question affecting 
her development and maturity, re- 
gardful alike of her processes of 
growth and the purposes of her 
growth. In the following section the 
essential physiology of woman has 
been outlined, and the law of her 
organization traced to its last analysis, 
furnishing a criterion by which the 
questions discussed in the succeeding 
section have been judged. 
The acquisition of knowledge, and 
the discipline of the mind which is to 
enable it to readily acquire and skil- 
fully use knowledge, though con- 
*A. Maudsley, M. D., Journal of Mental Science, 
1871. 12 
nected as efforts of the mind, are still 
different mental operations. The pos- 
session of knowledge is one thing, 
and does not necessarily imply that 
control of the mental powers, which 
places them at will and at once en 
rapport with new situations, new ideas, 
and the relations of new facts, which 
control is mental discipline, and is 
quite another thing. A disciplined 
mind must, of necessity, be possessed 
of some information, but knowledge 
may be so mixed, incongruous, and 
un-related, as to be utterly dissociated 
from anything like mental discipline. 
Now, as the relation of the educa- 
tional process to mental and physical 
education is not a comparison of the 
excellence of either, but a survey of 
the development of both, it will be 
readily perceived that the physical 
conditions, under which knowledge 
may be acquired and mental discipline 
secured, may vary exceedingly. 
The skilled educator and the parent 
are here widely at variance in their 
comprehension of the situation, and 
it is unquestionably true that the er- 
rors the former commits are oftentimes 
due to the pressure brought to bear 
by the unwise demands of the latter. 
The child, just turned into her teens, 
glibly rehearsing sines and tangents, 
and wantonly disporting with levers 
and fulcrums, while she may be the 
pride of a boastful circle of friends, 
must cause the outraged conscience 
of the educator to toss sleeplessly on 
its pillow. 
Learning by rote, and acquisition 
by the wholesale, demand a physical 
strain in extent and continuance far 
in excess of that proportionate mental 
and physical development which are 
parallel to each other, just so far as they 
are conformed to a principal common 
to both, viz: exercise in advance of 
development arrests growth. Arrest- 
ed physical development, and imper- 
fect mental discipline, have this in 
common, that no combination of pro- 
pitious circumstances can ever make 
up the growth that has once been 
dwarfed. 
The future is always uncertain ; the 
process of education, mental and phys- 
ical, should be directed to so prepare 
the mind and body, that the condi- 
tions of the future may be readily 
complied with, and that the opportuni- 
ties of the future may be taken advan- 
tage of without hindrance. A well- 
balanced and evenly-organized phy- 
sique will enable a man to earn his 
living as a blacksmith, endure hard- 
ship and exposure in discovery, or 
enjoy most completely the benign in- 
fluences of an easy life, as circum- 
stances, not altogether of his own 
making, may place him. So a well- 
disciplined mind is not only an 
adornment to ordinary life, but may 
enable one judiciously to administer 
important trusts, may fit for suc- 
cessful application to science, art 
or literature, as special qualifications 
may incline. Early education is not 
a preparation for a special purpose, 
but for any purpose, that all efforts 
may be directed to the best and most 
enjoyable ends. 
This co-ordinated development of 
mind and body, does not imply that 
mental education is any contravention 
of physical laws; it only demands that 
regard shall be had to these laws. It 
does not imply that all mental labor 
is injurious to the body ; it asserts that 13 
all such labor should recognize the 
conditions needful for the bodily vigor. 
It does not require the disregard of 
system ; it declares that the children, 
who are the material to be developed, 
are different one from the other, and 
that the system shall not be inflexi- 
ble; that this co-ordinated develop- 
ment cannot be hap-hazard, but must 
be systematic, adaptive, skilled, watch- 
ful, unceasing. 
Furthermore, this subordination, in 
the educational process, of the culture 
of the mental faculties to the condi- 
tions requisite to the harmonious de- 
velopment of the body, is in behalf 
of the upward culture of the race. It 
is, in the economy of things, that 
structure furnishes the conditions for 
the spiritual manifestations. So, like- 
wise, does structure limit these mani- 
festations. The flesh is lower and 
subordinate to the spirit, but in this 
perishable body the immortal spirit is 
temporarily lodged. The integrity of 
the body is essential to the most 
varied usefulness of the spirit. N eglect 
of the culture of the body is at the ex- 
pense of the comfort, the liberty and 
the usefulness of the spirit. The co- 
ordinated development of mind and 
body, is not only that the strong may 
be best endowed, but that the weaker, 
who are the legitimate result of ances- 
tral transgression of physical law, may 
be lifted up. 
Science shall not dissociate itself 
from man’s relations to his God and 
his duty to the whole brotherhood of 
man, and avow that knowledge must 
be mcreaseu, ttiough the weaker goes 
to tiie wail. Hie *" survival of the 
fittest ” may have its place in science, 
as belonging to the facts of Natural 
History, but the Christian philanthro- 
pist can know no Spartan edict to 
wipe out the weaker bodies. The 
body may be weak; ignorance and 
recklessness may have made it so ; but 
the spirit is in the disposition of Him 
who gave it. “The citizen is no more re- 
sponsible for his own weakness than for 
his own existence. Society—that is, in 
plain English, we and our ancestors— 
are responsible for both ; and we must 
fulfil the duty and keep him in life, and 
if we can, heal, strengthen and devel- 
op him to the utmost, and make the 
best of that which ‘ fate and our de- 
servings ’ has given us to deal with.”* 
The operation of the causes that 
have made infirmity and weakness to 
be passed into the heritage of this 
generation can be stopped, and infirm- 
ity and‘weakness, carefully nurtured, 
can be strengthened into a maturity 
that shall transmit a stronger and a 
better race. 
It is no valid argument, that the 
present civilization is intense, and he, 
who cannot place himself in the van, 
ignobles and wrecks his life. The man 
must not be wrecked in the effort to 
master the civilization. The civiliza- 
tion must be forced back to its place 
to meet the capacities of man. The 
civilization is wTrong which excites 
unduly human effort. 
The educational process is not re- 
sponsible for the untoward influences 
that unsteady life, but, nevertheless, it 
is unfitted for its task if these influ- 
ences are not taken into account. 
Localities may vary these influences, 
but to some extent they exist every- 
*iiuilding ol a Bram,by £,. H. Clarke, j>j . L).,p. 47. where 
reason is assumed to have place ill the perpetuation of 
the httest. 
* Health and Education, page 7. where. In the country and the town, 
they are perverse, but they are incom- 
parably worse in the city. The say- 
ing, “give me the first seven years of 
a child’s life and it is indifferent who 
has the remainoer,” has been so gen- 
erally accepted as the universal belief, 
that to credit any one as the fabricator 
of the maxim, spoils a dozen other 
reputations equally the original, but 
the second seven and the third seven 
are shore-lined with wrecks. 
The instability and the fretful ness 
of living are to be stamped out in the 
home. The teacher will have no fair 
chance till the parent is willing to lis- 
ten to the entreaty to protect the 
child. The practical working of the 
co-ordinate development of mind and 
body, in the educational process, can 
be guided by the general rules which 
physiology may furnish, but the parent 
in the home hours, and the teacher in 
the school-room, . must apply these 
rules to the child, not as a genus, but 
as an individual. There is here no 
text for the doctrinaire, but there is 
the inspiration for duty, anxious for 
results, the most effective and the 
most enduring. PART II. 
THE MATERIAL. 
SEX. 
In the preceding section the rela- 
tions between the physical and spirit- 
ual natures have been outlined ; but 
the next inquiry is into the limita- 
tions imposed by sex in the develop- 
ment of these relations. The ideal 
types of man and woman are so gen- 
erally recognized as essentially diff- 
erent, not only in physical structure, 
but in psychical manifestation, that it 
is pertinent to the studies of the phy- 
siologist to inquire into the nature of 
these differences, and deduce there- 
from the principles in accordance 
with which the best relations between 
the physical and spiritual natures of 
each sex can be established. Indeed, 
in the current discussions of the fer- 
tile themes of woman’s work and wo- 
man’s education, appeal has been 
made to the physiologist, as to the 
tribunal of last resort, to furnish such 
a statement of principles, based on the 
ascertained facts of his science, as 
shall take this discussion out from the 
confusing speculations of visionaries 
and enthusiasts, into the calmness ot 
scientific investigation. 
Before relation can be satisfactorily- 
discussed, condition must be known; 
and following out the argument of 
the previous section, that the body is 
the instrument of the mind, it remains 
to inquire how physiology differen- 
tiates sex in the human species, and 
what are the physical causes that pre- 
serve the essential peculiarities of the 
sexes. 
The physiology of woman is not 
satisfactorily summed up in the enu- 
meration of her physical peculiarities. 
The rehearsal of phenomena is not 
the logos of the phenomena. The or- 
der of the phenomena and the cause 
of the order are essential to a correct 
appreciation of her physiology. Nei- 
ther is the distinctive physiology of 
woman delineated in the statement 
that the functional activity of her re- 
productive system modifies the func- 
tional activity of her entire organism. 
For this does not satisfy the con- ditions of her development; does 
not explain the phenomena of healthy 
action, and does not touch the physi- 
cal causes that regulate the whole pro- 
cedure. 
An investigation instituted to ex- 
plain the physiological condition of 
woman, must proceed upon one of 
two assumptions: either that her 
physical and psychical phenomena, 
being in many particulars so widely 
different from man’s, stamp her as a 
distinct creation, with laws sui generis ; 
or that the human species, in develop- 
ment, maturity and decay, is a unit in 
structural elements, organism and 
function, and that sex is a modification 
constantly obedient to physical laws 
common to the species. 
I. At the outset, one striking fact 
presents itself, viz. : that the structure 
and processes necessary to the mainten- 
ance of the individual are a factor com- 
mon to the human species, and in the 
male and female individuals of that 
species are essentially the same. 
Not only is there in the female a 
duplicate with the male for every or- 
gan, bone, muscle, nerve, and tissue, 
whose vital properties and functions 
are in exact correspondence, but the 
histogenetic elements of which these 
are composed are no fewer and no 
more than in the male. Respiration, 
assimilation, secretion, circulation 
and excretion in each are identical in 
kind, and operate in accordance with 
laws common to both. The special 
senses, sight, smell, hearing, taste and 
touch, essential to protection and 
maintenance, correspond exactly in 
structure, size, sensitiveness and 
power. Life is maintained through 
the appropriation of the same kinds of 
aliment, and they exist together un- 
der the most diverse climatic in- 
fluences. 
Whatever differences exist in the 
female, in all that is essential to the 
maintenance of the individual, are in 
extent of structure and intensity of 
function, and do not trench upon the 
absolute accuracy of the statement 
that in all that is thus essential, there 
is in both absolute indentity in kind. 
There is a difference in contour, but 
contour is only a result of the group- 
ing of structures. The breadth of her 
pelvis may make her run queerly, the 
only ungraceful movement she does 
make, as some one has said; but the 
bones and the muscles, and the mode 
of their action, are the same as in the 
male*.* She may have a generally 
thinner skin, a relatively larger cere- 
bellum, a lesser weight of heart and 
kidneys, a smaller brain case, a quick- 
er pulse and higher temperature than 
man ; but the scalpel, the microscope, 
experimental physiology and chemical 
re-agents can discover in her no differ- 
ence from man, in the quality of the 
structure and processes needful for 
their common maintenance. 
If structure and processes are iden- 
tical in kind, identity in kind is to be 
predicated of the stimulating and co- 
ordinating force. 
Structure, function and force being 
identical in kind, identity of purpose 
(the maintenance of the individual) 
being constant, identity of type, for 
all individuals of the species, is to be 
assumed. In other words, the main- 
*An elaborate exposition of the external physical pecu- 
culiarities of woman, as compared with man, with a com- 
parative analysis of her intellectual and emotional char- 
acteristics, is to be found in Elliotson's Physiology, pp. 
609 to 707. 15 
tenance of all individuals of the hu- 
man species is provided for by a typi- 
cal structure with typical functions, 
controlled by a typical force. 
Although the male and female hold 
in common so much that is in precise 
identity, yet each possesses certain 
characteristics, peculiar to each, dis- 
tinguishing each, and unfailingly re- 
cognizable in all periods of their 
history, irrespective of race, location, 
external influence and special civil- 
ization ; and these persistent charac- 
teristics are, in every particular, a 
modification in size and intensity of 
the typical organism instituted for the 
maintenance of the individual, and 
common to all individuals of the 
species. The formulated proposition 
is that structure, function and force, 
being identical in kind, with constant 
modifications from a typical standard, 
identity of modifying cause, affecting 
development and maturity, is to be 
assumed. 
By reversion of argument, the con- 
stancy of a modifying cause, with 
constancy of results, argues a common 
type. 
From these propositions it is argued that 
the physical peculiarities characteristic of 
the male and female individuals of the hu- 
man species constant to each, are to 
be referred to the operation of some con- 
stant cause, not essential to the maintenance 
of the individual, and this affecting cause 
must be reside?it i?i each individual. 
II. The continuance of the species is a 
capacity of the species, and the provi- 
sions therefor are lodged in two indi- 
viduals of the species. In some low 
forms of life, the entire reproductive 
apparatus is contained in each indi- 
vidual, and up through every grade 
its structure is elaborated, and its 
functions are specialized with the re- 
finement of the species. 
The organs necessary for the fulfil- 
ment of this capacity, in their distri- 
bution among two individuals, are 
constant in these individuals, and 
distinguish them as male and female. 
Through all the higher grades of 
the animal creation, the distribution of 
the reproductive apparatus carries 
with it certain modifications of devel- 
opment in the nutritive system, the 
same in kind and analogous in mani- 
festation to the modifications which 
accompany this distribution in the 
human species. 
The capacity for the continuance of 
the species is, in no wise, essential to 
the maintenance of the individual. 
The facts of experience show that long 
life and continued health, are preserved 
in those individuals whose reproduc- 
tive apparatus has never been aroused 
into its highest possible functional 
activities, and the facts of experience 
also show, that arrest of development, 
with the functional activity held in 
abeyance, or reduced to its minimum 
is not inconsistent with the integrity 
of the nutritive system. This involves 
the conception that the typical struc- 
ture has reference to the maintenance 
of the individual, and is the constant 
factor, irrespective of the continuance 
of the species, and irrespective of the 
quietude or excitement of the func- 
tional activities peculiar to the repro- 
ductive apparatus. 
The reproductive system is the only 
system not the same in all individuals 
of the human species. The distribu- 
tion is uniformly the same, as the rare 16 
cases of more or less complete her- 
maphroditism belong to the class of 
monsters. The distribution in the re- 
productive system is a separation of 
the several parts of one organism, and 
not two modifications of analogous 
organs with special functions. 
Therefore, without taking into account 
the cause of sex, and considermg alone 
the facts of sex, it is to he assumed that 
the reproductive system is the constant 
cause operating to prodtice the physical 
peculiarities characteristic of the male and 
female individuals of the human species. 
III. The distribution of the organs 
of reproduction is unequal in the male 
and female. 
While the formation of the ovum 
and the stimulation of the ovum are 
the elements essential to reproduction, 
yet in the human species the struct- 
ures and the diversity of function 
which belongs to them, by means of 
which the whole process of reproduc- 
tion is developed, rise to an elabor- 
ateness and complexity that has no 
parallel in similar organs in any other 
of the animal creation. 
This inequality of distribution is 
manifest in the structures themselves 
(a), their location (IP), the difference in 
effect on the nutritive system in their 
normal condition (c), the special 
duties required of them (d), the special 
character of their activity (e), the 
changes wrought in their highest de- 
velopment (/), and in the period of 
their active operation (g). 
(a.) High organization, their func- 
tions characterized by activity, belongs 
to the essential portions of the repro- 
ductive apparatus distributed to the 
male, and of the subsidiary apparatus 
he has but a small portion ; while vast 
preponderance of the subsidiary ap- 
paratus is given to the female, char- 
acterized, in the main, by low organi- 
zation and passivity of function. 
(h.) In the male, the distribution is 
external and in the nature of an ap- 
pendage; in the female, it is altogether 
internal, and, structurally, an integral 
portion of her organism. 
(c.) In the male, the normal con- 
dition intensifies the general nutritive 
operations; in the female, while the 
normal condition leaves the system at 
rest, the activity of its functional op- 
erations depresses the general nutri- 
tive processes. 
(d.) In the male, the duty required 
is the deposit of a secretion appro- 
priate to the stimulation of the ovum; 
the reproductive system of the female 
elaborates the germ, develops it up to 
its capacity for an independent exist- 
ence, and provides for a certain 
period of its after-sustenance. 
(e.) The functional process special 
to the male is a power capable of but 
one activity, and that only at its high- 
est, held in abeyance, except under 
certain stimulation, and prompt in 
obedience thereto; in the female, the 
process is vital, periodical, involun- 
tary and complex ; subject to periods 
of rest and activity in one state, and 
yet capable of substituting that activ- 
ity for another vastly different and 
more energetic. 
(/.) The highest possible functional 
activity of the reproductive apparatus 
in the male involves no change of 
structure therein ; in the female, this 
activity is accompanied by nutritive 
changes of development and involu- tion altogether exceptional in charac- 
ter and extent. 
(g.) In the male, the period during 
which the activity of his reproductive 
apparatus is possible is long contin- 
ued; in the female, this period has a 
definite limitation. 
The inferior distribution of the re- 
productive apparatus in the male, its 
independence structurally of his or- 
ganism, the moderate effects of its 
normal activity on his nutritive sys- 
tem, the limited scope of the duties 
required of it in the reproductive pro- 
cess, the singleness of its activity 
without consequent change of struct- 
ure, and the evenness of its possible 
activity through so long a period of 
his natural existence, compel the 
physiological inference that the re- 
productive system in the male indi- 
vidual of the human species affects 
his nutritive system to a comparative- 
ly slight degree, and, therefore, the 
male individual of the human species rep- 
resents the typical organism for the 
maintenance of the individual, and man 
in his best physical estate is to be taken as 
the type. 
On the other hand, the preponder- 
ance of the distribution of the repro- 
ductive apparatus in the female, its 
close affiliation with her organic 
structure, the depressing character of 
its functional activity, the extraordi- 
nary energy of the duties of which it 
is capable, the complex character of 
its activities, the extensive structural 
changes it undergoes, the periodicity 
and limitations in the exercise of its 
functions, make it physiologically in- 
ferential that the reproductive system 
in the female individual of the human 
species is the constant cause, modify- 
ing her physical structure from the 
typical organism for the maintenance 
of the individual, and woman, in the 
utmost integrity of her organism, and in 
her most harmonious development of 
s true tut e, is, so far as concerns the main- 
tenance of the individual, a modification 
of the type. 
This physiological inference re- 
ceives confirmation from the ob- 
served facts of the influence of the 
ordinary functions of the reproductive 
system on the organism common to 
the species. The establishment of 
puberty in the female, not only signal- 
izes an increased death-rate in her 
over the male (1.25 to 1), but it is fre- 
quently associated with the occurrence 
of anaemia, from causes difficult to re- 
cognize, “ when there has been no loss 
of blood, no deficiency in alimentary 
supplies, and no unusual expenditure 
of blood plasma.”* It has been found 
as the result of extended experiments 
that during menstruation the process 
of nutrition slackens, the pulse is di- 
minished in force and frequency, the 
temperature is decreased half a degree, 
and that the amount of urea eliminated 
is diminished over twenty per cent. 
These changes commence to manifest 
themselves one or two days before the 
appearance of the catamenia, and dis- 
appear a few days after their cessation, f 
After menstruation, “ the brain and 
nervous system, the stomach and in- 
testinal canal, are exposed to new and 
energetic influences, which, when ab- 
normal, may give rise to disease, of 
the phenomena of disease, in these 
organs.“ Whether the due perform- 
* A Treatise on the Principles of Practice of Medicine. 
A. Flint, M. D., p. 6e. 
t Dr. Rabuteau, Gazette Hebdomadaire, July 6, 1870. 
$ Diseases of Women. F. Churchill, M. D., P. C. D., 
M. R. I. A., p, 23. 18 
ance of the functions of these organs 
adds to the health of the individual or 
not, it is quite clear that, during the 
period of activity of the sexual system, 
its derangements are most injurious, 
and that in proportion to the extent 
of the mischief.”* 
It is sound doctrine, that, as so great 
modifications are induced by disease 
of these organs, it is proper to infer 
that they are the result of a suscepti- 
bility, induced by some constant mod- 
ification, related to the healthful exer- 
cise of functions. So, without accept- 
ing as a necessary and constant fact, 
the saying of Michelet, “ Que la femme 
est une maladef this physiological in- 
ference is again confirmed by the mod- 
ifications of the common organism in- 
duced by menstrual disorder, and by 
disease of the reproductive organs. 
Clinical observation may determine 
the numerical ratio of certain diseases 
in the male and female, but deductions 
from the observed facts may be helpless 
to say why certain diseases should oc- 
cur in one more often than in the other. 
It may be clearly shown why she 
should be more subject to chorea, but 
why should she possess so great an im- 
munity from such a diasthesic condition 
as gout, is a mystery.] But the fright- 
ful list of neuroses which are intimate- 
ly connected with menstrual disorder,]; 
and the disorders connected invariably 
with uterine diseases, are matters 
of ordinary clinical experience, and 
crowd the pages of the specialist's 
descriptions. “Uterine diseases de- 
velop so great a number of symptoms 
called nervous or hysterical. The most 
varied forms of mental alienation, the 
most curious hyperaesthesias and anae- 
sthesias of certain parts of the body, 
the most persistent neuralgias and 
spasmodic contractions, spreading 
often to numerous groups of muscles, 
claim if not always, at least very fre- 
quently, for sole cause, an affection of 
the womb.”* 
But, leaving as beyond question the 
statement that at and after the estab- 
lishment of puberty, the reproductive 
system of itself, and by its normal and 
disordered functional activities, does 
operate as the constant cause giving 
rise to the physical peculiarities char- 
acteristic of the female, yet it is essen- 
tial to inquire how the reproductive 
system can effect the marked differen- 
ces that exist in the sexes before that 
period. It cannot be denied that 
many of the earliest developments of 
the child are such as belong to its 
sex. Not only is it the rule that girls 
speak earlier and more perfectly than 
boys, but the tastes, habits and man- 
ners are such as are characteristic 
of their sex in maturity. 
To meet this inquiry, it is to be re- 
marked that there is no structure in 
the human organism, which ultimately 
attains development, which is not to 
be found in a more or less rudiment- 
ary state at the end of foetal life. Matur- 
ity is but full development. All struc- 
ture is commenced in litero, though 
function may not be established. As 
there aie epochs in foetal organization, 
so there are periods in development. 
Again, it is to be remarked, that the 
rudimentary is but the initial stage of 
* Diseases of Women. F. Churchill, M. D., P. C. D., 
M. R. I. A., p. 25. 
t Flint’s Practice, p. 843. 
$ Obstetrical Journal ofGreat Britain and Ireland, Jan- 
uary, 1874, p. 134. 
* Scanzoni, p. 33. perfected growth. In organic life 
there is no period of rest. There is 
perpetual change. Development or 
decay mark every stage of organic 
life. Arrest of development is death 
or deformity. From the earliest or- 
ganization of the dental pulp to the 
shrinking of the alveolar process in 
the whitened head of age, the renewal 
of tissue is a substitution of new for 
old. 
Not less applicable are these physi- 
ological maxims to the organization 
and development of the reproductive 
system. The continuance of the spe- 
cies is provided for long before the 
child is born that is to be the mother 
of the coming race. Provision is 
made for its lodgment; the general 
contour is modified to suit the emer- 
gencies of the future years; such 
depressions in the development 
of the rest of the organism 
are provided for as shall insure 
harmony of action, when its ma- 
turity shall be reached, and its activity 
begun; waste and repair of its sub- 
stance date from its earliest incep- 
tion ; and renewal upon renewal oc- 
curs again and again during the long 
quiet of its development. And so, 
what is true of the processes of the or- 
ganic life of the reproductive system 
in its perfected organism is measure- 
ably true of all the antecedent stages of 
its history.* 
The sum of these physiological con- 
clusions is that there is a typical 
structure common to the human spe- 
cies for the maintenance of the indi- 
vidual ; that the physical peculiarities, 
characteristic of the male and female 
individuals of the human species, are 
the result of the influence of the re- 
productive system on the common or- 
ganism, and that the reproductive 
system is for the continuance of the 
species and not necessary to the main- 
tenance of the individual; that the 
distribution of the reproductive ap- 
paratus is so markedly unequal in 
structure and aggregate of function, 
slight in the male and preponderating 
in the female, energizing in the one 
and depressing in the other, that man 
is to be regarded as representing the 
typical standard of nutrition in the 
human species, and woman from her 
original organization, through the 
whole history of her development and 
maturity, in the structure and opera- 
tion of her organism, as a modification 
of the typical standard of nutrition, 
by reason of there being associated with 
the entire history of her nutritive organi- 
zation and developjnent, the organization 
and developmetit of her reproductive sys- 
tem. 
IV. The general fact being stated, 
that the physical characteristics of 
woman are the result of the influence 
of the development and operation of 
the reproductive system on the nutri- 
tive system, typical to the species, the 
next inquiry in the investigation ot her 
physiologic condition must include 
the principles in accordance with 
which these modifications are affected. 
(a.) The lower, the descent in the 
scale of the animal series, the nearer 
the approach to that state of homogen- 
eousness, which is the typical attribute 
of inorganic bodies, and wherein there 
* See the Genesis of Woman, by Dr. E. Van Der Wal- 
ker, Popular Science Monthly, No. xxvii, wherein he 
takes the ground that the crisis in female life is not func- 
tional, but structural. The sexual organism is formative 
and not paroxysmal. He argues, therefore, that too 
much stress is laid on the crisis of puberty, to the neg- 
lect of the needful care up to puberty. 20 
is no distinction either of tissues or 
organs; on the other hand, in the as- 
cending scale, there is a “ differentia- 
tion of the body into organic systems, 
and of these again into separate and 
more individualized sections,”* until 
the principle of specialization is carried 
to its highest degree in the organism 
of the human species. 
This upward series is characterized, 
not by greater bulk, but by the acqui- 
sition of new forms and structures.! 
Above form and structure, is the ca- 
pacity for manifold appliance. The 
hand of the ape is a lower organization 
than the hand of man, by reason of its 
limited capacity of appliance. As has 
been shown, the elemental structure 
is distributed throughout the entire 
organism; and the different adapta- 
tions of the various structures, while 
they act in obedience to laws vital to 
themselves, are dependent on the mo- 
tive power applied to the general 
organism. The reproductive appara- 
tus is nourished by the same fluid, 
stimulated by the same force, carried 
by the same organs, emanating from 
the same centre, that stimulate and 
vitalize the rest of the organism. 
Admitting the lower grade of some 
portions of the reproductive system, 
yet its processes of growth and repair 
are affected by the laws that govern 
the general nutrition. “An elimina- 
tive function is to a certain extent 
brought about by all the processes of 
growth, and there can be no change, 
however limited, that is not neces- 
sarily associated with a general one in 
the system at large.”* Every organ, 
to secure its proper development and 
perform its appropriate functions, 
must have a due proportion of nutri- 
tion. 
It thus appears that the female or- 
ganization, by its additional structures 
possessed of special capabilities, and 
in similarly intimate and necessary 
dependence on the general nutrition, 
advances by so much in the speciali- 
zation of structure, and is the higher 
organization. Higher organization 
involves essentially a modification of 
type. 
(b.) The physical condition of wo- 
man being characterized by high- 
er organization, it remains to inquire 
how the general nutrition is affected 
by the increased specialization of 
structure. 
While the later development of the 
nervous system renders it highly 
probable that it has but a slight and 
indirect influence in the development 
of structure (this process being car- 
ried on in accordance with certain 
special, inherent, vital powers), yet, in 
addition to the recognized phenom- 
ena of healthy action, the disturb- 
ances consequent on pathological 
change are sufficiently suggestive of 
the extensive influence exerted by the 
nervous system in harmonizing and 
regulating the functions. The pro- 
cesses that in health are hidden 
become patent in disease. That which 
promotes smoothness and repose in 
the normal state, in abnormal con-s 
ditions is the agent of widespread and 
tumultuous anarchy. In one way 
♦Principles of Comparative Physiology. By W. P. 
Carpenter, M.D., F.R.S., F.G.S.. § 18. 
t Paget’s Surgical Pathology, p. 26. 
X Bennett’s Practice of Medicine, p. 135, following 
the idea of Trevianus, viz. : that each single part of the 
body, in respect to its nutrition, stands to the whole body 
in the relation of an excreted substance. Ditto, p. 154 
for examples. 21 
and another all the tissues, no matter 
what their distribution, seem to be in- 
fluenced by the nervous force in their 
nutrition. 
It does not concern the present 
argument to discriminate between or 
inquire into the comparative predom- 
inance of the motor or sensitive nerve 
fibres of the cerebro-spinal system, or 
of the ganglionic system, in the pro- 
cesses of organic and animal life. For, 
“ however much we may differentiate 
the nervous and nutritive functions, 
the fact still holds that they are in- 
separably connected.”* Some ner- 
vous force is exercised in the nutri- 
tion of all the parts, in or near which 
nerves are distributed, in accordance 
with the general law, that the inter- 
dependence of parts augments with 
their development; for high organiza- 
tion consists not in mere multiplica- 
tion or diversity of independent parts, 
but in the intimate combination of 
many parts#in mutual maintenance.f 
In the higher classes of the animal 
creation, the dependence of independ- 
ent parts of the organism, in their 
varying activities, is provided for by 
the controlling and harmonizing in- 
fluence of a central power. The elab- 
orate structure of the cerebro-spinal 
and ganglionic system is the source 
and medium of that power in the hu- 
man species, and the general law of 
the distribution of force is equally 
applicable to the higher organization 
of the woman.. The amount of the 
nervous force is dependent on the in- 
tegrity of the nervous system. The 
manifestation of the force varies with 
the distribution of the system. 
Strength is dependent on concentra- 
tion ; delicacy on diversity of dis- 
tribution. The nervous system acts 
on organic life as a co-ordinator. 
The more complex the organism, the 
more complex is the interdependence 
of the various organs, and the delicacy 
of the interdependence varies with the 
extent of the distribution of the force. 
It has already been made out that 
the structural characteristics of woman 
are due to the co-ordination of her 
reproductive and nutritive systems in 
organization and development, and 
the argument for her higher organiza- 
tion, with its consequent more deli- 
cate balance in mutual maintenance, 
is equally explanatory of her function- 
al characteristics. 
(r.) It has been shown.that the re- 
productive system is in no sense 
essential to the nutritive ; that it is 
entirely dependent on the nutritive 
system, and that its operations con- 
nected with the operations of the gen- 
eral organism through the medium of 
the nervous system, under the law of 
the distribution of force, render more 
delicate the balance of the nutritive 
functions. The case is complicated 
by the well-ascertained and strictly 
accurate physiological fact of the 
antagonism between the nutritive and 
reproductive systems. Though a mat- 
ter of ordinary clinical experience, the 
general law has been well stated by 
Carpenter, u that the development of 
the individual and the reproduction 
of the species stand in an inverse re- 
lation to each other,”* and again, “the 
generative apparatus derives the ma- 
terials of its operations through the 
the nutritive system, and is entirely 
* See Dr. Brown-Sequard's Lowell Lectures, No. 
6. 1874. 
t Paget, p 53. 
♦Carpenter’s Physiology, § 848. 22 
dependent on it for the continuance of 
its activity. If, therefore, the genera- 
tive activity be excessive, it will 
necessarily draw from the fabric at 
large some portion of the aliment 
destined for its maintenance. It may 
be universally observed that where the 
nutritive functions are particularly 
active in supporting the individual, the 
reproductive system is in a corres- 
ponding degree undeveloped, and 
vice versa 
Generalizing again, the more spe- 
cialized the organism, the higher 
the organization; the more special- 
ized, the greater the need of a central 
co-ordinating power ; the more antag- 
onistic the specialized functions, the 
more delicately balanced the distribu- 
ted force, and the more easily dis- 
turbed. 
From the arguments and principles 
thus far adduced, the physiological 
condition of woman has been shown 
to be a higher organization, the resultant 
of the co-incident organization and de- 
velopment of her more numerous and 
specialized structures, the maximum re- 
sistance of the sum of whose nutritive 
processes is lowered by the wider distribu- 
tion of the nerve power, by which the 
functional operations of her organism 
are controlled and harmonized. 
V. By the foregoing argument it 
has been made out that the maximum 
resistance of the nutritive processes 
of woman is lessened by the co-ordin- 
ation therewith of a system whose 
functional activities are antagonistic to 
her nutrition. The case is still further 
complicated by the physiological fact 
that these functional activities are 
not only antagonistic but not constant. 
The reproductive system, operating 
under conditions vital to itself, has an 
ordinary activity rhythmical to itself, 
but irregular as to the constancy of 
the nutritive processes, and therefore 
irregularly disturbing the balance of 
the co-ordination of function. But 
the occasional display of its highest 
functional activities produces a dis- 
turbance vastly more profound, which 
not only modifies the nutritive pro- 
cesses, but affects to a still larger de- 
gree the results of those processes. 
But the argument thus far is incom- 
plete. It alleges, by the collocation 
of physiological facts and inferences, 
that woman is constitutionally differ- 
ent from man in the maximum of her 
resistance, a scientific no less than a 
popularly-recognized fact; a difference 
recognizable irrespective of race, na- 
tionality, clime, or civilization. 
Before her special relations can be 
submitted to intelligent investigation, 
the physiological law of her economy 
must be inquired into. 
What is the physiological and struct- 
ural law in accordance with which is 
produced the uniformity of the physi- 
cal characteristics of woman ? 
It has been found that histogenetic 
element, tissue, and organ, necessary 
for the maintenance of the species, are 
precisely identical in kind in the male 
and female individuals. “ The essential 
character of any tissue or organ, being 
maintained up to the limits of healthy 
(co-ordinate) growth, function in- 
creases with substance (quantity).”* 
In animals wh se muscular move- 
ments are more simple, as in fishes, 
the spinal cord is slighter, and the grey 
* Carpenter’s Comparative Physiology, § 9a. 
* Paget. matter, as well as the ganglionic cells, 
is much more scanty, as fewer com- 
binations of movement are required.* 
The inference is, that the nervous sys- 
tem being so nearly identical in quan- 
tity in man and woman, that similar 
combinations of movement are requir- 
ed with her as with him, and that the 
system being the same, the force is an 
equivalent. Extent of system and 
equivalency of force argue similar ca- 
pacity for results. 
The complete integrity of the phy- 
sical organism involves the concep- 
tion of an amount of nervous force 
exactly suited to the demands of the 
nutritive system, accurately adjusted, 
and constant in action. 
The antagonism of the generative 
and nutritive systems involves- the 
necessary conception of the disturb- 
ance of a co-ordinating force. 
The nervous force applied to the 
purposes of the nutritive system (neu- 
ro-muscular, organic) not controlled 
by the Will, is constantly in opera- 
tion. The special development and 
periodical activity of the reproductive 
system, independent of the nutritive, 
and yet influencing it, because itself 
influenced by the force which minis- 
ters to its support, begets the concep- 
tion that if the nutritive system of the 
female were in quantity up to the ty- 
pical standard of the species, the ner- 
vous force necessary for the develop- 
ment and functional activity of the re- 
productive system, must be under the 
control of the Will; or that, at cer- 
tain periods in the life of the woman, 
and particularly during the intermis- 
sion of the functional activities, a por- 
tion of the nervous force is dormant; 
or there must be an excess of nutritive 
activity at a.11 times except during that 
functional activity. All these con- 
ceptions are untrue. 
The final conception appears that in 
woman such a share of the typical 
nervous force is withdrawn from the 
functional activities of her nutritive 
system, as is requisite to serve the 
purposes of the development and sup- 
port of her reproductive apparatus 
and the fulfilment of the energies 
vital to itself. 
The integrity of the nervous system 
being dependent on the harmonious 
action of all the organs which it in- 
fluences, and is, in turn, influenced by, 
disturbance in the functions of one 
influences the integrity of every other 
“ It is a fundamental law of the distri- 
bution of the vital powers, that when 
they are increased in one part, they 
are diminished in all the rest of the 
living economy; that the sum is never 
augmented, but that they are neces- 
sarily transported from one organ to 
another, and, therefore, to increase the 
powers of one organ, it is absolutely 
necessary that they should be dimin- 
ished in another.”* 
It admits then of no question that 
in a congeries of connected organs, 
any one of which is subjected to 
periodical or irregular action, the 
connected organs must undergo some 
modification of functional irregularity, 
not only during that period, but 
during the time necessary for the re- 
covery of the equilibrium which it 
lost by the action of the disturbing 
force. Of course, it will* be readily 
perceived that these periodical func- 
* Prof. Schroeder Van Der Kolk on the Spinal Cord 
and Medulla Oblongata, pp. 64 and 80. See also p. 66. 
* Bichat, Physical Researches on Life and Death. 24 
tions, if performed in exact accord- 
ance with the vital laws governing the 
structure of the organ, would reduce 
to its minimum the disturbance of the 
regular and unintermitted functions 
of the associated ' organs, provided 
that these functions were performed 
in perfect harmony with the vital laws 
governing the special structures; but, 
nevertheless, it cannot fail to be re- 
cognized that the minimum of dis- 
turbance must always hold, and that 
the amount of the disturbance must 
vary directly with the integrity of the 
associated functions. And this reason- 
ing can only proceed on the assump- 
tion that the amount of nervous force 
in the ideal being of the human 
species is just adequate to the co-or- 
dination and direction of its nutritive 
system, considered as for its own 
maintenance; and that the reproduc- 
tive system designed for the contin- 
uance of the species, both in respect 
to the unequal distribution of its 
necessary structures in two individ- 
uals of the species, and in respect to 
the proportionate activity of its func- 
tions, in either part of its distribution, 
disturbs, to that degree, the harmony 
of the nervous and nutritive systems. 
In the structural process to provide 
for the development, support and 
special energies of the reproductive 
system in woman, one of two modes 
had to be provided. Given to 
her nutritive system a development 
and activity similar to man’s, the 
additional nervous force required to 
satisfy the demands of the reproduct- 
ive system, for the perfected display 
of all its possible energies, would have 
at once necessitated proportionate in- 
crease of size in the main trunks of 
the organs conveying the nervous 
force, no less than a proportionate in- 
crease in the nervous centres them- 
selves. The harmonious structure of 
the human form would have demand- 
ed proportionate increase of her en- 
tire body, and woman, instead of 
being the “lesser man,” the historic 
fact, long before Tennyson penned it, 
the horrible suggestion of the giant 
woman looms up from out the argu- 
ment. 
But give to her a sum of nervous 
force equivalent to man’s, and so dis- 
tribute it that it shall serve the pur- 
poses of organic and animal life, with 
her as with man, as well as serve the 
purposes for which the reproductive 
system was established, and her lesser 
size, the less intensity of her animal 
functions, the marked susceptibility of 
her nervous system,* which are the 
historic facts of her economy, are 
submitted to a rational explanation. 
Therefore, the cause of the physical 
characteristics of woman is to be found in 
her higher organization, from the multi- 
plicity of structure, and her more widely- 
distributed nervous force, with its conse- 
quently more delicately balanced characterj 
the aggregate of the distributed' nerve- 
force being the typical sum needful for 
the maintenance of the individual. 
VI. The discussion thus far has been 
restricted to the physical characteris- 
* “ The greater the amount of nervous force, the less 
the excitability there is, and nice versa. the greater the 
excitability the less amount of nervous force. There is, 
therefore, something quite distinct in these two things— 
excitability and nerve force. This property of excitation 
is nothing but the power to receive an excitation. Per- 
sons who are extremely strong will not generally be mov- 
ed by excitation. They will, of course, appreciate the 
excitation ; they will judge what it is ; but they will re- 
main calm under it. While, on the contrary, persons 
whose nervous system is weak, and who have little nerve 
force, will re act under any excitation, however slight, 
without giving the mind time to think what the excita- 
tion is.”—Dr. Brown-Sequard, Lowell Lectures, 1S74, 
No. 3. 25 
tics of woman. If there are any es • 
sential distinctions in the mental and 
moral nature, occasioned by sexual 
differences, satisfactory evidence has 
yet to be produced; and, though this 
discussion is limited to the physiolog- 
ical status, in view of what has been 
urged, it is to be asserted that sexual 
differences are of the material nature 
only. For, if the species be regarded 
as a physical and psychical combina- 
tion, and the accepted fhcts of the 
relation between the nervo-muscular 
system on the one hand, and the emo- 
tions, intelligence and the will on the 
other, be considered ; and if it be con- 
ceded that the material nature is but 
the instrument for the development 
of the immaterial nature; and, also, 
that physical conditions modify psych- 
ical states, and that psychical states do 
influence physical conditions; and that 
the nervous system, emanating from 
the brain, is the medium of this inter- 
change ; it follows, at least, that the 
harmonious action of the nutritive sys- 
tem is essential to the best psychical 
operations. It follows, likewise, that 
disturbance, from whatever cause, of 
this harmony of action in the nutri- 
tive system, must affect the psychical 
operations. In short, that the integri- 
ty of the psychical operations must 
vary directly with the integrity of the 
qutritive system. Add to this, that 
while the reproductive system is, in no 
sense, essential to the maintenance of 
the individual, the consideration that 
the psychical development is influ- 
enced by the mental and moral discip- 
line, evoked by all that is involved 
in the continuance of the species (a 
discipline that would be entirely un- 
known were the maintenance of the 
individual alone provided for), and 
that this development is in direct rela- 
tion to the conditions demanded by 
the special distribution of the repro- 
ductive apparatus, and it will follow, 
not only that the unequal distribution 
of the reproductive system varies the 
conditions of psychical development, 
but that the special psychical develop- 
ment must, in its own way, affect, in a 
peculiar manner, the physical organ- 
ism with which it is associated. 
To revert again to the law of dis- 
tribution : concentration intensifies 
and distribution weakens. The same 
force exerted over a multiplicity of 
organs not only weakens its intensity 
in each, and shortens the period of re- 
sistance, but demands for each a great- 
er sensitiveness, and necessitates an 
increased liability to derangement. 
Even though the rhythmical activity 
of the reproductive system be under- 
stood only as a fact of experience, yet, 
as such a fact, on this reasoning, it is 
clear that the disturbance of the nerv- 
ous system thereby induced, by all 
other analogies of the human economy, 
must affect to an extent more or less 
appreciable, the functional integrity 
of all the associated organs, which, in 
the case of woman, means her entire 
being. Not alone in common with 
man in organic disease, and more or 
less extreme functional disorder, when 
the general .functions of animal life 
participate in sympathy, and the stead- 
iness of judgment and the calmness of 
the moral sense are swayed, but the 
perturbations, which are the uniformity 
of her being, are the key-note to the 
music wherein is expressed the har- 
mony of woman’s physical and spirit- 
ual life. 26 
VII. Reverting again to the law of 
growth, viz.: that where the nutritive 
functions are particularly active in sup- 
porting the individual, the reproductive 
system is in a corresponding degree 
undeveloped, and vice versa, the con- 
verse of this law suggests an element 
of great importance in confirmation of 
the principle, the truth of which this 
argument is endeavoring to establish. 
It is ordinarily held that woman de- 
velops somewhat earlier than man, 
and the inference is that she must 
grow more quickly. The statement 
is unquestionably correct, if her earlier 
development be made a standard of 
comparison with her full develop- 
ment. From the age of puberty there 
is a marked difference in the develop- 
ment of girls and boys, as respects 
suddenness and speed. There is an 
equally marked difference in the con- 
tinuance and extent of this development 
during the years succeeding puberty. 
The girl develops into the woman and 
stops. The boy makes slower pro- 
gress into manhood and reaches a 
greater development. 
What is the physiological explana- 
tion of this constant fact? 
The development that occurs 
between infancy and puberty is vastly 
in excess of the development that oc- 
curs between puberty and the period 
of mature growth. During this period 
the growth of the healthy child is 
altogether symmetrical. It includes 
the period of the most rapid increase 
of substance. Rapid growth that oc- 
curs after that period is usually at the 
expense of the general vigor. What 
are the precise vital conditions essential 
to the establishment of puberty, is not 
known. But, in view of the general law 
of relation between the support of the 
individual and the development of the 
reproductive system, it is clear that the 
establishment of puberty is associated 
with a nutritive epoch. ‘‘Although dis- 
order of the menstrual function is one 
of the most common phenomena of 
female youth, yet it is, undoubtedly, to 
be looked upon more frequently as a 
symptom of general defective nutrition 
(and especially of an impoverished 
condition of the blood) than as itself 
constituting a disease.”* “It is 
strange to assume that the generative 
function should come into play before 
the nutritive processes so essential to 
the welfare of the individual have been 
perfectly consolidated. Such an as- 
sumption is opposed to the spirit of 
all sound physiological reasoning. 
There can be no more fertile cause of 
delicacy than the premature approach 
of menstruation. Such an event often 
engenders disease by drawing off the 
vascular and nervous energy, so essen- 
tial to the consolidation of the func- 
tions of nutrition and growth.”f 
Either the age of puberty indicates 
such a line of demarcation between 
the rapid growth of childhood and the 
slower development of adolescence, 
that the reproductive system is enabled 
to assert itself, or, that the reproduct- 
ive system has, at that period, attained 
such a development as enables it to 
oppose itself to the nutritive processes. 
The former hypothesis is probably 
correct, but the argument is concerned 
only with these two general facts, 
viz.: that childhood, in both sexes, 
comes up to the period of puberty in 
* Carpenter’s Physiology, § 979. 
t F. T. Porter, L. R. C. S. I., in the Obstetrical Journal, 
April, 1874, p. 55. 27 
similar development, and that, from 
that period, there is in the two a di- 
vergence in the nutritive processes. 
The man and the woman develop on 
different paths. 
Couple with this what has been 
urged as differentiating the effects of 
the-unequal distribution of the repro- 
ductive system in the two sexes, and 
it is clear that the establishment of pu- 
berty in the girl is not only coincident with 
an arrest of nutritive development, but is 
the cause of that arrest. From that 
epoch the nutritive functions are in 
abeyance. 
So this earlier arrest, which is sub- 
stantially the woman’s earlier physical 
development, explains her more rapid 
mental maturity. That, at the same 
age, the girl is more mature than the 
boy, is accepted. Not only are her in- 
tellectual operations quicker, but, by 
consequence, she has amassed a greater 
aggregate of intellectual experiences, 
rendering her judgment more mature. 
Her physical development has brought 
into exercise a greater number of her 
psychical capacities. 
VIII. But the more widely distrib- 
uted nerve force, the antagonistic in- 
fluence of the reproductive system, 
and the earlier arrest of the nutritive 
development, to which are referable, 
directly, the physical, and indirectly, 
the psychical characteristics of woman, 
and which constitute the physiological 
law of her being, do not in the least 
degree affect the integrity of her being. 
Her hold on life is stronger than man’s. 
“ The vital tenacity of woman is supe- 
rior to that of man, as is well proved 
by the greater facility with which she 
bears deprivation of food or submits to 
bodily torture and anguish of mind.”* 
Nervous force has only a certain re- 
lation to vital force. Nervous force 
has its variation in sensitiveness; vital 
its variation in resistance. Nervous 
force varies with the integrity of a 
system; vital with the integrity of a 
congeries of systems. Vital tenacity 
bears no fixed relation to nervous sus- 
ceptibility. The most exquisitely 
sensitive may or may not be of 
high vitality—-the latter varying with 
the integrity of an entire organism; 
the former manifested indifferently in 
healthful or diseased conditions. So, 
while the superior vital tenacity of 
woman is a matter of clinical expe- 
rience, it is' likewise a logical sequence 
of her organization. 
Woman, therefore, is a law unto 
herself, and the conditions of her best 
physical and psychical development 
are imposed by the laws of her organ- 
ization. To produce her best estate, 
the appliances of the better civilization 
must be adapted to those conditions. 
One part of her may be developed at 
the expense of another, and her charac- 
teristics, as woman, maybe indefinite- 
ly modified by the varying circum- 
stances which influence her life; but 
this cannot militate against the de- 
mands of the physiological laws by 
which her being is regulated, and in 
accordance with which, if at all, the 
best intent of her life is to be realized.f 
The ideal woman is not the dream 
of poetry, but a reality of flesh and 
blood; a material organism animated 
* Tilt, Introduction to Diseases of Menstruation, 
t At the late meeting of the American Medical Associ- 
ation, held it Louisville. Ky., May 5th, 1875, Dr. Allen, 
of Lowell, read a paper in which he claimed that the 
truly normal standard of womanhood was that of the 
highest anatomical development and of the greatest 
physiological excellence. 28 
by an immortal spirit. It would be un- 
fair to stamp her as the typical woman, 
who, browned and toughened by labor 
in the field, fulfils the grosser duties of 
her calling, and rests her aching body 
on the mattress of husk, renewing 
day by day this ceaseless toil, and for 
whom there is naught but toil; as it 
would be unfair so to typify the purple- 
veined transparency of some etherial 
sainthood in woman’s form, who, 
wrapped in silken seclusion, knows 
naught of the freshness that animates 
created things, and cares naught for 
the struggle out of which men hope 
to see the light. 
Her individualities are more striking- 
ly developed as she emerges into civil- 
ization from the repression of barbar- 
ism. “ Observations prove that women 
who are not exposed to depreciating 
influences can compete in strength and 
endurance with the men of their races, 
and in savage countries they are some- 
times regarded as superior to them.” 
“ The human female, if properly de- 
veloped and placed beyond causes 
which militate against her physical 
well-being, would be in no great de- 
gree the inferior of the male; but the 
customs of civilized life have depreci- 
ated her powers of endurance and 
capacity of resisting disease.”* Upon 
her advent into civilization, she 
changes infinitely more than the man 
does, evincing her greater sensitive- 
ness to external influences,! and her 
greater susceptibility to the action of 
external agencies. 
So if, under the higher influences, 
the predominance of the nervous sys- 
tem, activity of the imagination, in- 
tensity of emotion, and a greater sen- 
sitiveness became manifest, these do 
not mean that she has a nervous sys- 
tem and no stomach, lungs and no 
liver, emotion and no intellect or will, 
sensitiveness and no ability to en- 
dure; but it does teach that she has 
certain disturbing influences to avoid, 
so that her bodily vigor may be a fit 
medium for the co-ordinate develop- 
ment of her intellect and emotions, 
and so that her sensitiveness may be 
trained into effective ministry. 
Finally, this later civilization will 
not brook with impunity, or in silence 
and without protest, the sneer of the 
ages, which has been flung out in the 
adage, propter uterum, mulier est ; the 
implication being, uterus, ct proe,tcrea 
nihil. If the foregoing outline of the 
physiology of woman holds within it-, 
self any accuracy of description, it must 
establish the fact, that in the general 
functions of the human body the 
maintenance of the individual stands 
first, and then the continuance of the 
species; that the former is a constant 
and necessary factor, and the latter 
exceptional and contingent. 
Just as truthfully can it be said of 
man as of woman, that it is his mission 
to give birth to mankind, for, in the 
economy of things, one is as essential 
as the other to the result; and just as 
certainly is it true, that his energies 
are expended, correspondingly with 
her’s, in providing for the born and 
unborn generations. That the duties 
required are different, that the pyschi- 
cal natures are differently impressed 
by the conditions these duties impose, 
are unquestionable truths. But to as- 
sert that her share in the continuance 
of the species involves more than one 
* T. G. Thomas, M.D , Diseases of Women, p. 53. 
t See Hodge on Diseases of Women, p. 71. 29 
of her capacities is to contradict the 
facts of her physiology. 
The wrath of some of his critics 
came down hot on the head of a medi- 
cal gentleman, who, lately, with rare 
good courage, bent a valiant bow in 
demanding that periodicity should 
have due consideration in the schemes 
of female education. And, without 
doubt, periodicity will henceforth be 
taken into account. But regard to 
the periodicity is urged only as one of 
many hygienic measures that the in- 
tegrity of the body may be so saved 
from harm, that the psychical nature 
in the woman may have the broadest 
and most excellent culture. Under a 
wise discipline and guidance, con- 
ducted by processes devised to 
strengthen, and not impair, her physi- 
cal well-being, processes that take her- 
self into account, and not another, this 
culture promises for the future far 
more than has as yet been known. 
DEVELOPMENT. 
Growth and development are the 
physical characteristics of the period 
during which the body and mind are 
submitted to the educational process. 
The epochs of this period are second 
dentition and the establishment of pu- 
berty ; each resembling the other “ in 
the increased development of the ner- 
vous centres and in the specialized 
evolution of nervous force.” 
Maturity and development are each 
subject to waste and repair. In matur- 
ity these processes are balanced. Jn 
the adult, the whole operations of 
vitality may be comprised in the 
preserving and recuperative processes. 
In the formative period, the constnict- 
ive is in excess of the destructive. 
The excess of the constructive is 
greater up to puberty, though the 
germinal capacity is not exhausted 
till full growth is attained. 
All the parts of the organism do not 
develop with the same proportionate 
activity. The brain grows more act- 
ively than any other organ. From 
a weight of ten ounces at birth, to 
three and one half pounds in the adult? 
there is a rapid increase up to the 
seventh year, and then a steady decline 
in the progress of the increase till its 
maximum weight is acquired. 
Childhood is the period of the great- 
est functional activity. “ In the child 
everything predominates that is con- 
nected with organic growth, and of 
necessity with a redundancy of vitality, 
and on which alone the growth of the 
body depends. The desire for food is 
frequent, the digestion is rapid, the 
blood and all the fluids are in great ex- 
cess, capillary action, secretion, depo- 
sition and interstitial increase proceed 
with great vigor, while the nervous 
sensibility is in the highest activity.”* 
The rapid increase of the brain ex- 
plains, what observation proves, that 
in youth the nervous system predomi- 
nates. All vital operations have their 
source in the nervous system, and all 
those actions by which the develop- 
ment of the organization is effected 
are directed by, and derive their energy 
from, the nervous system. 
The capacity for resistance is in an 
inverse ratio to the rapidity of growth. 
It is a fact of common observation that 
the child, whose growth has been in 
advance of his years, will bear with 
less impunity loss of sleep, abstinence 
from food and extra hardship, than 
*Stewart, Diseases of Children. the child whose development has been 
more gradual. And this holds more 
particularly true as a physiological 
fact, when the growing child is com- 
pared with the adult whose forma- 
tive processes have been completed. 
Though this is a physiological law, 
it is, at the same time, so easily appre- 
hended by the most cursory observa- 
tion, that no more urgent proof is re- 
quired of the popular ignorance of the 
laws of health than the utter disregard 
of this maxim in the care of the young. 
The combinations of food that are al- 
lowed to children, the strain upon them 
in the over-excitement that is per- 
mitted in the name of pleasure, are as 
lamentable as the cupidity of parents 
in forcing the young into hard labor, 
or the mistaken sense of duty in whose 
name they are subjected to exhaustive 
brain work, are blamable. 
Whether a man or a child turn a 
grindstone will depend whether it 
sharpen an axe or a penknife. What 
is true of nerve and muscle is true ot 
organ and function; but then the or- 
gan itself is a varying quantity during 
development, and the stage of devel- 
opment varies its resisting power. As 
a matter of size, the child’s stomach is 
smaller than the man’s. It is a physi- 
ological and mechanical inference that 
it cannot do the work of a man’s. But 
then the force that is back, by whose 
energy the digestive fluid is secreted, 
is less powerful in the child. And, 
still further, there is the rapid change 
to repair waste, and the slower change 
that increases substance, continuously 
at work. It is easier to disarrange 
the harmony of two forces working 
together than to affect the integrity of 
a single force. Arrest of development 
in one of a series of connected organs 
is a modification of the whole series. 
Why is it that the growing boy can- 
not indulge in the same extravagant 
food withthesame impunity as a man? 
Certainly not because the histological 
and structural organization of his 
stomach is unlike the man’s; not be- 
cause his gastric juice is chemically 
different, but solely because violence 
is offered to the processes of develop- 
ment. The analogies are manifold; 
but the principle that underlies them 
all is, that whatever interferes with the 
physiological processes of develop- 
ment is fraught with the certainty of 
ultimate imperfect development, pro- 
portioned to the force and continuance 
of sucli interference. 
It is a physiological precept that an 
organ is disordered in proportion to 
its previous activity. The intractable 
character of intestinal disease and the 
violence of pulmonic disorder in 
young children are pertinent illustra- 
tions. The same precept applies to the 
organic disorders that supervene on 
artificial stimulation. A notable in- 
stance is manifest in the severity of 
acute cerebral disease, and the incur- 
able nature of chronic cerebral dis- 
ease, the result of an overwrought 
brain. 
Over excitement of a delicate and par- 
tially-developed organ is hazardous. 
The rapidity with which functional 
sometimes passes into organic mischief 
during the period of bodily and mental 
development finds its explanation in 
the disturbance of that uniformity 
with which the constructive is in ex- 
cess of the destructive process, during 
the formative period. One ofthe very 
best observers of the diseases of child- ren has formulated the statement that, 
“in infancy and childhood, pain re- 
ferred to any part signifies, almost 
without exception, that disease of 
some sort or other is going on there 
or near at hand,”* admitting, however, 
the single exception of the existence 
of one form of true neuralgic head- 
ache, developed in school children, 
which, in after years, may exist in the 
same persons as hysterical sick head- 
ache. The contrast between the sig- 
nificance of functional mischief in 
children and in adults is sufficiently 
striking in estimating the limits of 
resistance in development and matur- 
ity. 
Weaknesses result from a too early 
or excessive tax of functions. The 
principle applies not only to inhar- 
monious development, but to the in- 
efficiency of organs that are propor- 
tionately developed. The effect on 
the heart from over exercise, as among 
the University boat-racers, and the 
mal-nutrition resulting from inappro- 
priateness of food, are well-known ex- 
amples. 
As a matter of clinical experience, 
the constitutional diseases of child- 
hood are dependent on the imperfect 
performance of the digestive and assim- 
ilative functions, and on an irritable 
state of the nervous system. The 
rapid increase of the growth of the 
brain, and its controlling influence as 
the source of nervous power, and the 
dependence of harmonious growth on 
the integrity and activity of the digest- 
ive and assimilative functions, de- 
mand, if harmonious development is 
the end sought, that the conditions 
suited to these should not be inter- 
fered with. 
It is not pertinent to this inquiry to 
institute any formulary by which the 
health of the child shall be preserved, 
or what measures should be enforced 
whereby the nervous system shall be 
kept in abeyance, and the nutritive 
processes promoted to their best per- 
formance. It is essential, however, to 
insist that the nervous system is easily 
rendered irritable in childhood, and 
the nutrition easily disturbed. It is 
essential to insist that, popular igno- 
rance to the contrary, the child is not 
the man, and the conditions needful 
for the proper development of the 
child are not the conditions whereby 
the man is recuperated and preserved, 
and that the limits of resistance are 
not the same in the two periods. 
* On some Disorders of the Nervous System in Child- 
ren. Chas. West, M. D. 
■ PART III. 
THE PROCESS. 
The charge of indelicacy has been 
flung at the dicussions on the education, 
of women that are occupying public 
attention.* The urgent plea of those 
who would educate women up to a 
better comprehension of life, is met 
by the frank argument that a great 
deal of the .present system of the 
school education of girls has resulted 
in injury to their health; that, if a 
higher education is sought for them 
on a similar system, the results will 
be manifoldly worse. The claim is 
that woman has a physical organiza- 
tion peculiarly her own, subject to 
certain grave disorders, the tendency 
to which is aggravated by the system 
of education. The claim has been 
made good in the only way possible, 
by illustrating how this system has 
developed these disorders. If this 
social reform is to triumph, it must 
triumph in the face of the facts. If 
the facts prove it to be inherently 
weak, no plea of sentimentalism 
should be interposed in so grave a 
matter. “ Those who advocate the 
higher education of women, carried 
away by their zeal into an enthusiasm 
which borders on, or reaches, fanatic- 
ism, seem positively to ignore the fact 
that there are significant differences 
between the sexes, arguing in effect 
as if it were nothing more than an 
affair of clothes, and to be resolved in 
their indignation at woman’s wrongs 
to refuse to her the simplest rights of 
her sex. They would do better in the 
end if they would begin by realizing 
the fact that the male organization 
is one, and the female organization is 
another, and that, let come what may 
in the way of assimilation of male and 
female education and labor, it will 
not be possible to transform a woman 
into a man.”* 
As has already been pointed out, 
the profession of teaching occupies 
such a relation to the child as to 
limit its observations specifically to 
the mental culture. On the other 
hand, the parent on whose advice 
* Sex and Education : A Reply to Clarke’s Sex in Edu- 
cation, pp. 7, 29, 52, 91, 126. 
* Henry Maudsley, M. D. Sex in Mind and Education. 
Fortnightly Review, May, 1874. 34 
and direction the child’s future health 
is practically dependent, is not comp- 
etent to interfere with the school 
training. The social scientist, in- 
formed by the investigations of the 
physiologist, and looking to the in- 
terest of the State, is endeavoring to 
enlighten the public sentiment, so 
that the process of mental culture 
shall not trespass on the physical 
well-being. So far from placing any 
obstruction in the way of the broader 
or more general culture, he insists 
that that culture can best be obtained 
if conducted by processes that do not 
conflict with sound, vigorous health. 
The social scientist must appeal to 
the physician. “ The new departure 
of the higher female education should, 
unquestionably, be from the results 
of the medical profession. We be- 
lieve ' that physicians have by no 
means yet taken the share in general 
education that the interest of society 
require; but when the mental culti- 
vation of women is to become system- 
atic, and they have their own higher 
institutions, the agency of physicians 
will be indispensable.”* 
Of course all investigation will go 
for naught if comparison of one state 
of refinement is to be made with an- 
other entirely different. The children 
and the women of this country are 
not to be judged by the same rules 
that apply to another grade of civili- 
zation. Neither can any adequate 
comparison be instituted between the 
city and the country. And though, 
as has been shown in the preceding 
section, the law of organization holds 
wherever human beings are found, yet 
the special conditions under which 
they exist can never be left out of the 
account. The argument that has been 
rehearsed has not only endeavored to 
show that woman in her whole his- 
tory, from childhood to maturity, is 
more impressible than man, a fact 
sustained by all observation and ex- 
perience, but it has also given a phy- 
siological statement of the physical 
laws of her organization, whereby 
that greater impressibility is the fact 
and the necessity of her organization. 
The generally accepted fact, that the 
psychical manifestations are through 
the medium of the physical structure, 
has been joined to the doctrine that 
structure modifies manifestations, and 
the psychical characteristics of woman 
are shown to be due, not to difference 
in psychical elements, but to the same 
psychical elements manifested through 
a difference in physical organization. 
Herbert Spencer, in his Psychology of 
the Sexes, while he claims that wo- 
man is mentally, as she is bodily, un- 
like man, yet asserts that their psychi- 
cal differences relate to their respective 
shares in the rearing and protecting 
of offspring. A careful survey of the 
preceding argument will disclose how 
unfair is this claim for the essential 
difference. 
School hygiene, referred to the 
physiological relations of age and 
sex to mental and physical education, 
is a removal of such school influences 
as are noxious or injurious to the per- 
fect performance of the mental and 
bodily functions, and the substitution 
of such conditions as shall ensure the 
co-ordinated development of mind and 
body. Physiology intrudes on the do- 
main of the mental phenomena and 
the mental processes, only so far as to 
* Popular Science Monthly, Ed. Table, No. xxiv. 35 
insist that the best results of mental 
culture are to be assured by the best 
bodily conditions, and that the condi- 
tions under which mental training is 
conducted shall not be such as are 
injurious to bodily development. 
It is not to be forgotten that the en- 
forced restraint and the confinement, 
which are the necessary contingents 
of school life, are not the conditions 
most favorable to the best bodily de- 
velopment. But if it is borne in mind 
that in the most advanced school 
hygiene, these necessary contingents 
do exist, the preliminary step will be 
taken whereby the evils incident to 
school life may be reduced to their 
minimum. If it can be ascertained 
what are the conditions most suitable 
to the growing child, and what are the 
conditions best adapted to the special 
organization of the maturing girl, the 
conduct of the mental training can be 
made, not only not to injure and re- 
strain the bodily development, but 
practically ‘to assist that development. 
But life from the cradle to the grave 
is beset by opposing influences, and 
the influence of school life is but one 
in the catalogue. The preservation 
of health and the prolongation of life 
are desirable, that usefidness may be 
increased. To be well is not an end 
in itself, but a means to an end. It’s 
a poor estimate of life that cares for 
health as an immunity from suffering; 
it’s an equally mistaken notion that is 
forgetful or reckless of health in the 
strife for higher effort or attainment. 
The limit of resistance has often to be 
encroached on, and the question of 
direct importance is, where is that 
limit ? There is no rule applicable 
to two individuals. The boy is not 
as the girl, the child as the man. The 
mental discipline that is to make life 
honorable and enjoyable must, so far 
as the conditions of school life are 
concerned, be conducted on a system 
applicable to certain averages of age 
and sex; but an inflexible system will 
hinder some and injure others. 
The hygiene of school life is not to 
be based on the principle of furnish- 
ing the greatest amount of mental 
culture to the greatest number, per- 
mitting those who are unable to drop 
altogether from the ranks, but on the 
principle of furnishing to all the 
greatest amount of mental culture, to 
each according to his ability to re- 
cieve. This mental training is asso- 
ciated with more or less enfeebled 
bodies, and the conditions of this 
training are to be adapted to the 
bodily resistance. The judicious 
training is to re-act in recuperat- 
ing the bodily vigor. There is am- 
ple illustration of this fact, but an 
official investigation of the influence 
of education on the public health in 
France was made by M. Du Mesnil, 
the result of whose investigations was 
given in the Annales d’Hygiene Pub- 
lique, in 1872. From a comparison 
of the reports on recruiting for the 
army, with those on the progress of 
education, he found that those depart- 
ments in which the proportion of 
illiterate persons was greatest pre- 
sented the lowest duration of life, and 
the smallest average stature; while 
in those where primary instruction 
was most completely carried out, the 
people lived longer and were of larger 
build. 
Now the school is established to so 
systematically culture the body and 36 
mind, that the best results maybe 
achieved in after-life. It is systematic 
discipline as opposed to hap-hazard, 
self-made culture; and the harmoni- 
ous development of all the threefold 
faculties of the child, physical, men- 
tal, and moral, which was Froebel’s 
idea, is not to be lost sight of. “ Edu- 
cation is an affair of the laws of our 
being, involving a wide range of con- 
siderations—an affair of the air re- 
spired, its moisture, temperature, den- 
sity, purity, and electrical state, in 
their physiological effects; an affair 
of food, digestion, and nutrition ; of 
the quantity, quality and speed of 
the blood sent to the brain ; of cloth- 
ing, exercise, fatigue, and repose; 
health and disease, or variable voli- 
tion and automatic nerve-action; of 
fluctuating feeling, redundancy and 
exhaustion of nerve power; sensuous 
impressibility, temperament, family 
history, constitutional predisposition, 
and unconscious influence; of material 
surroundings, and a host of agencies 
which stamp themselves upon the 
plastic organism and re-appear in 
character.”* 
No age and neither sex is exempted 
from certain hygienic necessities, if 
good health is to be preserved while 
subjected to the discipline of school 
life. If the lungs are to inspire six- 
teen times a minute and twenty thou- 
sand times a day, and if headaches, op- 
pressive feelings in the chest, dyspep- 
sia, nervous disorder, lassitude and 
debility are the immediate conse- 
quences of breathing impure air, 
clearly good ventilation, which is 
simply “ letting out the foul air and 
letting in the fresli air,”* is a neces- 
sity. “Those who habitually take in 
fresh breath will probably grow up 
large, strong, ruddy, cheerful, active, 
clear-headed, fit for their work. Those 
who habitually take in the breath 
which has been breathed out by them- 
selves, or any other living creature, 
will certainly grow up, if they grow 
up at all, small, weak, pale, nervous, 
depressed, unfit for work.”f The 
kindred matter of heating is of similar 
general importance.J The construc- 
tion of seats and desks,§ the regula- 
tion of the light to save the eyes of the 
scholars,| sewerage, and priviesl de- 
mand attention ; the investigation of 
sick children, compulsory vaccination, 
and the exclusion of contagious dis- 
eases, all are universally necessary 
and capable of being enforced. 
The application of the physiological 
principles which have been discussed, 
can be appropriately considered in the 
order of 
1st. Apportionment of Time; 
2d. Character of the Application ; 
♦Ventilation of School Houses. Second Annual Re- 
port of the State Board of Health, 1871. Fourth Report 
of Metropolitan Board of Health of the State of New 
York, 1869. The Ventilation of School Rooms, by A C. 
Martin, Architect. Second Annual Report State Board 
of Health of Mass., 1871. 
t Kingsley’s Health and Education, p. 27. 
+ Hygiene as applied to the construction, warming, 
ventilation, and sewerage of School Buildings, R. C. 
Kedzie, M. D. Transactions Michigan State Med Soc., 
1873. The same enlarged ; Report of the State Board 
of Health, Mich., 1873. 
§ The Decorum of the School, H. O. Hitchcock, 
M. D.—Transactions Michigan State Med. Soc., 1873, 
pp 53 and 54. The Influence of Posture on the Health 
of Women, an elaborate and excellent article byj. H. 
Aveling, M. D , in the Obstet. Jour, of G. B. and I., 
Nov., 1874. 
|| Remarks on Dr. Cohn’s Observations, by D. F. Lin- 
coln, M. D., iu a Report on School Hygiene to the 
Amer. Scien. Ass., 1874.'—School Hygiene, F. Windsor, 
M. D. Fifth Annual Report State Board of Health of 
Mass.. January, 1874, p. 404 Transactions of the New 
York State Med. Soc., 1873, p. 76. School Diseases, by 
C. R. Agnew, M. D. Sanitarian, Sept. 1874. 
*| Phil. Med. Times, No. 95, p. 737. Med. and Surg. 
Reporter, No. 838, p. 248. 
* E. L. Youman’s, Popular Science Monthly. No. 
XIX. 37 
3d. The dependence of School on 
Home Hygiene ; 
4th. Identical and Co-education ; 
5th. The Purposes of the Higher 
Education defined by Structure. 
1st. Apportionment of Time. 
In certain grades of social life the 
length of the school hours is the test 
of the excellence of the school. The 
industries of home life are interfered 
with by the presence of children. But 
there is a popular belief, running 
through all grades of social life, that 
those schools are the best which take 
the children youngest, where the chil- 
dren learn the fastest and cover the 
most ground in the shortest time. In- 
stances as notable as the case of John 
Stuart Mill, who learned Greek of his 
father at the age of three, and other 
instances of similar precocity that crop 
out from the ordinary level of childish 
intelligence, are quoted as spurs to the 
industry of the young, and as incen- 
tives to the ambition of parents. 
There are as notable instances where 
high attainments have supervened on 
mental training that was not system- 
atically commenced till maturity. 
Early mental culture is not essential 
to the production of the highest men- 
tal powers. 
There is a general assent to the 
statement that children should not be 
sent to school before the seventh year. 
Before the third year of life all the 
parts of the body have experienced 
their fastest growth. After the seventh 
year the length of the body has an or- 
dinary uniform growth; up to the 
seventh year there is a uniform lessen- 
ing of the growth. The normal pro- 
portion of the upper portion of the 
trunk to the lower is reached with the 
eighth year. “The lumbar region 
grows principally up to the ninth 
year (then again between twelve and 
fifteen). This should be developed 
before children are compelled to re- 
main long in a sitting posture.” “ Be- 
tween the fifth and sixth years the 
base of the brain grows very rapidly, 
the frontal bone protrudes anteriorly, 
and grows upward. The anterior por- 
tion grows considerably, but still the 
white substance and middle portion 
of the brain are prevalent. These are 
the organs for the receptive faculties 
and memory. All this points to the 
end of the seventh year as the period 
of beginning of mental work.”* 
Mental exercise increases the flow 
of blood to the brain, increases its 
size and modifies the structure of the 
brain ; so, while the gray matter is de- 
veloping, the reflecti ve faculties should 
not be urged beyond the development 
of the gray matter. The first years are 
years of sensation, and “ up to seven 
or eight years the perceptive facul- 
ties are sufficient to keep the 
mind fully occupied in acquiring 
the knowledge to be gained by obser- 
vation.” Whatever development there 
is beyond is precocity, and precocity 
is nearly always disease. “ Intellect- 
ual effort in the first years of life is 
very injurious. All labor of the mind 
which is required of children before 
their seventh year is in opposition to 
the laws of nature, and will prove in- 
jurious to the organization, and pre- 
vent its proper development.”f The 
* Dr. Jacobi’s remarks on a paper of Dr. J. R. O’Sul- 
livan, before the N. Y. Acad. Med., August, 1873. 
t Hufeland. Art of Prelonging Life. The whole sub- 
ject of too early mental training is discussed in “ Mental 
Exertion,” by A. Brigham, M. D. London, 1866. 38 
Superintendent of the St. Louis Pub- 
lic Schools has put on record that 
children who enter school at eight 
years of age can, on the average, make 
nearly double the progress in primary 
work that pupils of five years of age 
can do.* 
But as children under seven years 
of age are likely to be sent to school, 
it is of paramount physiological im- 
portance that the school hours should 
be judiciously apportioned. Frequent 
and varied movement and occupation 
are the incidents of a child’s life in its 
waking hours. From one to three 
hours a day, and in divided sessions, 
is the limit to which young children 
should be subjected to school re- 
straint, and these sessions should be 
broken up by frequent opportunities 
to change the posture. The limit of 
cruelty is reached when these busy, 
active creatures are kept confined to 
their seats one, two, or three hours at 
a time. The advice of T. W. Higgin- 
son f is good—“ send them to that 
sch >ol whose daily hours of session 
are the shortest, and whose recess 
time and vacation are of the most 
formidable length.” Dr. J. R. O'Sul- 
livan, whose opinion, as the late phy- 
sician to the Board of Education of 
New York, is entitled to great re- 
spect, says: The hours of study are 
too long, especially in the infant 
classes. It is extremely unwise to 
require of little children that they 
should observe silence and sit quiet 
in their places for any length of time. 
The very condition of the develop- 
ment of mental or bodily faculties is 
use, exercise. But in school the child 
is required to refrain for hours at a 
time from that play of the muscles, 
from that exhibition of the exuberant 
life which is so natural to it, which, 
indeed, is as necessary for it as the in- 
halation of pure air.” 
The absurdity and cruelty of thus 
confining young children are apparent 
when it is considered that this school 
regime is, for all practical purpose, 
systematic bodily restraint. The physical 
conditions, under which alone the child 
can properly develop, are not only 
violated, but they are reversed ; and 
this repression is reduced to a system. 
It is not only systematic bodily re- 
straint from freedom of exercise, but 
restraint to a uniform, fixed position ; 
and further, it is systematic bodily re- 
straint to a constrained position, in 
the more or less vitiated atmosphere 
of a school room. Is it to be won- 
dered at that Froebel worked out his 
philosophy of the lawn, the flowers, 
and the open air? 
But if the best physiological devel- 
ment is opposed to subjecting children 
under seven years to the restraints of 
school life, and if the school session 
should be limited for those who must 
be sent to school to a very few hours, 
and these to be broken up by frequent 
intermissions for exercise, what is to 
be said of the time to be spent in 
study and confinement by the children 
of more advanced age, the pupils in 
attendance on the academies and 
higher schools ? 
Certain general principles can be 
stated which ought to be conclusive 
as t6 the excessive occupation of time 
so generally demanded by the schools, 
Four hours in one session and five 
hours in two sessions, with certain re- 
* See Report, 1872 and 1873. , 
t Murder of the Innocents. Atlantic Monthly, Septem- 
ber, 1859. 39 
cesses, are the ordinary periods al- 
lotted to the school time of each day.. 
Add to this the extra time in which 
children are “kept in” for certain neg- 
ligences or misbehavior; the time 
spent over the studies prescribed to be 
learned at home; the compositions 
and the like which are expected to 
occupy a certain portion of the Satur- 
day ; the preparation for competitive 
examinations, and for the “ school ex- 
hibition of music, one of those bad and 
useless modes of ending a school term 
which are full of evil for the moral, 
mental, and physical organization of 
girls,”* and an average of thirteen or 
fourteen hours of each day are given 
body and soul to the implacable 
tyranny of the school regime. This is 
no fancy picture. An amount of men- 
tal work is obtained from young and 
half-grown (which means growing) 
children which would be hazardous to 
adults. Sir Walter Scott, who had 
good reason whereof he was speaking, 
gave it as his deliberate opinion that 
five and a half hours form the limit of 
healthful mental labor for a mature 
person, f 
This extent of time spent over 
school studies seems to be based on 
the egregious blunder that all the 
mental acquirements possible for life 
are to be secured in youth, with an ab- 
solute forfeiture of any claim the body 
may have for its development and 
culture. It is forgotten that the brain 
is an integral part of the living organ- 
ism, needing rest, refreshment and re- 
cuperation. Furthermore, it seems to 
be forgotten that this brain itself is a 
developing quantity which is to be 
guided to a correct development by 
the teacher’s brain, which is supposed 
to be capable of imparting this in- 
struction. 
Studying at home, studying with- 
out help, is akin to original investiga- 
tion, the most refined capacity of ma- 
ture, well-disciplined minds. Practi- 
cally the school hours are largely oc- 
cupied in reciting the lessons that 
have been learned at home. The 
scholar is less taught than examined in 
his studies. If five and a half hours 
are the limit of healthful mental labor 
at maturity, what plea can be urged 
for the unresting sleep that follows 
thirteen or fourteen hours’ mental 
labor for the growing youth ? Clearly 
this : confession must ensue that it is 
a crime against physiological law. If 
brain work not only exhausts the gen- 
eral energy, which must be recuper- 
ated to sustain vigorous health, the 
growing child must have time not 
only for the recuperative, but for the 
constructive processes to have fair 
play. Muscular effort and brain work 
are in violent contrast, and brain 
* S. W. Mitchell, M. D. Med. and Surg. Reporter, 
No. 936, p. 103. 
t Last year the State Medical Society of Rhode Island 
referred, to a committee the subject of “ School Hygi- 
ene,” with instructions to investigate and report thereon. 
The report has recently been presented to the Society, 
which, after earnest consideration, unanimously passed 
the following resolutions : ” Resolved, That physical 
culture is of primary importance in our public schools, 
and that gymnastic exercise should be made a part of 
our school system ; that the ” Kindergarten system” 
should be engrafted upon our public school system ; that 
the school buildings should not exceed two stories in 
height ; that three hundred cubic feet of space and 
twenty-five square feet of floor space should be the mini- 
mum for each child in a sehool-room in connection with 
good legislation ; that proper warmth and pure air are of 
the first importance, and should always be considered 
before ornamentation ; that scholars should not maintain 
the same position, more than half an hour at a time ; that 
two short sessions daily are better than one long one ; 
that no child should be admitted into our publie schools, 
as now conducted, under seven years of age ; that under 
twelve years of age, three hours a day, and for twelve 
years and over, four hours a day is sufficiently long con- 
finement to mental culture ; that study out of sehool 
should not usually be permitted ; that all incentives to 
emulation should be used cautiously, especially with 
girls ; that the “ half-time system” should be introduced 
into our public schools. 40 
work should be followed by that ef- 
fort to which it is most violently con- 
trasted.* The persistence of school- 
work should be contrasted with vary- 
ing amusements at home. The ca- 
pacity for sleep and the desire to eat 
are the qualifications of healthful, vig- 
orous growth. School and home life 
sacrificed to thirteen hours over books 
will destroy both.f 
The sexual differences are manifest 
in the varying resistance to this terri- 
ble onslaught of prolonged study. 
Girls yield more readily and more 
generally to the effects of this con- 
tinuous mental effort, with its enforced 
bodily restraint, than boys. To the 
end of the chapter, under precisely 
similar external conditions, the girl 
will be herself, and not the boy. She 
is less inclined to this contrasted 
effort, does not naturally seek it, and, 
furthermore, as a rule, will not take 
it. If clinical experience were to be 
quoted, the number of girls from 
twelve to eighteen that come under a 
physician’s care is vastly in excess of 
the boys during the same ages. And 
this is true not for ailments of a 
special character, but because of gen- 
eral weakness. Here it is fitting to ad- 
vert to the sneer that the physician 
sees only the unsoynd side of life, and, 
therefore, his general statements are 
to be taken with allowance. Let it 
it be observed how small a proportion 
of malaise, functional disorder, and 
that range of symptoms indicative of 
diminution of vital force, is ever pre- 
sented to the physician’s notice. How 
vast the sum of the burdens of life 
that are borne in weakness! Boys 
break down by over-study. There 
are instances in academy and college. 
But the number is infinitely less than 
the girls, who, from sixteen years on 
through life, are the victims of nerv- 
ous disorder, traceable to over-study— 
study unduly proportioned to the ex- 
ercise and change needful for the 
bodily development. The superiority 
of woman’s vital force is here clearly 
shown. Boys do break down; and 
they turn their life into another 
course or they die. By her possession 
of this superior vital force, which ena- 
bles her to endure so much, the girl 
passes into womanhood, and bears up 
under its burdens, oftentimes with 
forced spirit and enthusiasm, enabled 
so to do by the constitution of her 
being. Iler impressibility is supple- 
mented by her vital force. 
2d. Character of the Application. 
In this portrayal of the physiologi- 
cal relations of the educational pro- 
cess to mental and bodily education, 
the mental processes are not dis- 
cussed, and the physical conditions 
made prominent, on the ground 
that symmetrical development of the 
body must not be interfered with, and 
the integrity of the body must not be 
impaired if the best mental results are 
to be realized. And, further, no dis- 
cussion is demanded of those external 
conditions, hygienically applicable to 
age and sex alike. In differentiating 
the conditions especially demanded 
by sex, the architecture of school 
houses is of peculiar importance. No 
adage is more trite than that God 
made the country, and man made the 
* One of the faculty of Princeton College relates to the 
writer that it is his custom to go from the class-room 
direct to the gymnasium, as the necessary and best tran- 
quillizer of his nervous system. 
t See above. Winsor’s article, p. 403. 41 
town,” and it is equally true that 
man is the only animal that volunta- 
rily goes up stairs. Furthermore, the 
human female, alone of the animal 
creation, carries her reproductive or- 
gans vertical to the horizon. Add to 
this that the long and broad liga- 
ments that maintain the uterus in 
situ are attached, not vertically, but 
laterally ; that the toughness and 
spring of these ligaments are in 
dependence on the general tone of 
the system, and it will be seen that 
the security of the maintenance of 
the uterus in its normal position 
is likely to be easily disturbed.* 
Climbi ng mountains or stairs is 
fatiguing work. It needs not an ex- 
perience on Mont Blanc or up Bunker 
Hill Monument to test the fact; daily 
experience in city homes and office 
buildings is adequate. It causes a 
man’s legs and back to ache; but 
whenever there is the least tendency 
to mal-position of the uterus in a wo- 
man, it is so appreciably provocative 
of distress, that she refrains from it, 
so far as possible, from motives of self- 
preservation, independent of a physi- 
cian’s counsel. Consider further, that 
at the age of puberty the uterus sud- 
denly triples its bulk, and demand of 
the maturing girl that, at her period 
of malaise, oppressed by the enforced 
restraint and fatiguing effort of school 
life, she shall from four to a dozen 
times a day go up and down three or 
four long flights of stairs, to meet the 
emergencies of our lofty school houses, 
the architectural pride of our towns 
and cities, and violated nature prays 
that physiological knowledge may 
be hammered into the Educational 
Boards. 
Variations from the norm consti- 
stitute a pathological state, no matter 
whether a community, a state, or a 
race is the subject thereof. If the 
whole race of melted-glacier drinkers 
were goitred, goitre would still be a 
pathological condition, and not a 
racial idiosyncracy. There are nu- 
merous instances of men whose con- 
tinuous and manifold intellectual 
exertion surpasses by far the ordinary 
endurance of man. It is none the less 
true that men are continually break- 
ing down in the rush of our civiliza- 
tion. Why? Most certainly not 
because there is a difference in spirit- 
ual composition, by which one man is 
stronger than another, but because 
the laws of heredity and the multitud- 
inous untoward influences of life have 
rendered one man’s brain weaker than 
that of his more fortunate fellow. 
There is such a climax as excessive 
intellectual exertion, and it means 
that when a man’s body and his brain, 
which is part of his body, has come 
up to, and crossed, the rubicon of its 
resistance, effort is palsied and the 
delicate instrument droops.* Need it 
be urged, must it be urged, that this 
palsy and this drooping are seizing on 
the freshness of many of the splendid 
promises of our school youth, martyrs 
to custom, martyrs to fashion, martyrs 
to the unbending implacableness of 
the school routine ? Bitterly true is 
* Difficult as it may be in some instances to ascertain 
quite accurately whether an overworked man had per- 
fectly sound health to begin with, obvious as it may be 
that in many breakdowns the final failure has been accel- 
erated by diseases independent of mental work, the facts 
remain, that the excessive exercise of the mental powers 
is injurious to bodily health, and that all intellectual 
labor proceeds upon a physical basis. No man can safe- 
ly forget this, and act as if he were pure spirit, superior 
to physical considerations,—The Intellectual Life. By 
T. G. rlamerton, p. 5. 
* A terse and excellent statement of these evils may be 
found in Dr Kedzie's Report to the State Board of 
Health of Michigan, 1873. 42 
it. Not the slovenly, not the lean in 
mind, but the buoyant with ambition, 
the earnest in duty, the strong in ef- 
fort and in hope, who, led on by reck- 
less incentive, find the light of the eye 
and the light of the mind fading, never 
to regain the brilliancy the first prom- 
ise foretold.* 
“ The lives and health of our chil- 
dren are frequently compromised by 
crowding studies, many of them of no 
practical use whatever, at a period of 
life when much of their time should 
be spent in the open air, taking exer- 
cise in some way. Instead of this 
they come home burdened with a lot 
of books, which, especially in the case 
of girls, makes their sides ache, and 
does irreparable injury to their health, 
and with a sense of responsibility in 
regard to the lessons of the following 
day that should not rest upon them. 
The consequence is, they deprive 
themselves of needed exercise and re- 
creation of body and mind, go to bed 
discouraged and out of humor, pass 
an uneasy, restless night, and rise 
with headache and no appetite for 
breakfast, and sometimes no time to 
eat it, if they had an appetite. We 
speak here of studious, faithful, con- 
scientious children, the ‘dull scholars’ 
often, who are ambitious to learn, not 
of bright, unfaithful ones, who get a 
mere smattering of their lessons and 
spend the hours of the evening, aye, 
and of the night, in revelry, but who 
often rank higher with their teachers 
than those whose young lives and ar- 
dent aspirations are being crushed out 
by injudicious cramming and too lit- 
tle encouragement. As a rule, school 
hours are the time for study, and 
out of school, children should take 
exercise and recreation' in various 
ways, should assist their parents in 
household matters, and in this way ac- 
quire something beside book-knowl- 
edge. This would speedily lay the 
ghosts of the ‘ pale, beautiful faces, 
with mild blue eyes,’ that are daily go- 
ing down to the grave, the victims of 
overwrought intellectual labor.” * 
Brain-work and brain-worry are not 
co-terminous. The former is condu- 
cive to health and long life, while the 
latter is itself the cause of distress. 
In each case the rnaterial brain is at 
work, and the continuance of the 
work is the exhausting feature. As a 
matter of physiology and of expe- 
rience the impressibility of the girl 
renders her, in the face of penalties, 
incentives and competitive study, 
vastly more the victim of the depress- 
ing consequences of this worry over 
school requirements. 
Rest is of two kinds, absolute and 
relative. The tired muscles seek rest 
in repose. The tired brain finds ab- 
solute rest only in sleep, which is in- 
action. During waking hours the 
brain is never in absolute rest. It 
finds relative rest in change ot labor. 
Brain-worry is continuous brain-work 
over one labor. It is a settled fact of 
experience that the increased flow of 
blood sent to the brain, during great 
mental activity, produces interstitial 
changes if prolonged. As a result of 
these changes, wakefulness is one of 
the earliest and most obstinate symp- 
* I compare the life of the intellectual to a long wedge 
of gold—the thin end of it begins at birth, and the depth 
and value of it go on indefinitely increasing till at last 
comes death, who stops the auriferous processes. Oh ! 
the mystery of the nameless ones who have died when 
the edge was thin and looked so poor and light ! Oh ! 
the happiness of the fortunate old men whose thoughts 
went deeper and deeper like a wall that runs out into the 
sea !—The Intellectual Life. By T. G. Hamerton, p. 41. 
* Medical and Surgical Reporter, Editorial, No. 831. 43 
toms. Almost always entire change 
of scene and occupation is necessary 
to secure this inaction of the brain. 
Once again let it be insisted how 
strong is the physiological case when 
applied to the immature and develop- 
ing brains of boys and girls. What 
is done con a7nore is done without 
harm ; what is done under the lash of 
strain, prostrates. Encouragement 
should supplant penalty. Anxious 
care should not grind off the edge of 
youth’s natural buoyancy. 
So it is clearly not the amount nor 
character of study to which the physi- 
ologist is opposed, but to the vices of 
the mode and the bad habits engen- 
dered in its prqsecution. He demands 
only that the character of the applica- 
tion should be so judiciously formed 
that the conditions under which the 
child studies shall not obstruct the 
free development of the child. To 
this end he demands that the brain 
shall obtain its relati ve rest in the sur- 
roundings which are needful for the 
body’s most refreshing exercise. 
To answer all the questions that 
arise on the introduction of a, subject 
so important as exercise, is not in the 
province of this discussion. The ad- 
vance of civilization has lessened the 
demand for personal strength as a 
subduing agency. Gunpowder has 
thrown the lance and the buckler into 
the museum, and nitro-glycerine has 
but secondary use for the sledge and 
the drill. But mere muscular strength 
is not essential to health, and neither 
is exercise needful solely for the de- 
velopment of muscle. The exercise 
that is to sharpen the digestion and 
increase the lung power is of far more 
worth. 
It is of the highest importance that 
the conditions of judicious exercise 
should be understood, not only during 
the long dependence of the intellec- 
tual development on the integrity of 
the body in the course of a liberal 
education, but likewise during the 
formative period, while the body and 
mind are both being developed. What 
is proper exercise for one child is 
violent for another. When Dr. Far- 
quharson was medical officer to Rug- 
by School, he found that in the few 
cases of cardiac strain that occurred the 
boys had usually been working hard, 
and had undergone excessive physical 
fatigue when worn out by mental 
labor. Skilled gymnasts practice on 
the principle that exercises of a mod- 
erate character, continued for a long 
period, produce the best general de- 
velopment. Though such exercises 
are very fatiguing, the result obtained 
is the ability to endure. “ Let it be 
well understood that muscular labor 
is not muscular exercise any more than 
promiscuous feeding is dietetics. L'art 
pour l'art must be the motto of him who 
exercises his bodily power with the 
object of improving his health.” 
The details of this problem ought 
to be in the physician’s gift. In the 
homes of his clientelle his function is 
advisory, and the advice will largely 
be accepted ex cathedra. Ultimately 
the problem will be settled out of his 
rescources in its application to the 
large schools, where masses of chil- 
dren are herded, where the children 
come from all grades of social life, 
and where the enfeebled are ranged 
with the strong. The physical and 
the mental discipline must be appor- 
tioned to the individual. 44 
3d. The dependence of School on 
Home Hygiene. 
Assuredly it requires no apology, 
in the discussion of school hygiene, 
if account be taken of the influences 
of social life on the physical status of 
the pupil ; for the particular mental 
training, and the conditions under 
which that training is conducted, 
must vary with the physical condition 
that has resulted from the discipline 
of home. For the same reasons that 
bind together the teacher and the 
parent, the union between home and 
school hygiene is so intimate that 
their divorce cannot be contemplated. 
The teacher’s query is, how is the 
material sent him to be best managed. 
He has no choice of material. It is 
one thing to provide a hygiene for 
an abnormal condition of sensitive- 
ness, with a mode of life forever fos- 
tering that sensitiveness, and still an- 
other to provide a hygiene suitable 
for a well-balanced organism whose 
functions are naturally performed. 
The parent’s study should be how 
best to guard and nurture the child 
so that- it shall be most capable of 
deriving advantage from the discipline 
of the school. Children should be 
sent to school well. The school 
ought not to be compelled to provide 
against systemic conditions that 
should have been prevented at home. 
It ought not to be censured for injury 
to health which is committed in the 
home. 
The social vices in which children 
participate, through the folly, the 
ignorance and the neglect of the 
parent, unfit them for the school. 
The.recklessness of living does unfit 
for mental culture. There are influ- 
ences, other than mental training, de- 
structive to the body.* 
“ Disease, whether preventible or 
inevitable, poverty, ignorance, and 
dirt, at one end of the social scale; 
luxury, fashion, social dissipation, 
and amusement, at the other end,” 
each, in its own way, perverts and ex- 
hausts the functions of the brain. 
The menial service and hard work of 
one social grade furnishes to the 
school material, only less poor than 
that supplied from another social 
grade, weakened by conventional re- 
straint and over-indulgence. The one 
is a dull drudge, and the other a 
“ dancing, flirting caricature of human 
nature.” 
But squalor and luxury are not the 
only social agencies that so depress 
the body as to render it incapable of 
submitting to the conditions requisite 
* The following is the sqmmary of the result of the 
investigation in regard to the health of pupils in public 
schools, read by Dr. D. F. Lincoln, at the meeting of the 
>ocial Science Association, held at Detroit, May 12, 
1S75: 
First: School-work, if performed in an unsuitable at- 
mosphere, is peculiarly productive of nervous fatigue, 
irritability and exhaustion. 
Second: By “unsuitable” is chiefly meant “close" 
air, or air that is hot enough to flush the face, or cold 
enough to chill the feet, or that is “ burnt ” or infected 
with noxious fumes of sulphur or carbonic oxide. 
Third: Very few schools are quite free from these 
faults. 
Fourth: Anxiety and stress of mind, dependent mostly 
upon needless formalities in discipline, or unwise appeals 
to ambition, are capable of doing vast harm. It is hard 
to say how much is actually done; but a strong sentiment 
against such injudicious methods is observed to be spring- 
ing up in the minds of teachers. 
Fifth: The amount of study required has not often 
been found so great as would harm scholars whose health 
is otherwise well cared for. 
Sixth: Teachers who neglect exercise and the rules of 
health seem to be almost certain to become sickly or to 
“ break down.” 
Seventh: Gymnastics are peculiarly needed by girls in 
large cities, but with the present fashion of dress, gym- 
nastics are impracticable for larger girls. 
Eighth: The health of girls at the period of the de- 
velopment of the menstrual function ought to be watched 
over with unusual care by persons possessed of tact, 
good judgment, and a personal knowledge of their char- 
acters. 
Ninth: One of the greatest sources of harm is found 
in circumstances lying outside of school life. The social 
habits of many older children are equally inconsistent 
with good health and a good education. 45 
to the best mental culture. There are 
plenty of earnest, intelligent, thougli- 
ful, prudent parents, who, by acts of 
omission and commission, are ignor- 
ing or neglecting for their children 
the important relations of healthful, 
mental and bodily conditions set forth 
in these pages. 
There is place here only for men- 
tion of pure air and free sunlight for 
the children, judicious clothing, clean- 
liness, pure habits, home recreations, 
sound sleep and plenty of it, assured 
for the boys and girls. But is it not 
a matter of almost universal home ex- 
perience, that, apart from all consider- 
ations of inappropriateness of food, 
school children are starving in the 
midst of plenty, and are sent, or al- 
lowed to go, to school, without any 
adequate amount of food ? And is it 
not true that the girls are the more 
numerous and the greater sufferers ? 
How frequent are the stories of a 
swallow of coffee for breakfast, cake 
and pie for luncheon, and too much 
home study to give any zest for the 
later meal! How constantly is the 
lament that the daughter is so 
troubled with constipation ! If there 
be any doubter of these prevalent 
facts, he is outside of the physician’s 
ranks. “Just as any system of teach- 
ing is a real success in proportion as 
it adapts itself to the peculiar needs— 
not of those who are quick and willing, 
but of those who are slow and averse 
to learn—so any scale of diet ap- 
proaches perfection in exact propor- 
tion to the provision made, not merely 
for the average standard of taste and 
appetite, but for all reasonable devia- 
tions therefrom. The result with such 
boys and girls as do not get those 
particular elements of nutrition which 
they specially require, is that even in 
the midst of plenty they remain per- 
manently underfed and imperfectly 
nourished, thus retarding, if not ar- 
resting, the due growth and develop- 
ment of their bodies, and strongly 
favoring the development of any in- 
herited or other constitutional un- 
soundness lurking within them.”* 
Should not the parent say, if you 
can’t eat your breakfast, you can’t go 
to school ? How many times has a 
soup-plate full of easily-swallowed 
stiff oat-meal porridge, ordered by the 
physician and commanded by the pa- 
rent, as a morning stint, saved from 
the noonday faintness, and provoked 
regular daily evacuations ? 
It is not needful to rehearse the 
story of the periodical function and its 
relations to school hygiene. That has 
already been forcibly told.f That 
persistent school attendance at the 
monthly period is fraught with serious 
evils to many, ought to be under- 
stood, and, likewise, that to any men- 
struating woman exposure to bad 
weather is a constant menace. But it 
should also be understood by the 
mother that not only the consequences 
of menstrual irregularities can be, to 
a great degree, averted, but the irreg- 
ularities themselves are capable of 
being prevented. It is safe to assert 
that, to a great extent, these irregular- 
ities are held to be part of woman’s 
primeval curse. The average mother, 
deeply sympathetic with the child, is 
sorry when puberty makes an early 
appearance in her girl, anxious when 
the period is painful, regretful when 
* Food Journal, August, 1872. 
t Clarke’s Sex in Education. 46 
it is excessive, and never dreams that, 
though constitutional taint may be 
hereditary, she herself, the mother, is 
personally responsible, nay culpable, 
by her neglect and bad management, 
for that daughter’s condition. 
The periodical changes in physical 
life with respect to the female sex are 
results of structure modified by habits. 
The notion that climatic and racial 
conditions vary the advent of ma- 
turity, has been and is generally ac- 
cepted; but if any one one will trouble 
himself to read the “Natural History 
of Man,”* and an “Inquiry into the 
Natural History of the Menstrual 
Function,”! and then consider the 
bearings of all that is said of the 
social conditions of savage life in 
“The Natural History of the Uncivil- 
ized Races,”! an(l afterwards consider 
how the physiological condition of 
woman renders her peculiarly suscep- 
tible to the enervations of civilized 
life, he will find himself arguing to 
the mothers that these menstrual ir- 
regularities are preventible accidents, 
censurable on the mothers if not pre- 
vented ; that the daughters of the land 
may yet look to a school career not 
drifting into the angry armamentarium 
of the gynecologist, but uninterrupt- 
edly bearing them on into a cultured, 
fresh and painless womanhood. 
Only one word more under this 
head. There is more under-rest than 
over-work. It has been shown that 
continued mental activity is the great 
opposer of sleep. Let it be under- 
stood that there is no mental activity 
so intense as emotional excitement. 
The dreamy and the emotional must 
be kept in abeyance to the practical. 
“ The impediments to sustained labor 
really inherent in woman’s organiza- 
tion are to be put against those that 
are artificial, and this sensitiveness, 
acquired by over stimulation of the 
emotions, can be largely overcome by 
a fair share of healthy work directed 
toward a definite object, combined 
with an equally fair share of healthy 
play during the years of adoles- 
cence.” * 
4th. Identical and Co-education. 
Discussion of these questions from 
the physiological plane, will be prov- 
ocative of bad temper, and resultless 
for good unless same agreement can 
be had as to the limitations within 
which the physiological argument is 
pertinent. Co-education and identical 
education of the sexes involve many 
more considerations than tne physiol- 
ogical. It is claimed that by the 
former greater economy is secured, 
discipline and instruction are improv- 
ed, individual development is made 
more sound, sentimentality, prurience, 
and rudeness yield to mutual self pos- 
session, and the association of the sex- 
es on the plane of intellectual contest 
delays the development of the sexual 
tension. For the latter it is argued 
that the highest possible culture of the 
rational soul is the duty and the privi- 
lege of every human being, whether 
male or female. With these interest- 
ing and important questions the phy- 
siologist has no more and no less in- 
* J. C. Pritchard, M. D., pp. 483 to 486. 
t John Roberton, M. D. Edinburgh Medical and Sur- 
gical Journal, October, 1832, July, 1842, and July, 1843, 
wherein he has elaborated the proof that the age of pu- 
berty is as early in the cold as in the tropical regions of 
the earth ; arguing that very early menstruation is a so- 
cial infirmity, and not a climatic peculiarity. 
t J. G. Wood, M. D. 
* Huxley, Popular Science Monthly, No. xxx, p. 764, 47 
terest than belongs to every intelli- 
gent and earnest man; neither, as 
physiologist, is his opinion on these 
questions of any special importance. 
Apart from these, however, the phy- 
siologist has instruction to offer which 
is to be accepted as authoritative, be- 
cause based on well-ascertained facts; 
and his teachings must be neither 
slighted nor misconstrued. When so 
able an advocate as the Superintendent 
of the St. Louis Public Schools as- 
serts, in the course of an intelligent 
and good-natured argument, based on 
his personal experience,that the “ma- 
jority of physiologists and physicians 
believe that the mind and its culture are 
subordinate to the organization of the 
body,”* and that “this materialism 
finds its delight in chilling the fervor 
of an aspiration by suggesting physio- 
logical limitation as that which should 
determine the question of the culture 
of the rational soul and the participa- 
tion in the spiritual heritage of the 
race,” certainly this large body of in- 
telligent and scientific men is entitled 
to know what he means by “ subordin- 
ate.” If he is of opinion that the ma- 
jority of physiologists and physicians 
believe that thought is a function of 
the brain, that molecular action in the 
brain cerebrates thought, he is entitled 
to the threat that “ the intensity of the 
recoil ” from such physiological doc- 
trine will “ have exactly the opposite 
effect from that intended.” It maybe 
submitted, on the contrary, that the 
majority of physicians do predicate 
moral responsibility of man and wo- 
man alike, holding to the belief that 
spirit is one, and that body is one, 
that the body furnishes the conditions 
under which the spirit is made mani- 
fest, and that the spirit has no other 
subordination to the body than that by 
it its manifestations are limited. 
The physiologist does hold, if the 
teachings of this paper are any ade- 
quate expression of the general belief, 
that these manifestations are limited 
and varied by bodily condition; that 
the health of the body, as expressed 
in its harmonious development, with 
its functions adequately fulfilled, is 
essential to the best mental culture ; 
that the structural differences in man 
and woman account for their pecu 
larities of psychical manifestation, 
which are constant, irrespective of age, 
race, or clime ; that as the races emerge 
and advance into civilization, the 
woman manifests her superior sensi- 
tiveness to external influences, and 
that the conditions best suited to the 
development and maintenance of her 
organism are different from the con- 
ditions under which man’s organism 
ripens into its best estate. 
The physiologist does not interfere 
with the identical education of women, 
save so far as to demand that the pro- 
cesses of mental culture shall always 
have regard to the laws of her physi- 
cal being, and he protests against co- 
education, because the sexes are, in 
development and maturity, subject to 
different physiological conditions, and 
that, therefore, the physical conditions 
under which the boy’s educational 
process is best conducted, are not the 
conditions best suited to the girl. 
In the opinion of the physiologist, 
it would be a costly experiment — 
costly in the life and health of woman 
—that would throw open the doors of 
* Annual Report of the Board of the St. Louis Public 
Schools, 1872—3, p. log. 48 
our colleges free to both sexes, and 
demand that the woman submit her- 
self to the routine already prescribed 
by experienced educators as the fitting 
preparation for the duties the man is 
expected to perform. Many a young 
man drops from the ranks now ; some 
young women would master the trial 
then ; but this does not invalidate the 
warning. 
A system of education, based on a 
sentimental theory, will secure some 
proselytes, some of whom will prove 
victims. Judiciously conducted, so 
that their physical development is pro 
vided for, there is no assignable limit 
to the education of the girls who may 
be found aspiring for the higher cul- 
ture. The whole question of school 
hygiene is in abeyance to the social 
and home life. If their influence is 
toward developing the healthful vigor 
of the child, the conditions will be 
simplified under which the mental 
training of the child can proceed with 
regularity and fullness. The nearer 
boys and girls approach to a sound 
and symmetrically developed physical 
organization, the greater the similar- 
ity of conditions under which their 
mental culture can be conducted. 
5th. The Purposes of the Higher 
Education defined by Structure. 
There are no physiological obstruc- 
tions in the way of woman bending 
her efforts to the acquisition of all the 
knowledge her time, inclination, op- 
portunity and strength may permit. 
On the contrary, the hope of the fu- 
ture rests on the introduction of 
strong, well-trained and cultured wo- 
men into the ranks now weakened by 
the presence of so many who are flac- 
cid, purposeless and untrained. If 
she possesses the knowledge, and is 
disposed to use it in the competition 
of the male professions, a grievance is 
established so soon as she is denied the 
privilege. Time will test her ability 
and endurance.' 
Social science is working at the 
problem of furnishing the large sur- 
plus of female population with hon- 
orable and lucrative employment. The 
women and children are rescued first 
from the burning ship; they areal- 
lowed free exit from the besieged city. 
The chivalry of common sense agrees 
with the physiological denial that 
man and woman can meet the same is- 
sues on the same plane. The excep- 
tional cases will wrest their own way 
to success. 
It must be seen, however, that this 
does not meet the demands of the ad- 
vanced controversy. Experience and 
the organic lawr, which are ready and 
willing to allow and provide for the ex- 
ceptional cases, are confronted by ar- 
gument to prove that experience is at 
fault, and that obedience to the phy- 
siological law is neither necessary nor 
advisable. Even the home, which is 
the keystone of the social order, must 
be abandoned, that the woman’s equal 
physical, legal and intellectual fran- 
chise may be asserted. 
The organic law, which is the ex- 
pression of God’s purpose, holds good 
nevertheless; unyielding against the 
assaults of fanaticism and the feverish 
restlessness of misdirected energy— 
neglect of duty near at hand for the 
possibilities that may never come, and 
which will prove unsatisfying if 
achieved. 
The rational soul, temporarily abid- 49 
ing in the material body, is dependent 
on that body for its knowledge of ma- 
terial things; and the distinction of sex, 
whose sole purpose is the continuance 
of the species, furnishes to the higher 
nature conceptions of duties whose 
fulfilment is needful for the highest 
spiritual development. Whatever an 
overwrought civilization may have 
produced in the way of a surplus 
female population, in straining the 
young away from duty to excess, in 
promoting celibacy and applying 
artificial checks to the increase in 
families, yet the woman’s organization 
stamps her as the producer of the 
race, and the law of her organization 
tones her down to the endurance 
needful for the culture of her chil- 
dren. 
“The system is organized when the 
effects which take place among the 
parts are essential to otie conception of the 
whole; when the whole would not be 
a whole except these effects were pro- 
duced; when the effects not only hap- 
pen in fact, but are included in the 
idea of the object; when they are not 
only seen, but foreseen; not only ex- 
pected, but intended; in short, when, 
instead of being causes and effects, 
they are ends and means."* What is 
true of other organizations is true of 
woman’s; it is a means to an end. 
Her physical education should have 
direct, unswerving reference to the 
purposes of her organization; her 
spiritual education neither reaches 
its own best estate nor does it fill up 
the void in man’s spiritual life, if it 
fails to meet and comprehend and 
fulfil the emergencies of the organiza- 
tion given to its keeping. 
The assumption of man’s organiza- 
tion is that he shall fulfil his part in 
the increase and nurture of the race, 
and provide for its sustenance. The 
assumption of woman’s organization 
is that she shall fulfil her part in the 
nurture and culture of her race, and 
be provided for. The higher educa- 
tion that inspires with other motives, 
or holds out incentives to women of 
an independent life, degrades the pur- 
poses of her organization, and does 
violence to her mind and body. Swift 
destruction follows on violation of 
natural law. Rome, in the opinion of 
the author of “ Ecce Homo,” died for 
want of men. 
It follows, then, that the physical 
organization of woman does not limit 
the extent of her mental culture, but 
it apportions the bounds within which 
that culture is to be applied. School 
and college life are but the beginnings 
of those courses of study and applica- 
tion which fit men for the ordin- 
ary competition of professional life. 
Grant the extreme case, that some pro- 
portionate number of young women 
are annually to emerge from these or 
similar institutions ; what then ? If 
they are to proceed still farther, and 
continue the student’s career, they 
may, and who will successfully in- 
terpose the barrier ? But if so, the 
woman’s organization is trampled 
under foot, for its highest functional 
activity would be a physiological pro- 
test against success. 
If, in the strife of duty near at hand, 
there is the sense of inferior occupa- 
tion, the oppression of monotonous 
* Prof. Whewell. History of Scientific Ideas, 3d edi- 
tion (1858), vol. 2, p. 240. routine,* the sense of “ perplexed dis- 
appointment, of baffled intelligence, of 
unoccupied powers, of blunted aspira- 
tions, or the consciousness of being 
fitted for something better than she is,” 
let the woman hold herself responsi- 
ble, and, by reform in social ways and 
by personal culture, release herself 
from the thraldom. Let it not be for- 
gotten that the nearest duty is the ur- 
gent duty. It was with high wisdom 
that the preacher said to the gradu- 
ating class, “ Many men are troubled 
about what God meant them to do; 
but, young gentlemen, my experience 
teaches me that God means very lew 
of us to do anything in particular.” 
If ennui is a summons to a real ac- 
tivity, as is so often the case both with 
men and women, she need not ask if 
she may properly obey it. Let her 
consider the lives of women who dif- 
fered essentially from each other * 
Mrs. Somerville, for instance; Miss 
Austen, Mrs. Fry, Rosa Bonheur, 
Mine. De Stael, Florence Nightingale, 
Angelica Kaufmann, Maria Mitchell, 
Mrs. Stowe ; ‘ if God have called any 
of you to explore truth or beauty, be 
bold, be firm, be true.’ Only it must 
be always remembered that the dissat- 
isfaction and the longing are not al- 
ways the proofs of the power nor of 
the vocation.” 
* “ And now I think of it,” says the schoolmaster, “ I 
wonder if there be not in the lives of some women too 
much ' green pine if some husbands don't ‘ forget the 
kindling' all the way through.” Mrs. Melendy said, 
that “ light wood” would make the heavy wood go bet- 
ter. I wonder if a little “ light wood” now and then in 
the shape of a pleasure trip, or of books, music, conveni- 
ences, sets of furs, pretty things in the house, or of an 
appreciative or commendatory word, would not make 
woman’s heavy burden of work go better.”—The School- 
master's Trunk, by Mrs. Diaz.