;-$$ US. Department NLM050539915 NAl LIBRARY OF MEDICINE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE NATIONAL LIBR g _^tl _rg?. g ^^l , RETURN TO NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE BEFORE LAST DATE SHOWN OCT 2^1985, SEX IN EDUCATION; OR, A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE GIRLS. j EDWARD H. CLARKE, M.D., MEMBER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY; FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES; LATE PROFESSOR OF MATERIA MEDICA IN HARVARD COLLEGE, ETC.,. ETC BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, (LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.) 1873- QTA 8^3 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by EDWARD H. CLARKE, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. boston : stereotyped and printed by rand, avery, & co. "An American female constitution, which collapses just in the middle third of life, and comes out vulcanized India-rubber, if it happen to live through the period when health and strength are most wanted." Oliver Wendell Holmes: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. "He reverenced and upheld, in every form in which it came he- fore him, womaiihood'. . . . What a woman should demand is respect for her as she in a woman. Let her first lesson be, with sweet Susan Winstanley, to reverence her sex." Charles Lamb; Essays of Elia. " We trust that the time now approaches when man's condition shall be progressively improved by the force of reason and truth, when the brute part of nature shall be crushed, that the god-like spirit may unfold." Guizot ; History of Civilization, I., 34. PEEFAOE. About a year ago the author was honored by an invitation to address the New-England Wo- men's Club in Boston. He accepted the invi- tation, and selected for his subject the relation of sex to the education of women. The essay excit- ed an unexpected amount of discussion. Brief reports of it found their way into the public jour- nals. Teachers and others interested in the edu- cation of girls, in different parts of the eountry, who read these reports, or heard of them, made in- quiry, by letter or otherwise, respecting it. Various and conflicting criticisms were passed upon it. This manifestation of interest in a brief and unstudied lecture to a small club appeared to the author to indicate a general appreciation of the importance of the theme he had chosen, compelled him to review carefully the statements he had made, and 6 6 PREFACE. has emboldened him to think that their publication in a more comprehensive form, with added physio- logical details and clinical illustrations, might con- tribute something, however little, to the cause of sound education. Moreover, his own conviction, not only of the importance of the subject, but of the soundness of the conclusions he has reached, and of the necessity of bringing physiological facts and laws prominently to the notice of all who are interested in education, conspires with the in- terest excited by the theme of his lecture to jus- tify him in presenting these pages to the public. The leisure of his last professional vacation has been devoted to their preparation. The original address, with the exception of a few verbal alter- ations, is incorporated into them. Great plainness of speech will be observed throughout this essay. The nature of the subject it discusses, the general misapprehension both of the strong and weak points in the physiology of the woman question, and the ignorance displayed by many, of what the co-education of the sexes really means, all forbid that ambiguity of language or euphemism of expression should be employed in the discussion. The subject is treated solely PREFACE. 7 from the standpoint of physiology. Technical terms have been employed, only where their use is more exact or less offensive than common ones. If the publication of this brief memoir does noth- ing more than excite discussion and stimulate in- vestigation with regard to a matter of such vital moment to the nation as the relation of sex to education, the author will be amply repaid for the time and labor of its preparation. No one can appreciate more than he its imperfections. Not- withstanding these, he hopes a little good may be extracted from it, and so commends it to the consideration of all who desire the best education of the sexes. Boston, 18 Arlington Street, October, 1873. CONTENTS. PART I. Introductory...........11 PART n. Chiefly Physiological . ......31 PART in. Chiefly Clinical..........61 PART rv. Co-Education...........118 PART V. The European Wat.........162 9 SEX IN EDUCATION. PART I. INTRODUCTORY. "Is there any thing better in a State than that both women and men be rendered the very best ? There is not." — Plato. It is idle to say that what is right for man is wrong for woman. Pure reason, abstract right and wrong, have nothing to do with sex: they neither recognize nor know it. They teach that what is right or wrong for man is equally right and wrong for woman. Both sexes are bound by the same code of morals ; both are amenable to the same divine law. Both have a right to do the best they can; or, to speak more justly, both should feel the duty, and have the opportunity, to do their 11 12 SEX IN EDUCATION. best. Each must justify its existence by be- coming a complete development of manhood and womanhood; and each should refuse whatever limits or dwarfs that development. The problem of woman's sphere, to use the modern phrase, is not to be solved by apply- ing to it abstract principles of right and wrong. Its solution must be obtained from physiology, not from ethics or metaphysics. The question must be submitted to Agassiz and Huxley, not to Kant or Calvin, to Church or Pope. Without denying the self-evident proposition, that whatever a woman can do, she has a right to do, the question at once arises, What can she do ? And this includes the fur- ther question, What can she best do ? A girl can hold a plough, and ply a needle, after a fashion. If she can do both better than a man, she ought to be both farmer and seamstress ; but if, on the whole, her husband can hold best the plough, and she ply best the needle, they should divide the labor. He should be master of the plough, and she mistress of the loom. The qucestio vexata of woman's sphere INTRODUCTORY. 13 will be decided by her organization. This limits her power, and reveals her divinely- appointed tasks, just as man's organization limits his power, and reveals his work. In the development of the organization is to be found the way of strength and power for both sexes. Limitation or abortion of development leads both to weakness and failure. Neither is there any such thing as inferior- ity or superiority in this matter. Man is not superior to woman, nor woman to man. The relation of the sexes is one of equality, not of better and worse, or of higher and lower. By this it is not intended to say that the sexes are the same. They are different, widely dif- ferent from each other, and so different that each can do, in certain directions, what the other cannot; and in other directions, where both can do the same things, one sex, as a rule, can do them better than the other; and in still other matters they seem to be so nearly alike, that they can interchange labor without perceptible difference. All this is so well known, that it would be useless to refer to it, 14 SEX IN EDUCATION. were it not that much of the discussion of the irrepressible woman-question, and many of the efforts for bettering her education and widening her sphere, seem to ignore any dif- ference of the sexes; seem to treat her as if she were identical with man, and to be trained in precisely the same way ; as if her organiza- tion, and consequently her function, were mas- culine, not feminine. There are those who write and act as if their object were to assimi- late woman as much as possible to man, by dropping all that is distinctively feminine out of her, and putting into her as large an amount of masculineness as possible. These persons tacitly admit the error just alluded to, that woman is inferior to man, and strive to get rid of the inferiority by making her a man. There may be some subtle physiological basis for such views; for many who hold and advo- cate them are of those, who, having passed middle life without the symmetry and devel- opment that maternity gives, have drifted into the hermaphroditic condition that sometimes accompanies spinsterism. One of these INTRODUCTORY. 15 torsos, who was glad to have escaped the chains of matrimony, but knew the value and lamented the loss of maternity, wished she had been born a widow with two children. This misconception arises from mistaking dif- ference of organization and function for differ- ence of position in the scale of being, which is equivalent to saying that man is rated higher in the divine order because he has more muscle, and woman lower because she has more fat. The loftiest ideal of humanity, re- jecting all comparisons of inferiority and su- periority between the sexes, demands that each shall be perfect in its kind, and not be hin- dered in its best work. The lily is not infe- rior to the rose, nor the oak superior to the clover : yet the glory of the lily is one, and the glory of the oak is another ; and the use of the oak is not the use of the clover. That is poor horticulture which would train them all alike. When Col. Higginson asked, not long ago, in one of his charming essays, that almost persuade the reader, " Ought women to learn 16 SEX IN EDUCATION. the alphabet ? " and added, " Give woman, if you dare, the alphabet, then summon her to the career," his physiology was not equal to his wit. Women will learn the alphabet at any rate; and man will be powerless to pre- vent them, should he undertake so ungracious a task. The real question is not, Shall women learn the alphabet ? but Row shall they learn it ? In this case, how is more important than ought or shall. The principle and duty are not denied. The method is not so plain. The fact that women have often equalled and sometimes excelled men in physical labor, intellectual effort, and lofty heroism, is sufficient proof that women have muscle, mind, and soul, as well as men; but it is no proof that they have had, or should have, the same kind of training ; nor is it any proof that they are destined for the same career as men. The presumption is, that if woman, subjected to a masculine training, arranged for the development of a masculine organization, can equal man, she ought to excel him if educated by a feminine training, arranged to develop a INTRODUCTORY. 17 feminine organization. Indeed, I have some- where encountered an author who boldly affirms the superiority of women to all exist- ences on this planet, because of the complexity of their organization. Without undertaking to indorse such an opinion, it may be affirmed, that an appropriate method of education for girls — one that should not ignore the me- chanism of their bodies or blight any of their vital organs — would yield a better result than the world has yet seen. Gail Hamilton's statement is true, that, " a girl can go to school, pursue all the studies which Dr. Todd enumerates, except ad infi- nitum ; know them, not as well as a chemist knows chemistry or a botanist botany, but as well as they are known by boys of her age and training, as well, indeed, as they are known by many college-taught men, enough, at least, to be a solace and a resource to her; then graduate before she is eighteen, and come out of school as healthy, as fresh, as eager, as she went in." * But it is not true * Woman's Wrongs, p. 59. 18 SEX IN EDUCATION. that she can do all this, and retain uninjured health and a future secure from neuralgia, uterine disease, hysteria, and other derange- ments of the nervous system, if she follows the same method that boys are trained in. Boys must study and work in a boy's way, and girls in a girl's way. They may study the same books, and attain an equal result, but should not follow the same method. Mary can mas- ter Virgil and Euclid as well as George ; but both will be dwarfed, — defrauded of their rightful attainment, — if both are confined to the same methods. It is said that Elena Cor- naro, the accomplished professor of six lan- guages, whose statue adorns and honors Padua, was educated like a boy. This means that she was initiated into, and mastered, the studies that were considered to be the pecu- liar dower of men. It does not mean that her life was a man's life, her way of study a man's way of study, or that, in acquiring six languages, she ignored her own organization. Women who choose to do so can master the humanities and the mathematics, encounter INTRODUCTORY. 19 the labor of the law and the pulpit, endure the hardness of physic and the conflicts of pol- itics ; but they must do it all in woman's way, not in man's way. In all their work they must respect' their own organization, and remain women, not strive to be men, or they will ig- nominiously fail. For both sexes, there is no exception to the law, that their greatest power and largest attainment lie in the perfect de- velopment of their organization. " Woman," says a late writer, " must be regarded as wo- man, not as a nondescript animal, with greater or less capacity for assimilation to man." If we would give our girls a fair chance, and see them become and do their best by reaching after and attaining an ideal beauty and pow- er, which shall be a crown of glory and a tower of strength to the republic, we must look after their complete development as women. Wherein they are men, they should be edu- cated as men; wherein they are women, they should be educated as women. The physio- logical motto is, Educate a man for manhood, a woman for womanhood, both for humanity. In this lies the hope of the race. 20 SEX IN EDUCATION. Perhaps it should be mentioned in this con- nection, that, throughout this paper, education is not used in the limited and technical sense of intellectual or mental training alone. By saying there is a boy's way of study and a girl's way of study, it is not asserted that the intellectual process which masters Juvenal, German, or chemistry, is different for the two sexes. Education is here intended to include what its etymology indicates, the drawing out and development of every part of the system ; and this necessarily includes the whole man- ner of life, physical and psychical, during the educational period. " Education," says Wor- cester, " comprehends all that series of in- struction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the tem- per, and form the manners and habits, of youth, and fit them for usefulness in their fu- ture stations." It has been and is the mis- fortune of this country, and particularly of New England, that education, stripped of this, its proper signification, has popularly stood for studying, without regard to the physical INTRODUCTORY. 21 training or no training that the schools af- ford. The cerebral processes by which the acquisition of knowledge is made are the same for each sex; but the mode of life which gives the finest nurture to the brain, and so enables those processes to yield their best result, is not the same for each sex. The best educa- tional training for a boy is not the best for a girl, nor that for a girl best for a boy. The delicate bloom, early but rapidly fad- ing beauty, and singular pallor of American girls and women have almost passed into a proverb. The first observation of a Euro- pean that lands upon our shores is, that our women are a feeble race ; and, if he is a phy- siological observer, he is sure to add, They will give birth to a feeble race, not of women only, but of men as well. " I never saw before so many pretty girls together," said Lady Amberley to the writer, after a visit to the public schools of Boston; and then added, " They all looked sick." Circumstances have repeatedly carried me to Europe, where I am always surprised by the red blood that fills 22 SEX IN EDUCATION. and colors the faces of ladies and peasant girls, reminding one of the canvas of Rubens and Murillo; and am always equally sur- prised on my return, by crowds of pale, bloodless female faces, that suggest consump- tion, scrofula, anemia, and neuralgia. To a large extent, our present system of edu- cating girls is the cause of this pallor and weakness. How our schools, through their methods of education, contribute to this un- fortunate result, and how our colleges that have undertaken to educate girls like boys, that is, in the same way, have succeeded in intensifying the evils of the schools, will be pointed out in another place. It has just been said that the educational methods of our schools and colleges for girls are, to a large extent, the cause of " the thousand ills " that beset American women. Let it be remembered that this is not assert- ing that such methods of education are the sole cause of female weaknesses, but only that they are one cause, and one of the most important causes of it. An immense loss of INTRODUCTORY. 23 female power may be fairly charged to irra- tional cooking and indigestible diet. We live in the zone of perpetual pie and dough- nut ; and our girls revel in those unassimilable abominations. Much also may be credited, to artificial deformities strapped to the spine, or piled on the head, much to corsets and skirts, and as much to the omission of clothing where it is needed as to excess where the body does not require it; but, after the am- plest allowance for these as causes of weak- ness, there remains a large margin of disease unaccounted for. Those grievous maladies which torture a woman's earthly existence, called leucorrhcea, amenorrhcea, dysmenor- rhcea, chronic and acute ovaritis, prolapsus uteri, hysteria, neuralgia, and the like, are indirectly affected by food, clothing, and ex- ercise ; they are directly and largely affected by the causes that will be presently pointed out, and which arise from a neglect of the peculiarities of a woman's organization. The regimen of our schools fosters this neg- lect. The regimen of a college arranged for 24 SEX IN EDUCATION. boys, if imposed on girls, would foster it still more. The scope of this paper does not permit the discussion of these other causes of female weaknesses. Its object is to call attention to the errors of physical training that have crept into, and twined themselves about, our ways of educating girls, both in public and private schools, and which now threaten to attain a larger development, and inflict a consequently greater injury, by their introduction into col- leges and large seminaries of learning, that have adopted, or are preparing to adopt, the co-education of the sexes. Even if there were space to do so, it would not be neces- sary to discuss here the other causes alluded to. They are receiving the amplest attention elsewhere. The gifted authoress of " The Gates Ajar " has blown her trumpet with no uncertain sound, in explanation and advocacy of a new-clothes philosophy, which her sis- ters will do well to heed rather than to ridi- cule. It would be a blessing to the race, if some inspired prophet of clothes would ap- INTRODUCTORY. 25 pear, who should teach the coming woman how, in pharmaceutical phrase, to fit, put on, wear, and take off her dress, — " Cito, Tuto, et Jucunde." Corsets that embrace the waist with a tighter and steadier grip than any lover's arm, and skirts that weight the hips with heavier than maternal burdens, have often caused grievous maladies, and imposed a needless invalidism. Yet, recognizing all this, it must not be for- gotten that breeches do not make a man, nor the want of them unmake a woman. Let the statement be emphasized and re- iterated until it is heeded, that woman's neg- lect of her own organization, though not the sole explanation and cause of her many weak- nesses, more than any single cause, adds to their number, and intensifies their power. It limits and lowers her action very much, as man is limited and degraded by dissipation. The saddest part of it all is, that this neglect of herself in girlhood, when her organization is ductile and impressible, breeds the germs 26 SEX IN EDUCATION. of diseases that in later life yield torturing or fatal maladies. Every physician's note- book affords copious illustrations of these statements. The number of them which the writer has seen prompted this imperfect essay upon a subject in which the public has a most vital interest, and with regard to which it acts with the courage of ignorance. Two considerations deserve to be men- tioned in this connection. One is, that no organ or function in plant, animal, or human kind, can be properly regarded as a disability or source of weakness. Through ignorance or misdirection, it may limit or enfeeble the ani- mal or being that misguides it; but, rightly guided and developed, it is either in itself a source of power and grace to its parent stock, or a necessary stage in the development of larger grace and power. The female organi- zation is no exception to this law ; nor are the particular set of organs and their functions with which this essay has to deal an exception to it. The periodical movements which char- acterize and influence woman's structure for INTRODUCTORY. 27 more than half her terrestrial life, and which, in their ebb and flow, sway every fibre and thrill every nerve of her body a dozen times a year, and the occasional pregnancies which test her material resources, and cradle the race, are, or are evidently intended to be, fountains of power, not hinderances, to her. They are not infrequently spoken of by women themselves with half-smothered anathemas; often endured only as a necessary evil and sign of inferiority; and commonly ignored, till some steadily-advancing malady whips the recalcitrant sufferer into acknowl- edgment of their power, and respect for their function. All this is a sad mistake. It is a foolish and criminal delicacy that has persuaded woman to be so ashamed of the temple God built for her as to neglect one of its most important services. On account of this neglect, each succeeding generation, obedient to the law of hereditary transmis- sion, has become feebler than its predecessor. Our great-grandmothers are pointed at as types of female physical excellence; their 28 SEX IN EDUCATION. great - grand - daughters as illustrations of female physical degeneracy. There is con- solation, however, in the hope, based on sub- stantial physiological data, that our great- grand-daughters may recapture their ances- tors' bloom and force. " Three generations of wholesome life," says Mr. Greg, " might suffice to eliminate the ancestral poison, for the vis medicatrix naturce has wonderful effi- cacy when allowed free play; and perhaps the time may come when the worst .cases shall deem it a plain duty to curse no future generations with the damnosa hereditas, which has caused such bitter wretchedness to themselves." * The second consideration is the acknowl- edged influence of beauty. "When one sees a god-like countenance," said Socrates to Phsedrus, " or some bodily form that rep- resents beauty, he reverences it as a god, and would sacrifice to it." From the days of Plato till now, all have felt the power of woman's beauty, and been more than willing * Enigmas of Life, p. 34. INTRODUCTORY. 29 to sacrifice to it. The proper, not exclusive search for it is a legitimate inspiration. The way for a girl to obtain her portion of this radiant halo is by the symmetrical develop- ment of every part of her organization, muscle, ovary, stomach and nerve, and by a physiological management of every function that correlates every organ; not by neglect- ing or trying to stifle or abort any of the vital and integral parts of her structure, and supplying the deficiency by invoking the aid of the milliner's stuffing, the colorist's pencil, the druggist's compounds, the doctor's pelvic supporter, and the surgeon's spinal brace. When travelling in the East, some years ago, it was my fortune to be summoned as a physician into a harem. With curious and not unwilling step I obeyed the summons. While examining the patient, nearly a dozen Syrian girls — a grave Turk's wifely crowd, his matrimonial bouquet and armful of con- nubial bliss — pressed around the divan with eyes and ears intent to see and hear a Western Hakim's medical examination. As I looked 30 SEX IN EDUCATION. upon their well-developed forms, their brown skins, rich with the blood and sun of the East, and their unintelligent, sensuous faces, I thought that if it were possible to marry the Oriental care of woman's organization to the Western liberty and culture of her brain, there would be a new birth and loftier type of womanly grace and force. PART n. CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL. " She girdeth her loins with strength." — Solomon. Before describing the special forms of ill that exist among our American, certainly among our New-England girls and women, and that are often caused and fostered by our methods of education and social customs, it is important to refer in considerable detail to a few physiological matters. Physiology serves to disclose the cause, and explain the modus operandi, of these ills, and offers the only rational clew to their prevention and re- lief. The order in which the physiological data are presented that bear upon this dis- cussion is not essential; tLeir relation to the subject matter of it will be obvious as we proceed. 81 32 SEX IN EDUCATION. The sacred number, three, dominates the human frame. There is a trinity in our anato- my. Three systems, to which all the organs are directly or indirectly subsidiary, divide and control the body. First, there is the nutritive system, composed of stomach, intestines, liver, pancreas, glands, and vessels, by which food is elaborated, effete matter removed, the blood manufactured, and the whole organization nourished. This is the commissariat. Second- ly, there is the nervous system, which co-ordi- nates all the organs and functions; which enables man to entertain relations with the world around him, and with his fellows ; and through which intellectual power is manifest- ed, and human thought and reason made pos- sible. Thirdly, there is the reproductive sys- tem, by which the race is continued, and its grasp on the earth assured. The first two of these systems are alike in each sex. They are so alike, that they require a similar train- ing in each, and yield in each a similar result. The machinery of them is the same. No scalpel has disclosed any difference between CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL. 33 a man's and a woman's liver. No microscope has revealed any structure, fibre, or cell, in the brain of man or woman, that is not com- mon to both. No analysis or dynamometer has discovered or measured any chemical ac- tion or nerve-force that stamps either of these systems as male or female. From these ana- tomical and physiological data alone, the in- ference is legitimate, that intellectual power, the correlation and measure of cerebral struc- ture and metamorphosis, is capable of equal development in both sexes. With regard to the reproductive system, the case is altogether different. Woman, in the interest of the race, is dowered with a set of organs peculiar to herself, whose complexity, delicacy, sympa- thies, and force are among the marvels of creation. If properly nurtured and cared for, they are a source of strength and power to her. If neglected and mismanaged, they retaliate upon their possessor with weakness and disease, as well of the mind as of the body. God was not in error, when, after Eve's creation, he looked upon his work, and pro- 8 34 SEX IN EDUCATION. nounced it good. Let Eve take a wise care of the temple God made for her, and Adam of the one made for him, and both will enter upon a career whose glory and beauty no seer has foretold or poet sung. Ever since the time of Hippocrates, woman has been physiologically described as enjoying, and has always recognized herself as enjoying, or at least as possessing, a tri-partite life. The first period extends from birth to about the age of twelve or fifteen years; the second, from the end of the first period to about the age of forty-five ; and the third, from the last boundary to the final passage into the un- known. The few years that are necessary for the voyage from the first to the second period, and those from the second to the third, are justly called critical ones. Mothers are, or should be, wisely anxious about the first passage for their daughters, and women are often unduly apprehensive about the second passage for themselves. All this is obvious and known; and yet, in our educa- tional arrangements, little heed is paid to CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL. 35 the fact, that the first of these critical voyages is made during a girl's educational life, and extends over a very considerable portion of it. This brief statement only hints at the vital physiological truths it contains: it does not disclose them. Let us look at some of them a moment. Remember, that we are now con- cerned only with the first of these passages, that from a girl's childhood to her maturity. In childhood, boys and girls are very nearly alike. If they are natural, they talk and romp, chase butterflies and climb fences, love and hate, with an innocent abandon that is ignorant of sex. Yet even then the differ- ence is apparent to the observing. Inspired by the divine instinct of motherhood, the girl that can only creep to her mother's knees will caress a doll, that her tottling brother looks coldly upon. The infant Ulysses breaks the thin disguise of his gown and sleeves by drop- ping the distaff, and grasping the sword. As maturity approaches, the sexes diverge. An unmistakable difference marks the form and 36 SEX IN EDUCATION. features of each, and reveals the demand for a special training. This divergence, however, is limited in its sweep and its duration. The difference exists for a definite purpose, and goes only to a definite extent. The curves of separation swell out as childhood recedes, like an ellipse, and, as old age draws on, approach, till they unite like an ellipse again. In old age, the second childhood, the difference of sex becomes of as little note as it was during the first. At that period, the picture of the " Lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing," is faithful to either sex. Not as man or woman, but as a sexless being, does advanced age enter and pass the portals of what is called death. During the first of these critical periods, when the divergence of the sexes becomes obvious to the most careless observer, the complicated apparatus peculiar to the female enters upon a condition of functional activity. CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL. 37 " The ovaries, which constitute," says Dr. Dal- ton, " the ' essential parts' * of this apparatus, and certain accessory organs, are now rapidly developed." Previously they were inactive. During infancy and childhood all of them ex- isted, or rather all the germs of them existed; but they were incapable of function. At this period they take on a process of rapid growth and development. Coincident with this process, indicating it, and essential to it, are the periodical phenomena which characterize woman's physique till she attains the third division of her tripartite life. The growth of this peculiar and marvellous apparatus, in the perfect development of which humanity has so large an interest, occurs during the few years of a girl's educational life. No such extraordinary task, calling for such rapid expenditure of force, building up such a deli- cate and extensive mechanism within the organism, — a house within a house, an engine within an engine, — is imposed upon the male * Human Physiology, p. 546. 38 SEX IN EDUCATION. physique at the same epoch.* The organiza- tion of the male grows steadily, gradually, and equally, from birth to maturity. The importance of having our methods of female education recognize this peculiar demand for growth, and of so adjusting themselves to it, as to allow a sufficient opportunity for the healthy development of the ovaries and their accessory organs, and for the estab- lishment of their periodical functions, can- not be overestimated. Moreover, unless the work is accomplished at that period, unless the reproductive mechanism is built and put in good working order at that time, it is never perfectly accomplished afterwards. " It is not enough," says Dr. Charles * As might be expected, the mortality of girls is greater at this period than that of boys, an additional reason for im- posing less labor on the former at that time. According to the authority of MM. Quetelet and Smits, the mortality of the two sexes is equal in childhood, or that of the male is greatest; but that of the female rises between the ages of fourteen and sixteen to 1.28 to one male death. Eor the next four years, it falls again to 1.05 females to one male death. — Sur la Reproduction et la Mortality de I'Homme. Bvo. Brux- eUes. CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL. 39 West, the accomplished London physician, and lecturer on diseases of women, "it is not enough to take precautions till men- struation has for the first time occurred: the period for its return should, even in the healthiest girl, be watched for, and all pre- vious precautions should be once more re- peated; and this should be done again and again, until at length the habit of regular, healthy menstruation is established. If this be not accomplished during the first few years of womanhood, it will, in all probability, never be attained." * There have been in- stances, and I have seen such, of females in whom the special mechanism we are speak- ing of remained germinal, —undeveloped. It seemed to have been aborted. They gradu- ated from school or college excellent scholars, but with undeveloped ovaries. Later they married, and were sterile, f * Lectures on Diseases of Women. Am. ed., p. 48. t " Much less uncommon than the absence of either ovary is the persistence of both through the whole or greater part of life in the condition which they present in infancy and early childhood, with scarcely a trace of graafian vesicles in 40 SEX IN EDUCATION. The system never does two things well at the same time. The muscles and the brain cannot functionate in their best way at the same moment. One cannot meditate a poem and drive a saw simultaneously, without divid- ing his force. He may poetize fairly, and saw poorly ; or he may saw fairly, and poetize poorly; or he may both saw and poetize in- differently. Brain-work and stomach-work interfere with each other if attempted to- gether. The digestion of a dinner calls force to the stomach, and temporarily slows the brain. The experiment of trying to digest a hearty supper, and to sleep during the process, has sometimes cost the careless experimenter his life. The physiological principle of doing only one thing at a time, if you would do it well, holds as truly of the growth of the or- ganization as it does of the performance of their tissue. This want of development of the ovaries is generally, though not invariably, associated with want of ievelopment of the uterus and other sexual organs; and I need not say that women in whom it exists are sterile." — Lectures on the Diseases of Women, by Charles West, M.D. Am. ed., p. 37. CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL. 41 any of its special functions. If excessive labor, either mental or physical, is imposed upon children, male or female, their develop- ment will be in some way checked. If the schoolmaster overworks the brains of his pupils, he diverts force to the brain that is needed elsewhere. He spends in the study of geography and arithmetic, of Latin, Greek and chemistry, in the brain-work of the school room, force that should have been spent in the manufacture of blood, muscle, and nerve, that is, in growth. The results are monstrous brains and puny bodies; abnormally active cerebration, and abnormally weak digestion ; flowing thought and constipated bowels ; lofty aspirations and neuralgic sensations; " A youth of study and an old age of nerves." Nature has reserved the catamenial week for the process of ovulation, and for the develop- ment and perfectation of the reproductive system. Previously to the age of eighteen or twenty, opportunity must be periodically al- lowed for the accomplishment of this task. 42 SEX IN EDUCATION. Both muscular and brain labor must be re- mitted enough to yield sufficient force for the work. If the reproductive machinery is not manufactured then, it will not be later. If it is imperfectly made then, it can only be patched up, not made perfect, afterwards. To be well made, it must be carefully managed. Force must be allowed to flow thither in an ample stream, and not diverted to the brain by the school, or to the arms by the factory, or to the feet by dancing. " Every physician," says a recent writer, " can point to students whose splendid cerebral development has been paid for by emaciated limbs, enfeebled diges- tion, and disordered lungs. Every biography of the intellectual great records the dangers they have encountered, often those to which they have succumbed, in overstepping the ordinary bounds of human capacity; and while beckoning onward to the glories of their almost preternatural achievements, re- gister, by way of warning, the fearful penalty of disease, suffering, and bodily infirmity, which Nature exacts as the price for this par- CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL. 43 tial and inharmonious grandeur. It cannot be otherwise. The brain cannot take more than its share without injury to other organs. It cannot do more than its share without depriv- ing other organs of that exercise and nourish- ment which are essential to their health and vigor. It is in the power of the individual to throw, as it were, the whole vigor of the con- stitution into any one part, and, by giving to this part exclusive or excessive attention, to develop it at the expense, and to the neglect, of the others.* In the system of lichens, Nylander reckons all organs of equal value.f No one of them can be neglected without evil to the whole or- ganization. From lichens to men and women there is no exception to the law, that, if one member suffers, all the members suffer. What is true of the neglect of a single organ, is true in a geometrical ratio of the neglect of a system of organs. If the nutritive system is wrong, the evil of poor nourishment and * Enigmas of Life, pp. 165-8. t Tuckerman's Genera Lichenum. Introduction, p. v. 44 SEX IN EDUCATION. bad assimilation infects the whole economy. Brain and thought are enfeebled, because the stomach and liver are in error. If the ner- vous system is abnormally developed, every organ feels the twist in the nerves. The bal- ance and co-ordination of movement and function are destroyed, and the ill percolates into an unhappy posterity. If the repro- ductive system is aborted, there may be no future generations to pay the penalty of the abortion, but what is left of the organism suffers sadly. When this sort of arrest of development occurs in a man, it takes the element of masculineness out of him, and re- places it with adipose effeminacy. When it occurs in a woman, it not only substitutes in her case a wiry and perhaps thin bearded masculineness for distinctive feminine traits and power, making her an epicene, but it en- tails a variety of prolonged weaknesses, that dwarf her rightful power in almost every direction. The persistent neglect and ignor- ing by women, and especially by girls, igno- rantly more than wilfully, of that part of CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL. 45 their organization which they hold in trust for the future of the race, has been fearfully punished here in America, where, of all the world, they are least trammelled and should be the best, by all sorts of female trou- bles. " Nature," says Lord Bacon, " is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished." In the education of our girls, the attempt to hide or overcome nature by training them as boys has almost extin- guished them as girls. Let the fact be ac- cepted, that there is nothing to be ashamed of in a woman's organization, and let her whole education and life be guided by the divine requirements of her system. The blood, which is our life, is a complex fluid. It contains the materials out of which the. tissues are made, and also the debris which results from the destruction of the same tissues, — the worn-out cells of brain and muscle, — the cast-off clothes of emotion, thought, and power. It is a common carrier, conveying unceasingly to every gland and tissue, to every nerve and organ, the fibrin 46 SEX IN EDUCATION. and albumen which repair their constant waste, thus supplying their daily bread; and as unceasingly conveying away from every gland and tissue, from every nerve and organ, the oxidized refuse, which are both the result and measure of their work. Like the water flowing through the canals of Venice, that carries health and wealth to the portals of every house, and filth and disease .from every doorway, the blood flowing through the canals of the organization carries nutriment to all the tissues, and refuse from them. Its current sweeps nourishment in, and waste out. The former, it yields to the body for assimilation ; the latter, it deposits with the organs of elimination for rejection. In order to have good blood, then, two things are es- sential : first, a regular and sufficient supply of nutriment, and, secondly, an equally reg- ular and sufficient removal of waste. Insuf- ficient nourishment starves the blood; insufficient elimination poisons it. A wise housekeeper will look as carefully after the condition of his drains as after the quality of his food. CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL. 47 The principal organs of elimination, com- mon to both sexes, are the bowels, kidneys, lungs, and skin. A neglect of their functions is punished in each alike. To woman is in- trusted the exclusive management of another process of elimination, viz., the catamenial function. This, using the blood for its chan- nel of operation, performs, like the blood, dou- ble duty. It is necessary to ovulation, and to the integrity of every part of the reproductive apparatus; it also serves as a means of elimi- nation for the blood itself. A careless man- agement of this function, at any period of life during its existence, is apt to be followed by consequences that may be serious; but a neg- lect of it during the epoch of development, that is, from the age of fourteen to eighteen or twenty, not only produces great evil at the time of the neglect, but leaves a large legacy of evil to the future. The system is then peculiar- ly susceptible; and disturbances of the delicate mechanism we are considering, induced during the catamenial weeks of that critical age by constrained positions, muscular effort, brain 48 SEX IN EDUCATION. work, and all forms of mental and physical excitement, germinate a host of ills. Some- times these causes, which pervade more or less the methods of instruction in our public and private schools, which our social customs ig- nore, and to which operatives of all sorts pay little heed, produce an excessive performance of the catamenial function ; and this is equiv- alent to a periodical hemorrhage. Sometimes they produce an insufficient performance of it; and this, by closing an avenue of elimina- tion, poisons the blood, and depraves the or- ganization. The host of ills thus induced are known to physicians and to the sufferers as amenorrhcea, menorrhagia, dysmenorrhcea, hysteria, anemia, chorea, and the like. Some of these fasten themselves on their victim for a lifetime, and some are shaken off. Now and then they lead tc an abortion of the function, and consequent sterility. Fortunate is the girls' school or college that does not furnish abundant examples of these sad cases. The more completely any such school or college succeeds, while adopting every detail and CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL. 49 method of a boy's school, in ignoring and neg- lecting the physiological conditions of sexual development, the larger will be the number of these pathological cases among its gradu- ates. Clinical illustrations of these state- ments will be given in another place. The mysterious process which physiologists call metamorphosis of tissue, or intestitial change, deserves attention in connection with our subject. It interests both sexes alike. Unless it goes on normally, neither boys, girls, men, nor women, can have bodies or brains worth talking about. It is a process, without which not a step can be taken, or muscle moved, or food digested, or nutriment assimilated, or any function, physical or men- tal, performed. By its aid, growth and devel- opment are carried on. Youth, maturity, and old age result from changes in its character. It is alike the support and the guide of health, convalescence, and disease. It is the means by which, in the human system, force is de- veloped, and growth and decay rendered pos- sible. The process, in itself, is one of the 50 SEX IN EDUCATION. simplest. It is merely the replacing of one microscopic cell by another; and yet upon this simple process hang the issues of life and death, of thought and power. Carpenter, in his physiology, reports the discovery, which we owe to German investi- gation, " that the whole structure originates in a single cell; that this cell gives birth to others, analogous to itself, and these again to many future generations ; and that all the varied tissues of the animal body are devel- oped from cells."* A more recent writer adds, " In the higher animals and plants, we are presented with structures which may be regarded as essentially aggregates of cells; and there is now a physiological division of labor, some of the cells being concerned with the nutriment of the organism, whilst others are set apart, and dedicated to the function of reproduction. Every cell in such an aggregate leads a life, which, in a certain limited sense, may be said to be independent; and each discharges its own function in the * Carpenter's Human Physiology, p. 455. CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL. 51 general economy. Each cell has a period of development, growth, and active life, and each ultimately perishes; the life of the organism not only not depending upon the life of its elemental factors, but actually being kept up by their constant destruction and as constant renewal." * Growth, health, and disease are cellular manifestations. With every act of life, the movement of a finger, the pulsation of a heart, the uttering of a word, the coining of a thought, the thrill of an emotion, there is the destruction of a cer- tain number of cells. Their destruction evolves or sets free the force that we recog- nize as movement, speech, thought, and emotion. The number of cells destroyed depends upon the intensity and duration of the effort that correlates their destruction. When a blacksmith wields a hammer for an hour, he uses up the number of cells neces- sary to yield that amount of muscular force. When a girl studies Latin for an hour, she uses up the number of brain-cells necessary * Nicholson, Study of Biology, p, 79. 52 SEX IN EDUCATION. to yield that amount of intellectual force. As fast as one cell is destroyed, another is generated. The death of one is followed instantly by the birth of its successor. This continual process of cellular death and birth, the income and outgo of cells, that follow each other like the waves of the sea, each different yet each the same, is metamorphosis of tissue. This is life. It corresponds very nearly to Bichat's definition that, " life is organization in action." The finer sense of Shakspeare dictated a truer definition than the science of the French physiologist, — " What's yet in this That bears the name of life ? Yet in this life Lie hid more thousand deaths." Measure for Measure, Act iii. Scene 1. No physical or psychical act is possible without this change. It is a process of con- tinual waste and repair. Subject to its in- evitable power, the organization is continually wasting away and continually being repaired. The old notion that our bodies are changed CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL. 53 every seven years, science has long since ex- ploded. " The matter," said Mr. John Goodsir, " of the organized frame to its minutest parts is in a continual flux." Our bodies are never the same for any two suc- cessive days. The feet that Mary shall dance with next Christmas Eve will not be the same feet that bore her triumphantly through the previous Christmas holidays. The brain that she learns German with to- day does not contain a cell in its convolu- tions that was spent in studying French one year ago. Whether her present feet can dance better or worse than those of a year ago, and whether her present brain can do more or less German and French than the one of the year before, depends upon how she has used her feet and brain during the intervening time, that is, upon the metamor- phosis of her tissue. From birth to adult age, the cells of muscle, organ, and brain that are spent in the activities of life, such as digesting, growing, studying, playing, working, and the like, are 54 SEX IN EDUCATION. replaced by others of better quality and larger number. At least, such is the case where metamorphosis is permitted to go on normally. The result is growth and develop- ment. This growing period or formative epoch extends from birth to the age of twenty or twenty-five years. Its duration is shorter for a girl than for a boy. She ripens quicker than he. In the four years from fourteen to eighteen, she accomplishes an amount of physiological cell change and growth which Nature does not require of a boy in less than twice that number of years. It is obvious, that to secure the best kind of growth during this period, and the best de- velopment at the end of it, the waste of tissue produced by study, work, and fashion must not be so great that repair will only equal it. It is equally obvious that a girl upon whom Nature, for a limited period and for a definite purpose, imposes so great a physiological task, will not have as much power left for the tasks of the school, as the boy of whom Nature requires less at the CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL. 55 corresponding epoch. A margin must be allowed for growth. The repair must be greater and better than the waste. During middle age, life's active period, there is an equilibrium between the body's waste and repair: one equals the other. The machine, when properly managed, then holds its own. A French physiologist fixea the close of this period for the ideal man of the future at eighty, when, he says, old age begins. Few have such inherited power, and live with such physiological wisdom, as to keep their machine in good repair, — in good working-order, — to that late period. From the age of twenty-five or thirty, however, to that of sixty or sixty-five, this equilibrium occurs. Repair then equals waste; recon- struction equals destruction. The female or- ganization, like the male, is now developed: its tissues are consolidated; its functions are established. With decent care, it can per- form an immense amount of physical and mental labor. It is now capable of its best work. But, in order to do its best, it must 56 SEX IN EDUCATION. obey the law of periodicity; just as the male organization, to do its best, must obey the law of sustained effort. When old age begins, whether, normally, at seventy or eighty, or, prematurely, at fifty or thirty, repair does not equal waste, and degeneration of tissue results. More cells are destroyed by wear and tear than are made up from nutriment. The friction of the machine rubs the stuff of life away faster than it can be replaced. The muscles stiffen, the hair turns white, the joints crack, the arteries ossify, the nerve-centres harden or soften: all sorts of degeneration creep on till death appears, — Mors janua vitoz. There the curves unite, and men and women are alike again. Sleep, whose inventor received the bene- diction of Sancho Panza, and whose power Dryden apostrophized, — " Of all the powers the hest: Oh 1 peace of mind, repairer of decay, Whose balm renews the limbs to labor of the day," — is a most important physiological factor. CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL. 57 Our schools are as apt in frightening it away as our churches are in inviting it. Sleep is the opportunity for repair. During its hours of quiet rest, when muscular and nervous effort are stilled, millions of microscopic cells are busy in the penetralia of the organism, like coral insects in the depths of the sea, repairing the waste which the day's study and work have caused. Dr. B. W. Richardson of London, one of the most ingenious and ac- complished physiologists of the present day, describes the labor of sleep in the following language: " During this period of natural sleep, the most important changes of nutri- tion are in progress: the body is renovating, and, if young, is actually growing. If the body be properly covered, the animal heat is being conserved, and laid up for expendi- ture during the waking hours that are to follow ; the respiration is reduced, the in- spirations being lessened in the proportion of six to seven, as compared with the number made when the body is awake; the action of the heart is reduced ; the voluntary 58 SEX IN EDUCATION. muscles, relieved of all fatigue, and with the extensors more relaxed than the flexors, are undergoing repair of structure, and recruit- ing their excitability ; and the voluntary ner- vous system, dead for the time to the external vibration, or, as the older men called it, ' stimulus' from without, is also under- going rest and repair, so that, when it comes again into work, it may receive better the impressions it may have to gather up, and influence more effectively the muscles it may be called upon to animate, direct, control." * An American observer and physiologist, Dr. William A. Hammond, confirms the views of his English colleague. He tells us that " the state of general repose which accom- panies sleep is of especial value to the or- ganism, in allowing the nutrition of the ner- vous tissue to go on at a greater rate than its destructive metamorphosis." In another place he adds, " For the brain, there is no rest except during sleep." And, again, he says, " The more active the mind, the * Popular Science Monthly, August, 1872, p. 411. CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL. 59 greater the necessity for sleep; just as with a steamer, the greater the number of revolu- tions its engine makes, the more imperative is the demand for fuel." * These statements justify and explain the instinctive demand for sleep. They also show why it is that infants require more sleep than children, and children than middle-age folk, and middle- age folk than old people. Infants must have sleep for repair and rapid growth; children, for repair and moderate growth; middle-age folk, for repair without growth; and old people, only for the minimum of repair. Girls, between the ages of fourteen and eight- een, must have sleep, not only for repair and growth, like boys, but for the additional task of constructing, or, more properly speaking, of developing and perfecting then, a repro- ductive system, — the engine within an en- gine. The bearing of this physiological fact upon education is obvious. Work of the school is work of the brain. Work of the brain eats the brain away. Sleep is the chance * Sleep and its Derangements, pp. 9,10,13. 60 SEX IN EDUCATION. and laboratory of repair. If a child's brain- work and sleep are normally proportioned to each other, each night will more than make good each day's loss. Clear heads will greet each welcome morn. But if the reverse occurs, the night will not repair the day; and aching heads will signalize the advance of neuralgia, tubercle, and disease. So Nature punishes disobedience. It is apparent, from these physiological considerations, that, in order to give girls a fair chance in education, four conditions at least must be observed: first, a sufficient supply of appropriate nutriment; secondly, a normal management of the catamenial func- tions, including the building of the reproduc- tive apparatus; thirdly, mental and physical work so apportioned, that repair shall exceed waste, and a margin be left for general and sexual development; and fourthly, sufficient sleep. Evidence of the results brought about by a disregard of these conditions will next be given. PART III. CHIEFLY CLINICAL. "Et l'on nous persuadera difficilement que lorsque lea hommes ont tant de peine a etre hommes, les femmes puis- sent, tout en restant femmes, devenir hommes aussi, mettant ainsi la main sur les deux roles, exercant la double mission, re*sumant le double caractere de rhumanite"! Nous perdrons la femme, et nous n'aurons pas Thomme. "Voila ce qui nous arrivera. On nous donnera ce quelque chose de mon- streux, cet fitre repugnant, qui deja parait a notre horizon." — Lb Comte A. De Gasparin. "Facts given in evidence are premises from which a conclusion is to be drawn. The first step in the exercise of this duty is to acquire a belief of the truth of the facts." — Bam, on Facts. Clinical observation confirms the teach- ings of physiology. The sick chamber, not the schoolroom; the physician's private con- sultation, not the committee's public exam- ination; the hospital, not the college, the 61 62 SEX IN EDUCATION. workshop, or the parlor, — disclose the sad results which modern social customs, modern education, and modern ways of labor, have entailed on women. Examples of them may be found in every walk of life. On the lux- urious couches of Beacon Street; in the pal- aces of Fifth Avenue; among the classes of our private, common, and normal schools; among the female graduates of our colleges; behind the counters of Washington Street and Broadway; in our factories, workshops, and homes, — may be found numberless pale, weak, neuralgic, dyspeptic, hysterical, men- orraghic, dysmenorrhoeic girls and women, that are living illustrations of the truth of this brief monograph. It is not asserted here that improper methods of study, and a disregard of the reproductive apparatus and its func- tions, during the educational life of girls, are the sole causes of female diseases; neither is it asserted that all the female graduates of our schools and colleges are pathological specimens. But it is asserted that the num- ber of these graduates who have been per- CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 63 manently disabled to a greater or less degree by these causes is so great, as to excite the gravest alarm, and to demand the serious attention of the community. If these causes should continue for the next half-century, and increase in the same ratio as they have for the last fifty years, it requires no prophet to foretell that the wives who are to be mothers in our republic must be drawn from trans-atlantic homes. The sons of the New World will have to re-act, on a magnificent scale, the old story of unwived Rome and the Sabines. We have previously seen that the blood is the life, and that the loss of it is the loss of so much life. Deluded by strange theories, and groping in physiological darkness, our fathers' physicians were too often Sangrados. Nourishing food, pure air, and haematized blood were stigmatized as the friends of dis- ease and the enemies of convalescence. Ox- ygen was shut out from and carbonic acid shut into the chambers of phthisis and fever; and veins were opened, that the currents of 64 SEX IN EDUCATION. blood and disease might flow out together. Happily, those days of ignorance, which God winked at, and which the race survived, have passed by. Air and food and blood are recognized as Nature's restoratives. No physician would dare, nowadays, to bleed either man or woman once a month, year in and year out, for a quarter of a century con- tinuously. But girls often have the courage, or the ignorance, to do this to themselves. And the worst of it is, that the organization of our schools and workshops, and the de- mands of social life and polite society, encour- age them in this slow suicide. It has already been stated that the excretory organs, by constantly eliminating from the system its effete and used material, the measure and source of its force, keep the machine in clean, healthy, and working order, and that the reproductive apparatus of woman uses the blood as one of its agents of elimination. Kept within natural limits, this elimination is a source of strength, a perpetual fountain of health, a constant renewal of life. Beyond CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 65 these limits it is a hemorrhage, that, by drain- ing away the life, becomes a source of weak- ness and a perpetual fountain of disease. The following case illustrates one of the ways in which our present school methods of teaching girls generate a menorrhagia and its consequent evils. Miss A----, a healthy, bright, intelligent girl, entered a female school, an institution that is commonly but oddly called a seminary for girls, in the State of New York, at the age of fifteen. She was then sufficiently-well developed, and had a good color ; all the functions appeared to act normally, and the catamenia were fairly es- tablished. She was ambitious as well as ca- pable, and aimed to be among the first in the school. Her temperament was what physi- ologists call nervous, — an expression that does not denote a fidgety make, but refers to a relative activity of the nervous system. She was always anxious about her recitations. No matter how carefully she prepared for them, she was ever fearful lest she should trip a little, and appear to less advantage 5 66 SEX IN EDUCATION. than she hoped. She went to school regu- larly every week, and every day of the school year, just as boys do. She paid no more attention to the periodical tides of her organi- zation than her companions; and that was none at all. She recited standing at all times, or at least whenever a standing recitation was the order of the hour. She soon found, and this history is taken from her own lips, that for a few days during every fourth week, the effort of reciting produced an extraordi- nary physical result. The attendant anxiety and excitement relaxed the sluices of the system that were already physiologically open, and determined a hemorrhage as the concomitant of a recitation. Subjected to the inflexible rules of the school, unwilling to seek advice from any one, almost ashamed of her own physique, she ingeniously pro- tected herself against exposure, and went on intellectually leading her companions, and physically defying nature. At the end of a year, she went home with a gratifying report from her teachers, and pale cheeks and a CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 67 variety of aches. Her parents were pleased, and perhaps a little anxious. She is a good scholar, said her father; somewhat over- worked possibly; and so he gave her a trip among the mountains, and a week or two at the seashore. After her vacation she re- turned to school, and repeated the previous year's experience,—constant, sustained work, recitation and study for all days alike, a hem- orrhage once a month that would make the stroke oar of the University crew falter, and a brilliant scholar. Before the expiration of the second year, Nature began to assert her authority. The paleness of Miss A's com- plexion increased. An unaccountable and uncontrollable twitching of a rhythmical sort got into the muscles of her face, and made her hands go and feet jump. She was sent home, and her physician called, who at once diagnosticated chorea (St. Vitus' dance), and said she had studied too hard, and wisely prescribed no study and a long vaca- tion. Her parents took her to Europe. A year of the sea and the Alps, of England 68 SEX IN EDUCATION. and the Continent, the Rhine and Italy, worked like a charm. The sluiceways were controlled, the blood saved, and color and health returned. She came back seemingly well, and at the age of eighteen went to her old school once more. During all this time not a word had been said to her by her parents, her physician, or her teachers, about any periodical care of herself; and the rules of the school did not acknowledge the cata- menia. The labor and regimen of the school soon brought on the old menorrhagic trouble in the old way, with the addition of occa- sional faintings to emphasize Nature's warn- ings. She persisted in getting her education, however, and graduated at nineteen, the first scholar, and an invalid. Again her parents were gratified and anxious. She is overworked, said they, and wondered why girls break down so. To insure her recovery, a second and longer travel was undertaken. Egypt and Asia were added to Europe, and nearly two years were allotted to the cure. With change of air and scene her health im- CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 69 proved, but not so rapidly as with the pre- vious journey. She returned to America better than she went away, and married at the age of twenty-two. Soon after that time she consulted the writer on account of pro- longed dyspepsia, neuralgia, and dysmenor- rhcea, which had replaced menorrhagia. Then I learned the long history of her education, and of her efforts to study just as boys do. Her attention had never been called before to the danger she had incurred while at school. She is now what is called getting better, but has the delicacy and weaknesses of American women, and, so far, is without children. It is not difficult, in this case, either to dis- cern the cause of the trouble, or to trace its influence, through the varying phases of disease, from Miss A----'s school-days, to her matronly life. She was well, and would have been called robust, up to her first critical period. She then had two tasks imposed upon her at once, both of which required for their perfect accomplishment a few years of 70 SEX IN EDUCATION. time and a large share of vital force : one was the education of the brain, the other of the reproductive system. The schoolmaster superintended the first, and Nature the second. The school, with puritanic inflexi- bility, demanded every day of the month ; Nature, kinder than the school, demanded less than a fourth of the time, — a seventh or an eighth of it would have probably answered. The schoolmaster might have yielded somewhat, but would not; Nature could not. The pupil, therefore, was com- pelled to undertake both tasks at the same time. Ambitious, earnest, and conscientious, she obeyed the visible power and authority of the school, and disobeyed, or rather igno- rantly sought to evade, the invisible power and authority of her organization. She put her will into the education of her brain, and withdrew it from elsewhere. The system does not do two things well at the same time. One or the other suffers from neglect, when the attempt is made. Miss A----made her brain and muscles work actively, and diverted CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 71 blood and force to them when her organiza- tion demanded active work, with blood and force for evolution in another region. At first the schoolmaster seemed to be success- ful. He not only made his pupil's brain manipulate Latin, chemistry, philosophy, geography, grammar, arithmetic, music, French, German, and the whole extraordi- nary catalogue of an American young lady's school curriculum, with acrobatic skill; but he made her do this irrespective of the peri- odical tides of her organism, and made her perform her intellectual and muscular calis- thenics, obliging her to stand, walk, and recite, at the seasons of highest tide. For a while she got on nicely. Presently, how- ever, the strength of the loins, that even Solomon put in as a part of his ideal woman, changed to weakness. Periodical hemor- rhages were the first warning of this. As soon as loss of blood occurred regularly and largely, the way to imperfect development and invalidism was open, and the progress easy and rapid. The nerves and their centres 72 SEX IN EDUCATION. lacked nourishment. There was more waste than repair,—no margin for growth. St. Vitus' dance was a warning not to be neg- lected, and the schoolmaster resigned to the doctor. A long vacation enabled the system to retrace its steps, and recover force for evo- lution. Then the school resumed its sway, and physiological laws were again defied. Fortunately graduation soon occurred, and unintermitted, sustained labor was no longer enforced. The menorrhagia ceased, but per- sistent dysmenorrhea now indicates the neuralgic friction of an imperfectly devel- oped reproductive apparatus. Doubtless the evil of her education will infect her whole life. The next case is drawn from different social surroundings. Early associations and natural aptitude inclined Miss B---- to the stage ; and the need of bread and butter sent her upon it as a child, at what age I do not know. At fifteen she was an actress, deter- mined to do her best, and ambitious of suc- cess. She strenuously taxed muscle and CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 73 brain at all times in her calling. She worked in a man's sustained way, ignoring all de- mands for special development, and essaying first to dis-establish, and then to bridle, the catamenia. At twenty she was eminent. The excitement and effort of acting periodi- cally produced the same result with her that a recitation did under similar conditions with Miss A----. If she had been a physiologist, she would have known how this course of action would end. As she was an actress, and not a physiologist, she persisted in the slow suicide of frequent hemorrhages, and encour- aged them by her method of professional edu- cation, and later by her method of practising her profession. She tried to ward off disease, and repair the loss of force, by consulting various doctors, taking drugs, and resorting to all sorts of expedients ; but the hemor- rhages continued, and were repeated at irreg- ular and abnormally frequent intervals. A careful local examination disclosed no local disturbance. There was neither ulceration, hypertrophy, or congestion of the os or cervix 74 SEX IN EDUCATION. uteri; no displacement of any moment, or ovarian tenderness. In spite of all her diffi- culties, however, she worked on courageously and steadily in a man's way and with a woman's will. After a long and discouraging experience of doctors, work, and weaknesses, when rather over thirty years old, she came to Boston to consult the writer, who learned at that time the details just recited. She was then pale and weak. A murmur in the veins, which a French savan, by way of dedication to the Devil, christened bruit de diable, a baptismal name that science has retained, was audible over her jugulars, and a similar murmur over her heart. Palpitation and labored respiration accompanied and impeded effort. She complained most of her head, which felt " queer," would not go to sleep as formerly, and often gave her turns, in which there was a mingling of dizziness, semi-consciousness, and fear. Her education and work, or rather method of work, had wrought out for her anemia and epileptiform attacks. She got two or three physiological CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 75 lectures, was ordered to take iron, and other nourishing food, allow time for sleep, and, above all, to arrange her professional work in harmony with the rythmical or periodical action of woman's constitution. She made the effort to do this, and, in six months, re- ported herself in better health—though far from well — than she had been for six years before. This case scarcely requires analysis in order to see how it bears on the question of a girl's education and woman's work. A gifted and healthy girl, obliged to get her education and earn her bread at the same time, labored upon the two tasks zealously, perhaps over-much, and did this at the epoch when the female organization is busy with the development of its reproductive apparatus. Nor is this all. She labored continuously, yielding nothing to Nature's periodical demand for force. She worked her engine up to highest pressure, just as much at flood-tide as at other times. Naturally there was not nervous power enough developed in the uterine and associated gan- 76 SEX IN EDUCATION. glia to restrain the laboring orifices of the cir- culation, to close the gates; and the flood of blood gushed through. With the frequent repetition of the flooding, came inevitably the evils she suffered from, — Nature's penalties. She now reports herself better; but whether convalescence will continue will depend upon her method of work for the future. Let us take the next illustration from a walk in life different from either of the fore- going. Miss C----was a bookkeeper in a mercantile house. The length of time she remained in the employ of the house, and its character, are a sufficient guaranty that she did her work well. Like the other clerks, she was at her post, standing, during business hours, from Monday morning till Saturday night. The female pelvis being wider than that of the male, the weight of the body, in the upright posture, tends to press the upperltex- tremities of the thighs out laterally in females more than in males. Hence the former can stand less long with comfort than the latter. Miss C----, however, believed in doing her CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 77 work in a man's way, infected by the not un- common notion that womanliness means manli- ness. Moreover, she would not, or could not, make any more allowance for the periodicity of her organization than for the shape of her skeleton. When about twenty years of age, perhaps a year or so older, she applied to me for advice in consequence of neuralgia, back- ache, menorrhagia, leucorrhcea, and general debility. She was anemic, and looked pale, care-worn, and anxious. There was no evi- dence of any local organic affection of the pelvic organs. " Get a woman's periodical remission from labor, if intermission is impos- sible, and do your work in a woman's way, not copying a man's fashion, and you will need very little apothecary's stuff," was the advice she received. " I must go on as I am doing," was her answer. She tried iron, sitz- baths, and the like: of course they were of no avail. Latterly I have lost sight of her, and, from her appearance at her last visit to me, presume she has gone to a world where back- ache and male and female skeletons are un- known. 78 SEX IN EDUCATION. Illustrations of this sort might be multiplied; but these three are sufficient to show how an abnormal method of study and work may and does open the flood-gates of the system, and, by letting blood out, lets all sorts of evil in. Let us now look at another phase ; for menor- rhagia and its consequences are not the .only punishments that girls receive for being edu- cated and worked just like boys. Nature's methods of punishing men and women are as numerous as their organs and functions, and her penalties as infinite in number and gra- dation as her blessings. Amenorrhcea is perhaps more common than menorrhagia. It often happens, however, during the first critical epoch, which is isoch- ronal with the technical educational period of a girl, that after a few occasions of cata- menial hemorrhage, moderate perhaps but still hemorrhage, which are not heeded, the con- servative force of Nature steps in, and saves the blood by arresting the function. In such instances, amenorrhcea is a result of menor- rhagia. In this way, and in others that we CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 79 need not stop to inquire into, the regimen of our schools, colleges, and social life, that re- quires girls to walk, work, stand, study, recite, and dance at all times as boys can and should, may shut the uterine portals of the blood up, and keep poison in, as well as open them, and let life out. Which of these two evils is worse in itself, and which leaves the largest legacy of ills behind, it is difficult to say. Let us examine some illustrations of this, sort of arrest. Miss D----entered Vassar College at the age of fourteen. Up to that age, she had been a healthy girl, judged by the standard of American girls. Her parents were appar- ently strong enough to yield her a fair dower of force. The catamenial function first showed signs of activity in her Sophomore Year, when she was fifteen years old. Its appearance at this age * is confirmatory evi- * It appears, from the researches of Mr. Whitehead on this poin t, that an examination of four thousand cases gave fifteen years six and three-quarter months as the average age in England for the appearance of the catamenia.— Whitehead, on Abortion, frc. 80 SEX IN EDUCATION. dence of the normal state of her health at that period of her college career. Its com- mencement was normal, without pain or ex- cess. She performed all her college duties regularly and steadily. She studied, recited, stood at the blackboard, walked, and went through her gymnastic exercises, from the beginning to the end of the term, just as boys do. Her account of her regimen there was so nearly that of a boy's regimen, that it would puzzle a physiologist to determine, from the account alone, whether the subject of it was male or female. She was an aver- age scholar, who maintained a fair position in her class, not one of the anxious sort, that are ambitious of leading all the rest. Her first warning was fainting away, while exer- cising in the gymnasium, at a time when she should have been comparatively quiet, both mentally and physically. This warning was repeated several times, under the same cir- cumstances. Finally she was compelled to renounce gymnastic exercises altogether. In her Junior Year, the organism's periodical CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 81 function began to be performed with pain, moderate at first, but more and more severe with each returning month. When between seventeen and eighteen years old, dysmenor- rhea was established as the order of that function. Coincident with the appearance of pain, there was a diminution of excretion; and, as the former increased, the latter be- came more marked. In other respects she was well; and, in all respects, she appeared to be well to her companions and to the faculty of the college. She graduated before nineteen, with fair honors and a poor phy- sique. The year succeeding her graduation was one of steadily-advancing invalidism. She was tortured for two or three days out of every month; and, for two or three days after each season of torture, was weak and miserable, so that about one sixth or fifth of her time was consumed in this way. The excretion from the blood, which had been gradually lessening, after a time substan- tially stopped, though a periodical effort to keep it up was made. She now suffered 6 82 SEX IN EDUCATION. from what is called amenorrhcea. At the same time she became pale, hysterical, ner- vous in the ordinary sense, and almost con- stantly complained of headache. Physicians were applied to for aid: drugs were adminis- tered ; travelling, with consequent change of air and scene, was undertaken; and all with little apparent avail. After this experi- ence, she was brought to Boston for advice, when the writer first saw her, and learned all these details. She presented no evidence of local uterine congestion, inflammation, ulcer- ation, or displacement. The evidence was altogether in favor of an arrest of the devel- opment of the reproductive apparatus, at a stage when the development was nearly com- plete. Confirmatory proof of such an arrest was found in examining her breast, where the milliner had supplied the organs Nature should have grown. It is unnecessary.for our present purpose to detail what treatment was advised. It is sufficient to say, that she probably never will become physically what she would have been had her education being physiologically guided. CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 83 This case needs very little comment: its teachings are obvious. Miss D----went to college in good physical condition. During the four years of her college life, her parents and the college faculty required her to get what is popularly called an education. Na- ture required her, during the same period, to build and put in working-order a large and complicated reproductive mechanism, a mat- ter that is popularly ignored, — shoved out of sight like a disgrace. She naturally obeyed the requirements of the faculty, which she could see, rather than the requirements of the mechanism within her, that she could not see. Subjected to the college regimen, she worked four yoirs in getting a liberal educa- tion. Her way of work was sustained and con-. tinuous, and out of harmony with the rhyth- mical periodicity of the female organization. The stream of vital and constructive force evolved within her was turned steadily to the brain, and away from the ovaries and their ac- cessories. The result of this sort of educa- tion was, that these last-mentioned organs, 84 SEX IN EDUCATION. deprived of sufficient opportunity and nutri- ment, first began to perform their functions with pain, a warning of error that was un- heeded ; then, to cease to grow ; * next, to set up once a month a grumbling torture that made life miserable ; and, lastly, the brain and the whole nervous system, disturbed, in obedience to the law, that, if one member suffers, all the members suffer, became neu- ralgic and hysterical. And so Miss D---- spent the few years next succeeding her graduation in conflict with dysmenorrhcea, headache, - neuralgia, and hysteria. Her parents marvelled at her ill-heath; and she * The arrest of development of the uterus, in connection with amenorrhoea, is sometimes very marked. In the New- York Medical Journal for June, 1873, three such cases are recorded, that came under the eye of those excellent ob- servers, Dr. E. E. Peaslee and Dr. T. G. Thomas. In one of these cases, the uterine cavity measured one and a half inches; in another, one and seven-eighths inches; and, in a third, one and a quarter inches. Eecollecting that the normal measurement is from two and a half to three inches, it ap- pears that the arrest of development in these cases occurred when the uterus was half or less than half grown. Liberal education should avoid such errors. CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 85 furnished another text for the often-repeated sermon on the delicacy of American girls. It may not be unprofitable to give the his- tory of one more case of this sort. Miss E----had an hereditary right to a good brain and to the best cultivation of it. Her father was one of our ripest and broadest American scholars, and her mother one of our most accomplished American women. They both enjoyed excellent health. Their daughter had a literary training, — an intel- lectual, moral, and aesthetic half of educa- tion, such as their supervision would be likely to give, and one that few young men of her age receive. Her health did not seem to suffer at first. She studied, recited, walked, worked, stood, and the like, in the steady and sustained way that is normal to the male organization. She seemed to evolve force enough to acquire a number of lan- guages, to become familiar with the natural sciences, to take hold of philosophy and mathematics, and to keep in good physical case while doing all this. At the age of 86 SEX IN EDUCATION. twenty-one she might have been presented to the public, on Commencement Day, by the president of Vassar College or of Antioch College or of Michigan University, as the wished-for result of American liberal female culture. Just at this time, however, the catamenial function began to show signs of failure of power. No severe or even mode- rate illness overtook her. She was subjected to no unusual strain. She was only follow- ing the regimen of continued and sustained work, regardless of Nature's periodical de- mands for a portion of her time and force*, when, without any apparent cause, the fail- ure of power was manifested by moderate dysmenorrhcea and diminished excretion. Soon after this the function ceased altogeth- er ; and up to this present writing, a period of six or eight years, it has shown no more signs of activity than an amputated arm. In the course of a year or so after the cessa- tion of the function, her head began to trouble her. First there was headache, then a frequent congested condition, which she CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 87 described as a " rush of blood " to her head ; and, by and by, vagaries and forebodings and despondent feelings began to crop out. Co- incident with this mental state, her skin became rough and coarse, and an inveterate acne covered her face. She retained her appetite, ability to exercise and sleep. A careful local examination of the pelvic or- gans, by an expert, disclosed no lesion or displacement there, no ovaritis or other inflammation. Appropriate treatment faith- fully persevered in was unsuccessful in re- covering the lost function. I was finally obliged to consign her to an asylum. The arrest of development of the repro- ductive system is most obvious to the super- ficial observer in that part of it which the milliner is called upon to cover up with pads, and which was alluded to in the case of Miss D----. This, however, is too im- portant a matter to be dismissed with a bare allusion. A recent writer has pointed out the fact and its significance with great clear- ness. "There is another marked charge," 88 SEX IN EDUCATION. says Dr. Nathan Allen, "going on in the female organization at the present day, which is very significant of something wrong. In the normal state, Nature has made ample provision in the structure of the female for nursing her offspring. In order to furnish this nourishment, pure in quality and abundant in quantity, she must possess a good development of the sanguine and lym- phatic temperament, together with vigorous and healthy digestive organs. Formerly such an organization was very generally possessed by American women, and they found but little difficulty in nursing their infants. It was only occasionally, in case of some defect in the organization, or where sickness of some kind had overtaken the mother, that it became necessary to resort to the wet-nurse or to feeding by hand. And the English, the Scotch, the German, the Canadian French, and the Irish women now living in this country, generally nurse their children: the exceptions are rare. But how is it with our American women who become CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 89 mothers ? To those who have never consid- ered this subject, and even to medical men who have never carefully looked into it, the facts, when correctly and fully presented, will be surprising. It has been supposed by some that all, or nearly all, our American wo- men could nurse their offspring just as well as not; that the disposition only was want- ing, and that they did not care about having the trouble or confinement necessarily at- tending it. But this is a great mistake. This very indifference or aversion shows something wrong in the organization as well as in the disposition: if the physical system were all right, the mind and natural instincts would generally be right also. While there may be here and there cases of this kind, such an indisposition is not always found. It is a fact, that large numbers of 'our wo- men are anxious to nurse their offspring, and make the attempt: they persevere for a while, — perhaps for weeks or months, — and then fail. . . . There is still another class that cannot nurse at all, having neither the 90 SEX IN EDUCATION. organs nor nourishment requisite even to make a beginning. . . . Why should there be such a difference between the women of our times and their mothers or grand- mothers ? Why should there be such a dif- ference between our American women and those of foreign origin residing in the same locality, and surrounded by the same exter- nal influences ? The explanation is simple: they have not the right kind of organization; there is a want of proper development of the lymphatic and sanguine temperaments, — a marked deficiency in the organs of nutrition and secretion. You cannot draw water without good, flowing springs. The brain and nervous system have, for a long time, made relatively too large a demand upon the organs of digestion and assimilation, while the exer- cise and development of certain other tissues in the body have been sadly neglected. ... In consequence of the great neglect of physical exercise, and the continuous application to study, together with various other influences, large numbers of our American women have CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 91 altogether an undue predominance of the nervous temperament. If only here and there an individual were found with such an organization, not much harm comparatively would result; but, when a majority or nearly all have it, the evil becomes one of no small magnitude."* And the evil, it should be added, is not simply the inability to nurse ; for, if one member suffers, all the members suffer. A woman, whether married or unmarried, whether called to the offices of maternity or relieved from them, who has been defrauded by her education or otherwise of such an essential part of her development, is not so much of a woman, intellectually and morally as well as physically, in consequence of this defect. Her nervous system and brain, her instincts and character, are on a lower plane, and incapable of their harmonious and best development, if she is possessed, on reach- ing adult age, of only a portion of a breast and an ovary, or none at all. » * Physical Degeneracy. By Nathan Allen, M.D., Journal of Psychological Medicine. October, 1870. 92 SEX IN EDUCATION. When arrested development of the repro- ductive system is nearly or quite complete, it produces a change in the character, and a loss of power, which it is easy to recognize, but difficult to describe. As this change is an occasional attendant or result of amenor- rhcea, when the latter, brought about at an early age, is part of an early arrest, it should not be passed by without an allusion. In these cases, which are not of frequent occur- rence at present, but which may be evolved by our methods of education more numer- ously in the future, the system tolerates the absence of the catamenia, and the consequent non-elimination of impurities from the blood. Acute or chronic disease, the ordinary result of this condition, is not set up, but, instead, there is a change in the character and devel- opment of the brain and nervous system. There are in individuals of this class less adipose and more muscular tissue than is commonly seen, a coarser skin, and, gen- erally, a tougher and more angular make- up. There is a corresponding change in CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 93 the intellectual and psychical condition, — a dropping out of maternal instincts, and an appearance of Amazonian coarseness and force. Such persons are analogous to the sexless class of termites. Naturalists tell us that these insects are divided into males and females, and a third class called workers and soldiers, who have no reproductive appa- ratus, and who, in their structure and in- stincts, are unlike the fertile individuals. A closer analogy than this, however, exists between these human individuals and the eunuchs of Oriental civilization. Except the secretary of the treasury, in the cabinet of Candace, queen of Ethiopia, who was baptized while journeying, by Philip the deacon, none of that class have made any impression on the world's life, that history has recorded. It may be reasonably doubted if arrested development of the female reproductive system, producing a class of agenes,* not epicenes, will yield a * According to the biblical account, woman was formed by subtracting a rib from man. If, in the evolution of the future, a third division of the human race is to be formed by subtracting sex from woman,— the castration of femininity,— 94 SEX IN EDUCATION. better result of intellectual and moral power in the nineteenth century, than the analogous class of Orientals exhibited. Clinical illus- trations of this type of arrested growth might be given, but my pen refuses the ungracious task. Another result of the present methods of educating girls, and one different from any of the preceding, remains to be noticed. Schools and colleges, as we have seen, require girls to work their brains with full force and sustained power, at the time when "their organization periodically requires a portion of their force for the performance of a periodical function, and a portion of their power for the building up of a peculiar, complicated, and important mechanism, >— the engine within an engine. They are required to do two I venture to propose the term agene (a without, yevog sex) as an appropriate designation for the new development. Count Gasparin prophesies it thus : " Quelque chose de monstreux, cet etre repugnant, qui deja parait a notre horizon," a free translation of Virgil's earlier description : — " Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens.cui lumen ademtum." 3d, 658 line. CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 95 things equally well at the same time. They are urged to meditate a lesson and drive a machine simultaneously, and to do them both with all their force. Their organizations are expected to make good sound brains and nerves by working over the humanities, the sciences, and the arts, and, at the same time, to make good sound reproductive apparatuses, not only without any especial attention to the latter, but while all available force is withdrawn from the latter and sent to the former. It is not materialism to say, that, as the brain is, so will thought be. Without discussing the French physiologist's dictum, that the brain secretes thought as the liver does bile, we may be sure, that without brain there will be no thought. The quality of the latter depends on the quality of the for- mer. The metamorphoses of brain manifest, measure, limit, enrich, and color thought. Brain tissue, including both quantity and quality, correlates mental power. The brain is manufactured from the blood ; its quantity and quality are determined by the quantity 96 SEX IN EDUCATION. and quality of its blood supply. Blood is made from food; but it may be lost by care- less hemorrhage, or poisoned by deficient elim- ination. When frequently and.largely lost or poisoned, as I have too frequent occasion to know it often is, it becomes impoverished, — anemic. Then the brain suffers, and men- tal power is lost. The steps are few and direct, from frequent loss of blood, im- poverished blood, and abnormal brain and nerve metamorphosis, to loss of mental force and nerve disease. Ignorance or carelessness leads to anemic blood, and that to an anemic mind. As the blood, so the brain; as the brain, so the mind. The cases which have hitherto been pre- sented illustrate some of the evils which the reproductive system is apt to receive in con- sequence of obvious derangement of its growth and functions. But it may, and often does, happen that the catamenia are normally performed, and that the reproductive system is fairly made up during the educational period. Then force is withdrawn from the CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 97 brain and nerves and ganglia. These are dwarfed or checked or arrested in their development. In the process of waste and repair, of destructive and constructive met- amorphosis, by which brains as well as bones are built up and consolidated, education often leaves insufficient margin for growth. Income derived from air, food, and sleep, which should largely, may only mode- rately exceed expenditure upon study and work, and so leave but little surplus for growth in any direction; or, what more commonly occurs, the income which the brain receives is all spent upon study, and little or none upon its development, while that which the nutritive and reproductive systems re- ceive is retained by them, and devoted to their own growth. When the school makes the same steady demand for force from girls who are approaching puberty, ignoring Nature's periodical demands, that it does from boys, who are not called upon for an equal effort, there must be failure some- where. Generally either the reproductive 7 98 SEX IN EDUCATION. system or the nervous system suffers. We have looked at several instances of the for- mer sort of failure ; let us now examine some of the latter. Miss F----was about twenty years old when she completed her technical education. She inherited a nervous diathesis as well as a large dower of intellectual and aesthetic graces. She was a good student, and con- scientiously devoted all her time, with the exception of ordinary vacations, to the labor of her education. She made herself mistress of several languages, and accomplished in many ways. The catamenial function ap- peared normally, and, with the exception of occasional slight attacks of menorrhagia, was normally performed during the whole period of her education. She got on without any sort of serious illness. There were few belonging to my clientele who required less professional advice for the same period than she. With the ending of her school life, when she should have been in good trim and well equipped, physically as well as intel- CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 99 lectually, for life's work, there commenced, without obvious cause, a long period of invalidism. It would be tedious to the reader, and useless for our present purpose, to detail the history and describe the protean shapes of her sufferings. With the excep- tion of small breasts, the reproductive system was well developed. Repeated and careful examinations failed to detect any derange- ment of the uterine mechanism. Her symptoms all pointed to' the nervous system as the fons et origo mali. First general de- bility, that concealed but ubiquitous leader of innumerable armies of weakness and ill, laid siege to her, and captured her. Then came insomnia, that worried her nights for month after month, and made her beg for opium, alcohol, chloral, bromides, any thing that would bring sleep. Neuralgia in every conceivable form tormented her, most fre- quently in her back, but often, also, in her head, sometimes in her sciatic nerves, some- times setting up a tic douloureux, sometimes causing a fearful dysmenorrhcea and fre- 100 SEX IN EDUCATION. quently making her head ache for days together. At other times hysteria got hold of her, and made her fancy herself the victim of strange diseases. Mental effort of the slightest character distressed her, and she could not bear physical exercise of any amount. This condition, or rather these varying conditions, continued for some years. She followed a careful and systematic regimen, and was rewarded by a slow and gradual return of health and strength, when a sudden accident killed her, and terminated her struggle with weakness and pain. Words fail to convey the lesson of this case to others with any thing like the force that the observation of it conveyed its moral to those about Miss F----, and especially to the physician who watched her career through her educational life, and saw it lead to its logical conclusion of invalidism and thence towards recovery, till life ended. When she finished school, as the phrase goes, she was considered to be well. The principal of any seminary or head of any college, CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 101 judging by her looks alone, would not have hesitated to call her rosy and strong. At that time the symptoms of failure which began to appear were called signs of previous overwork. This was true, but not so much in the sense of overwork as of erroneously- arranged work. While a student, she wrought continuously, — just as much during each catamenial week as at other times. As a consequence, in her metamorphosis of tissue, repair did little more than make up waste. There were constant demands of force for constant growth of the system generally, equally constant demands of force for the labor of education, and periodi- cal demands of force for a periodical func- tion. The regimen she followed did not permit all these demands to be satisfied, and the failure fell on the nervous system. She accomplished intellectually a good deal, but not more than she might have done, and re- tained her health, had the order of her edu- cation been a physiological one. It was not Latin, French, German, mathematics, or 102 SEX IN EDUCATION. philosophy that undermined her nerves; nor was it because of any natural inferiority to boys that she failed; nor because she under- took to master what women have no right to learn: she lost her health simply because she undertook to do her work in a boy's way and not in a girl's way. Let us learn the lesson of one more case. These details may be tedious ; but the justi- fication of their presence here are the im- portance of the subject they illustrate and elucidate, and the necessity of acquiring a belief of the truth of the facts of female education. Miss G----worked her way through New- England primary, grammar, and high schools to a Western college, which she entered with credit to herself, and from which she gradu- ated, confessedly its first scholar, leading the male and female youth alike. All that need be told of her career is that she worked as a student, continuously and perseveringly, through the years of her first critical epoch, and for a few years after it, without any CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 103 sort of regard to the periodical type of her organization. It never appeared that she studied excessively in other respects, or that her system was weakened while in college by fevers or other sickness. Not a great while after graduation, she began to show signs of failure, and some years later died under the writer's care. A post-mortem ex- amination was made, which disclosed no dis- ease in any part of the body, except in the brain, where the microscope revealed com- mencing degeneration. This was called an instance of death from over-work. Like the preceding case, it was not so much the result of over-work as of un-physiological work. She was unable to make a good brain, that could stand the wear and tear of life, and a good reproduc- tive system that should serve the race, at the same time that she was continuously spending her force in intellectual labor. Nature asked for a periodical remission, and did not get it. And so Miss G---- died, not because she had mastered the 104 SEX IN EDUCATION. wasps of Aristophanes and the Me*chanique Celeste, not because she had made the acquaintance of Kant and Kolliker, and ventured to explore the anatomy of flowers and the secrets of chemistry, but because, while pursuing these studies, while doing all this work, she steadily ignored her woman's make. Believing that woman can do what man can, for she held that faith, she strove with noble but ignorant bravery to compass man's intellectual attainment in a man's way, and died in the effort. If she had aimed at the same goal, disregarding masculine and following feminine methods, she would be alive now, a grand example of female cul- ture, attainment, and power. These seven clinical observations are suffi- cient to illustrate the fact that our modern methods of education do not give the female organization a fair chance, but that they check development, and invite weakness. It would be easy to multiply such obser- vations, from the writer's own notes alone, and, by doing so, to swell this essay into a CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 105 portly volume; but the reader is spared the needless infliction. Other observers have noticed similar facts, and have urgently called attention to them. Dr. Fisher, in a recent excellent monograph on insanity, says, " A few examples of in- jury from continued study will show how mental strain affects the health of young girls particularly. Every physician could, no doubt, furnish many similar ones." " Miss A----graduated with honor at the normal school after several years of close study, much of the time out of school; never attended balls or parties; sank into a low state of health at once with depression. Was very absurdly allowed to marry while in this state, and soon after became violently insane, and is likely to remain so." " Miss A----graduated at the grammar school, not only first, but perfect, and at once entered the normal school; was very am- bitious to sustain her reputation, and studied hard out of school; was slow to learn, but had a retentive memory; could seldom be 106 SEX IN EDUCATION. induced to go to parties, and, when she did go, studied while dressing, and on the way; was assigned extra tasks at school, because she performed them so well; was a fine healthy girl in appearance, but broke down permanently at end of second year, and is now a victim of hysteria and depression." " Miss C----, of a nervous organization, and quick to learn; her health suffered in normal school, so that her physician predicted insanity if her studies were not discontinued. She persevered, however, and is now an in- mate of a hospital, with hysteria and de- pression." " A certain proportion of girls are predis- posed to mental or nervous derangement. The same girls are apt to be quick, brilliant, ambitious, and persistent at study, and need not stimulation, but repression. For the sake of a temporary reputation for scholarship, they risk their health at the most susceptible period of their lives, and break down after the ex- citement of school-life has passed away. For sexual reasons they cannot compete with boys, CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 107 whose out-door habits still further increase the difference in their favor. If it was a question of school-teachers instead of school- girls, the list would be long of young women whose health of mind has become bankrupt by a continuation of the mental strain com- menced at school. Any method of relief in our school-system to these over-susceptible minds should be welcomed, even at the cost of the intellectual supremacy of woman in the next generation." * The fact which Dr. Fisher alludes to, that many girls break down not during but after the excitement of school or college life, is an important one, and is apt to be overlooked. The process by which the development of the reproductive system is arrested, or degenera- tion of brain and nerve-tissue set a going, is an insidious one. At its beginning, and for a long time after it is well on in its progress, it would not be recognized by the superficial observer. A class of girls might, and often * Plain Talk about Insanity. By T. W. Fisher, M.D. Boston. Pp. 23, 24. 108 SEX IN EDUCATION. do, graduate from our schools, higher semina- ries, and colleges, that appear to be well and strong at the time of their graduation, but whose development has already been checked, and whose health is on the verge of giving way. Their teachers have known nothing of the amenorrhcea, menorrhagia, dysmenor- rhoea, or leucorrhcea which the pupils have sedulously concealed and disregarded; and the cunning devices of dress have covered up all external evidences of defect; and so, on graduation day, they are pointed out by their instructors to admiring committees as rosy specimens of both physical and intellectual education. A closer inspection by competent experts would reveal the secret weakness which the labor of life that they are about to enter upon too late discloses. The testimony of Dr. Anstie of London, as to the gravity of the evils incurred by the sort of erroneous education we are consider- ing, is decided and valuable. He says, " For, be it remembered, the epoch of sexual devel- opment is one in which an enormous addition CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 109 is being made to the expenditure of vital en- ergy; besides the continuous processes of growth of the tissues and organs generally, the sexual apparatus, with its nervous supply, is making by its development heavy demands upon the nutritive powers of the organism ; and it is scarcely possible but that portions of the nervous centres, not directly connected with it, should proportionally suffer in their nutrition, probably through defective blood supply. When we add to this the abnormal strain that is being put on the brain, in many cases, by a forcing plan of mental education, we shall perceive a source not merely of exhaust- ive expenditure of nervous power, but of sec- ondary irritation of centres like the medulla oblongata that are probably already somewhat lowered in power of vital resistance, and pro- portionably irritable." * A. little farther on, Dr. Anstie adds, " But I confess, that, with me, the result of close attention given to the pathology of neuralgia has been the ever- * Neuralgia, and the Diseases that resemble it. By Fran- cis E. Anstie, M.D. Pp. 122. English ed. 110 SEX IN EDUCATION. growing conviction, that, next to the influence of neurotic inheritance, there is no such fre- quently powerful factor in the construction of the neuralgic habit as mental warp of a cer- tain kind, the product of an unwise education." In another place, speaking of the liability of the brain to suffer from an unwise education, and referring to the sexual development that we are discussing in these pages, he makes the following statement, which no intelligent phy- sician will deny, and which it would be well for all teachers who care for the best educa- tion of the girls intrusted to their charge to ponder seriously. " I would also go farther, and express the opinion, that peripheral influ- ences of an extremely powerful and continuous kind, where they concur with one of those critical periods of life at which the central nervous system is relatively weak and unsta- ble, can occasionally set going a non-inflam- matory centric atrophy, which may localize itself in those nerves upon whose centres the morbific peripheral influence is perpetually pouring in. Even such influences as the psy- CHIEFLY CLINICAL. Ill Chical and emotional, be it remembered, must be considered peripheral."* The brain of Miss G----, whose case was related a few pages back, is a clinical illustration of the accuracy of this opinion. Dr. Weir Mitchell, one of our most eminent American physiologists, has recently borne most emphatic testimony to the evils we have pointed out: " Worst of all," he says, " to my mind, most destructive -in every way, is the American view of female education. The time taken for the more serious instruction of girls extends to the age of eighteen, and rarely over this. During these years, they are undergoing such organic development as renders them remarkably sensitive." ... "To show more precisely how the growing girl is injured by the causes just mentioned " (forced and continued study at the sexual epoch) " would carry me upon subjects unfit for full discussion in these pages; but no thoughtful reader can be much at a loss as to my mean- ing." ..." To-day the American woman is, * Op. cit., p. 160. 112 SEX IN EDUCATION. to speak plainly, physically unfit for her du- ties as woman, and is, perhaps, of all civilized females, the least qualified to undertake those weightier tasks which tax so heavily the ner- vous system of man. She is not fairly up to what Nature asks from her as wife and mother. How will she sustain herself under the pressure of those yet more exacting duties which now-a-days she is eager to share with the man ? " * In our schools it is the ambitious and con- scientious girls, those who have in them the stuff of which the noblest women are made, that suffer, not the romping or lazy sort; and thus our modern ways of education provide for the " non-survival of the fittest." A speaker told an audience of women at Wes- leyan Hall not long ago, that he once attended the examination of a Western college, where a girl beat the boys in unravelling the intra- cacies of Juvenal. He did not report the consumption of blood and wear of brain tissue that in her college way of study correlated * Wear and Tear. By S. Weir Mitchell, M.D. CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 113 her Latin, or hint at the possibility of arrested development. Girls of bloodless skins and intellectual faces may be seen any day, by those who desire the spectacle, among the scholars of our high and normal schools, — faces that crown, and skins that cover, curving spines, which should be straight, and neural- gic nerves that should know no pain. Later on, when marriage and maternity overtake these girls, and they " live laborious days " in a sense not intended by Milton's line, they bend and break beneath the labor, like loaded grain before a storm, and bear little fruit again. A training that yields this result is neither fair to the girls nor to the race. Let us quote the authority of such an acute and sagacious observer as Dr. Maudsley, in support of the physiological and pathological views that have been here presented. Refer- ring to the physiological condition and phe- nomena of the first critical epoch, he says, " In the great mental revolution caused by the development of the sexual system at puberty, we have the most striking example of the 8 114 SEX IN EDUCATION. intimate and essential sympathy between the brain, as a mental organ, and other organs of the body. The change of character at this period is not by any means limited to the appearance of the sexual feelings, and their sympathetic ideas, but, when traced to its ulti- mate reach, will be found to extend to the highest feelings of mankind, social, moral, and even religious." * He points out the fact that it is very easy by improper training and forced work, during this susceptible period, to turn a physiological into a pathological state. " The great mental revolution which occurs at puberty may go beyond its physio- logical limits in some instances, and become pathological." " The time of this mental revolution is at best a trying period for youth." " The monthly activity of the ovaries, which marks the advent of puberty in women, has a notable effect upon the mind and body; wherefore it may become an important cause of mental and physical derangement." f * Body and Mind. By Henry Maudsley, M.D. Lond. p. 31. t Op. cit., p. 87. CHIEFLY CLINICAL. 115 With regard to the physiological effects of arrested development of the reproductive apparatus in women, Dr. Maudsley uses the following plain and emphatic language: " The forms and habits of mutilated men approach those of women; and women, whose ovaries and uterus remain for some cause in a state of complete inaction, approach the forms and habits of men. It is said, too, that, in hermaphrodites, the mental character, like the physical, participates equally in that of both sexes. While woman preserves her sex, she will necessarily be feebler than man, and, having her special bodily and mental charac- ters, will have, to a certain extent, her own sphere of activity; where she has become thoroughly masculine in nature, or hermaphro- dite in mind, — when, in fact, she has pretty well divested herself of her sex, — then she may take his ground, and do his work; but she will have lost her feminine attractions, and probably also her chief feminine functions." * * Op. cit., p. 32. 116 SEX IN EDUCATION. It has been reserved for our age and country, by its methods of female education, to demon- strate that it is possible in some cases to di- vest a woman of her chief feminine functions ; in others, to produce grave and even fatal disease of the brain and nervous system ; in others, to engender torturing derangements and imperfections of the reproductive ap- paratus that imbitter a lifetime. Such, we know, is not the object of a liberal female edu- cation. Such is not the consummation which the progress of the age demands. Fortunately, it is only necessary to point out and prove the existence of such erroneous methods and evil results to have them avoided. That they can be avoided, and that woman can have a liberal education that shall develop all her powers, without mutilation or disease, up to the loftiest ideal of womanhood, is alike the teaching of physiology and the hope of the race. In concluding this part of our subject, it is well to remember the statement made at the beginning of our discussion, to the fol- CHIEFLY CLINICAL. Ill lowing effect, viz., that it is not asserted here, that improper methods of study and a disregard of the reproductive apparatus and its functions, during the educational life of girls, are the sole causes of female diseases; neither is it asserted that all the female grad- uates of our schools and colleges are patho- logical specimens. But it is asserted that the number of these graduates who have been permantly disabled to a greater or less degree, or fatally injured, by these causes, is such as to excite the gravest alarm, and to demand the serious attention of the community. The preceding physiological and pathologi- cal data naturally open the way to a consider- ation of the co-education of the sexes. PART IV. CO-EDUCATION. " Pistoc. Where, then, should I take my place ? 1st Bacch. Near myself, that, with a she wit, a he wit may be reclining at our repast." — Bacchides of Plautus. " The woman's-rights movement, with its conventions, its speech-makings, its crudities, and eccentricities, is neverthe- less a part of a healthful and necessary movement of the hu- man race towards progress." — Harriet Beecher Stowe. Guided by the laws of development which we have found physiology to teach, and warned by the punishments, in the shape of weakness and disease, which we have shown their infringement to bring about, and of which our present methods of female educa- tion furnish innumerable examples, it is not difficult to discern certain physiological prin- ciples that limit and control the education, and, consequently, the co-education of our 118 CO-EDUCATION. 119 youth. These principles we have learned to be, three for the two sexes in common, and one for the peculiarities of the female sex. The three common to both, the three to which both are subjected, and for which wise meth- ods of education will provide in the case of both, are, 1st, a sufficient supply of appropriate nutriment. This of course includes good air and good water and sufficient warmth, as much as bread and butter ; oxygen and sun- light, as much as meat. 2d, Mental and phys- ical work and regimen so apportioned, that repair shall exceed waste, and a margin be left for development. This includes out- of-door exercise and appropriate ways of dressing, as much as the hours of study, and the number and sort of studies. 3d, Sufficient sleep. This includes the best time for sleeping, as well as the proper number of hours for sleep. It excludes the " murdering of sleep," by late hours of study and the crowding of studies, as much as by wine or tea or dissipation. All these guide and limit the education of the two 120 SEX IN EDUCATION. sexes very much alike. The principle or con- dition peculiar to the female sex is the man- agement of the catamenial function, which, from the age of fourteen to nineteen, includes the building of the reproductive apparatus. This imposes upon women, and especially upon the young woman, a great care, a corre- sponding duty, and compensating privileges. There is only a feeble counterpart to it in the male organization ; and, in his moral constitu- tion, there cannot be found the fine instincts and quick perceptions that have their root in this mechanism, and correlate its functions. This lends to her development and to all her work a rythmical or periodical order, which must be recognized and obeyed. "In this recognition of the chronometry of organic process, there is unquestionably great promise for the future ; for it is plain that the observ- ance of time in the motions of organic mole- cules is as certain and universal, if not as exact, as that of the heavenly bodies." * Pe- riodicity characterizes the female organization, * Body and Mind. Op. cifc, p. 178. CO-EDUCATION. 121 and developes feminine force. Persistence characterizes the male organization, and de- v. velops masculine foree. Education will draw the best out of each by adjusting its methods to the periodicity of one and the persistence of the other. Before going farther, it is essential to ac- quire a definite notion of what is meant, or, at least, of what we mean in this discussion, by the term co-education. Following its ety- mology, con-educare, it signifies to draw out together, or to unite in education; and this union refers to the time and place, rather than to. the methods and kinds of education. In this sense any school or college may utilize its buildings, apparatus, and instructors to give appropriate education to the two sexes as well as to different ages of the same sex. This is juxtaposition in education. When the Massachusetts Institute of Technology teaches one class of young men chemistry, and an- other class engineering, in the same building and at the same time, it co-educates those two classes. In this sense it is possible that many 122 SEX IN EDUCATION. advantages might be obtained from the co- education of the sexes, that would more than counterbalance the evils of crowding large numbers of them together. This sort of co- education does not -exclude appropriate clas- sification, nor compel the two sexes to follow the same methods or the same regimen. Another signification of co-education, and, as we apprehend, the one in which it is com- monly used, includes time, place, government, methods, studies, and regimen. This is iden- tical co-education. This means, that boys and girls shall be taught the same things, at the same time, in the same place, by the same faculty, with the same methods, and under the same regimen. This admits age and pro- ficiency, but not sex, as a factor in classifica- tion. It is against the co-education of the sexes, in this sense of identical co-education, that physiology protests; and it is this identity of education, the prominent characteristic of our American school-system, that has pro- duced the evils described in the clinical part of this essay, and that threatens to push the CO-EDUCATION. 123 degeneration of the female sex still farther on. In these pages, co-education of the sexes is used in its common acceptation of identical co-education. Let us look for a moment at what identical co-education is. The law has, or had, a maxim, that a man and his wife are one, and that the one is the man. Modern American edu- cation has a maxim, that boys' schools and girls' schools are one, and that the one is the boys' school. Schools have been arranged, accordingly, to meet the requirements of the masculine organization. Studies have been selected that experience has proved to be appropriate to a boy's intellectual develop- ment, and a regimen adopted, while pursuing them, appropriate to his physical development. His school and college life, his methods of study, recitations, exercises, and recreations, are ordered upon the supposition, that, bar- ring disease or infirmity, punctual attend- ance upon the hours of recitation, and upon all other duties in their season and order, may be required of him continuously, in 124 SEX IN EDUCATION. spite of ennui, inclement weather, or fa- tigue ; that there is no week in the month, or day in the week, or hour in the day, when it is a physical necessity to relieve him from standing or from studying, — from physical effort or mental labor; that the chapel-bell may safely call him to morning prayer from New Year to Christmas, with the assurance, that, if the going does not add to his stock of piety, it will not diminish his stock of health; that he may be sent to the gymnasium and the examination-hall, to the theatres of physical and intellectual display at any time, — in short, that he develops health and strength, blood and nerve, intellect and life, by a regular, uninterrupted, and sustained course of work. And all this is justified both by experience and physiology. Obedient to the American educational maxim, that boys* schools and girls' schools are one, and that the one is the boys' school, the female schools have copied the methods which have grown out of the requirements of the male organization. Schools for girls have CO-EDUCATION. 125 been modelled after schools for boys. Were it not for differences of dress and figure, it would be impossible, even for an expert, after visiting a high school for bo}*s and one for girls, to tell which was arranged for the male and which for the female organization. Our girls' schpols, whether public or private, have imposed upon their pupUs a boy's regimen; and it is now proposed, in some quarters, to carry this principle still farther, by burdening girls, after they leave school, with a quadren- nium of masculine college regimen. And so girls are to learn the alphabet in college, as they have learned it in the grammar-school, just as boys do. This is grounded upon the supposition that sustained regularity of action and attendance may be as safely required of a girl as of a boy; that there is no physical necessity for periodically relieving her from walking, standing, reciting, or studying; that the chapel-bell may call her, as well as him, to a daily morning walk, with a standing prayer at the end of it, regardless of the danger that such exercises, by deranging the tides of her 126 SEX IN EDUCATION. organization, may add to her piety at the ex- pense of her blood ; that she may work her brain over mathematics, botany, chemistry, German, and the like, with equal and sus- tained force on every day of the month, and so safely divert blood from the reproductive apparatus to the head ; in short, that she, like her brother, develops health and strength, blood and nerve, intellect and life, by a reg- ular, uninterrupted, and sustained course of work. All this is not justified, either by ex- perience or physiology. The gardener may plant, if he choose, the lily and the rose, the oak and the vine, within the same enclosure; let the same soil nourish them, the same air visit them, and the same sunshine warm and cheer them ; still, he trains each of them with a separate art, warding from each its peculiar dangers, developing within each its peculiar powers, and teaching each to put forth to the utmost its divine and peculiar gifts of strength and beauty. Girls lose health, strength, blood, and nerve, by a regimen that ignores the periodical tides and reproductive appa- CO-EDUCATION. 127 ratus of their organization. The mothers and instructors, the homes and schools, of our country's daughters, would profit by occasion- ally reading the old Levitical law. The race has not yet quite outgrown the physiology of Moses. Co-education, then, signifies in common acceptation identical co-education. This identity of training is what many at the pres- ent day seem to be praying for and working for. Appropriate education of the two sexes, carried as far as possible, is a consummation most devoutly to be desired; identical edu- cation of the two sexes is a crime before God and humanity, that physiology protests against, and that experience weeps over. Because the education of boys has met with tolerable success, hitherto, — but only tolera- ble it must be confessed, —in developing them into men, there are those who would make girls grow into women by the same process. Because a gardener has nursed an acorn till it grew into an oak, they would have him cradle a grape in the same soil and way, and make 128 SEX IN EDUCATION. it a vine. Identical education, or identical co-education, of the sexes defrauds one sex or the other, or perhaps both. It defies the Roman maxim, which physiology has fully justified, mens sana in corpore sano. The sustained regimen, regular recitation, erect posture, daily walk, persistent exercise, and unintermitted labor that toughens a boy, and makes a man of him, can only be partially applied to a girl. The regimen of intermit- tance, periodicity of exercise and rest, work three-fourths of each month, and remission, if not abstinence, the othej: fourth, physio- logical interchange of the erect and reclining posture, care of the reproductive system that is the cradle of the race, all this, that tough- ens a girl and makes a woman of her, will emasculate a lad. A combination of the two methods of education, a compromise between them, would probably yield an average result, excluding the best of both. It would give a fair chance neither to a boy nor a girl. Of all compromises, such a physiological one is the worst. It cultivates mediocrity, and cheats CO-EDUCATION. 129 the future of its rightful legacy of lofty man- hood and womanhood. It emasculates boys, stunts girls; makes semi-eunuchs of one sex, and agenes of the other. The error which has led to the identical education of the two sexes, and which proph- ecies their identical co-education in colleges and universities, is not confined to technical education. It permeates society. It is found in the home, the workshop, the factory, and in all the ramifications of social life. The identity of boys and girls, of men and women, is practically asserted out of the school as much as in it, and it is theoretically proclaimed from the pulpit and the rostrum. Woman seems to be looking up to man and his development, as the goal and ideal of wo- manhood. The new gospel of female devel- opment glorifies what she possesses in com- mon with him, and tramples under her feet, as a source of weakness and badge of inferi- ority, the mechanism and functions peculiar to herself. In consequence of this wide- spread error, largely the result of physio- 9 130 SEX IN EDUCATION. logical ignorance, girls are almost universally trained in masculine methods of living and - working as well as of studying. The notion is practically found everywhere, that boys and girls are one, and that the boys make the one. Girls, young ladies, to use the polite phrase, who are about leaving or have left school for society, dissipation, or self-culture, rarely permit any of Nature's periodical de- mands to interfere with their morning calls, or evening promenades, or midnight dancing, or sober study. Even the home draws the sacred mantle of modesty so closely over the reproductive function as not only to cover but to smother it. Sisters imitate brothers in persistent work at all times. Female clerks in stores strive to emulate the males by unremitting labor, seeking to de- velop feminine force by masculine methods. Female operatives of all sorts, in factories and elsewhere, labor in the same way ; and, when the day is done, are as likely to dance half the night, regardless of any pressure upon them of a peculiar function, as their CO-EDUCATION. 131 fashionable sisters in the polite world. All unite in pushing the hateful thing out of sight and out of mind ; and all are punished by similar weakness, degeneration, and disease. There are two reasons why female opera- tives of all sorts are likely to suffer less, and actually do suffer less, from such persistent work, than female students ; why Jane in the factory can work more steadily with the loom, than Jane in college with the diction- ary ; why the girl who makes the bed can safely work more steadily the whole year through, than her little mistress of sixteen who goes to school. The first reason is, that the female operative, of whatever sort, has, as a rule, passed through the first critical epoch of woman's life : she has got fairly by it. In her case, as a rule, unfortunately there are too many exceptions to it, the cata- menia have been established; the function is in good running order; the reproduc- tive apparatus — the engine within an en- gine— has been constructed, and she will 132 SEX IN EDUCATION. not be called upon to furnish force for build- ing it again. The female student, on the contrary, has got these tasks before her, and must perform them while getting her educa- tion ; for the period of female sexual devel- opment coincides with the educational period. The same five years of life must be given to both tasks. After the function is normally established, and the apparatus made, woman can labor mentally or physically, or both, with very much greater persistence and intensity, than during the age of develop- ment. She still retains the type of period- icity ; and her best work, both as to quality and amount, is accomplished when the order of her labor partakes of the rhythmic order of her constitution. Still the fact remains, that she can do more than before ; her fibre has acquired toughness ; the system is con- solidated ; its fountains are less easily stirred. It should be mentioned in this connection, what has been previously adverted to, that the toughness and power of after life are largely in proportion to the normality of sex- CO-EDUCATION. 133 ual development. If there is error then, the organization never fully recovers. This is an additional motive for a strict physiological regimen during a girl's student life, and, just so far, an argument against the identical co- education of the sexes. The sepond reason why female operatives are less likely to suffer, and actually do suffer less, than school-girls, from persistent work straight through the year, is because the former work their brains less. To use the language of Herbert Spen- cer, " That antagonism between body and brain which we see in those, who, pushing brain-activity to an extreme, enfeeble their bodies," * does not often exist in female operatives, any more than in male. On the contrary, they belong to the class of those who, in the words of the same author, by " pushing bodily activity to an extreme, make their brains inert." * Hence they have stronger bodies, a reproductive apparatus more normally constructed, and a catamenial function less readily disturbed by effort, than * The Study of Sociology, by Herbert Spencer, chap. 13. 134 SEX IN EDUCATION. their student sisters, who are not only younger than they, but are trained to push " brain- activity to an extreme." Give girls a fair chance for physical development at school, and they will be able in after life, with rea- sonable care of themselves, to answer the demands that may be made upon them. The identical education of the sexes has borne the fruit which we have pointed out. Their identical co-education will intensify the evils of separate identical education; for it will introduce the element of emulation, and it will introduce this element in its strongest form. It is easy to frame a theoretical emu- lation, in which results only are compared and tested, that would be healthy and invig- orating ; but such theoretical competition of the sexes is not at all the sort of steady, untiring, day-after-day competition that iden- tical co-education implies. It is one thing to put up a goal a long way off, — five or six months or three or four years distant, — and tell boys and girls, each in their own way, to strive for it, and quite a different thing to CO-EDUCATION. 135 put up the same goal, at the same distance, and oblige each sex to run their race for it side by side on the same road, in daily com- petition with each other, and with equal expenditure of force at all times. Identical co-education is racing in the latter w&y. The inevitable results of it have been shown in some of the cases we have narrated. The trial of it on a larger scale would only yield a larger number of similar degenerations, weaknesses, and sacrifices of noble lives. Put a boy and girl together upon the same course of study, with the same lofty ideal before them, and hold up to their eyes the daily incitements of comparative progress, and there will be awakened within them a stimulus unknown before, and that separate study does not excite. The unconscious fires that have their seat deep down in the recesses of the sexual organization will flame up through every tissue, permeate every vessel, burn every nerve, flash from the eye, tingle in the brain, and work the whole machine at highest pressure. There need not be, and 136 SEX IN EDUCATION. generally will not be, any low or sensual desire in all this elemental action. It is only making youth work over the tasks of sober study with the wasting force of intense pas- sion. Of course such strenuous labor will yield brilliant, though temporary, results. The fire is kept alive by the waste of the system, and soon burns up its source. The first sex to suffer in this exhilarating and costly competition must be, as experience shows it is, the one that has the largest amount of force in readiness for immediate call; and this is the female sex. At the age of development, Nature mobilizes the forces of a girl's organization for the purpose of establishing a function that shall endure for a generation, and for constructing an appara- tus that shall cradle and nurse a race. These mobilized forces, which, at the technical educational period, the girl possesses and controls largely in excess of the boy, under the passionate stimulus of identical co-edu- cation, are turned from their divinely-ap- pointed field of operations, to the region of CO-EDUCATION. 137 brain activity. The result is a most brilliant show of cerebral pyrotechnics, and degenera- tions that we have described. That undue and disproportionate brain activity exerts a sterilizing influence upon both sexes is alike a doctrine of physiology, and an induction from experience. And both physiology and experience also teach that this influence is more potent upon the female than upon the male. The explanation of the latter fact — of the greater aptitude of the female organization to become thus modified by excessive brain activity — is probably to be found in the larger size, more complicated relations, and more important functions, of the female reproductive appara- tus. This delicate and complex mechanism is liable to be aborted or deranged by the withdrawal of force that is needed for its construction and maintenance. It is, per- haps, idle to speculate upon the prospective evil that would accrue to the human race, should such an organic modification, intro- duced by abnormal education, be pushed to 138 SEX IN EDUCATION. its ultimate limit. But inasmuch as the subject is not only germain to our inquiry, but has attracted the attention of a recent writer, whose bold and philosophic specula- tions, clothed in forcible language, have startled the best thought of the age, it may be well to quote him briefly on this point. Referring to the fact, that, in our modern civ- ilization, the cultivated classes have smaller families than the uncultivated ones, he says, " If the superior sections and specimens of humanity are to lose, relatively, their procre- ative power in virtue of, and in proportion to, that superiority, how is culture or progress to be propagated so as to benefit the species as a whole, and how are those gradually amended organizations from which we hope so much to be secured ? If, indeed, it were ignorance, stupidity, and destitution, instead of mental and moral development, that were the sterilizing influences, then the improve- ment of the race would go on swimmingly, and in an ever-accelerating ratio. But since the conditions are exactly reversed, how CO-EDUCATION. 139 should not an exactly opposite direction be pursued ? How should the race not deterio- rate, when those who morally and physically are fitted to perpetuate it are (relatively), by a law of physiology, those least likely to do so ? " * The answer to Mr. Greg's inquiry is obvious. If the culture of the race moves on into the future in the same rut and by the same methods that limit and direct it now; if the education of the sexes remains identical, instead of being appropriate and special; and especially if the intense and passionate stimu- lus of the identical co-education of the sexes is added to their identical education,—then the sterilizing influence of such a training, acting with tenfold more force upon the female than upon the male, will go on, and the race will be propagated from its inferior classes.f * Enigmas of Life. Op. cit., by W. E. Greg, p. 142. t It is a fact not to be lost sight of, says Dr. J. C. Toner of Washington, that the proportion between the number of American children under fifteen years of age, and the number of American women between the child-bearing ages of fifteen and fifty, is declining steadily. In 1830, there were to every 1,000 marriageable women, 1,952 children under fifteen years 140 SEX IN EDUCATION. The stream of life that is to flow into the future will be Celtic rather than American: it will come from the collieries, and not from the peerage. Fortunately, the reverse of this picture is equally possible. The race holds its destinies in its own hands. The highest wisdom will secure the survival and propaga- tion of the fittest. Physiology teaches that this result, the attainment of which our hopes prophecy, is to be secured, not by an identi- cal education, or an identical co-education of the sexes, but by a special and appropriate education, that shall produce a just and harmo- nious development of every part. Let one remark be made here. It has been asserted that the chief reason why the higher of age. Ten years later, there were 1,863, or 89 less children to every thousand women than in 1830. In 1850, this num- ber had declined to 1,720 ; in 1860, to 1,666 ; and in 1870, to 1,568. The total decline in the forty years was 384, or about 20 per cent of the whole proportional number in 1830, a gen- eration ago. The United-States census of 1870 shows that there is, in the city of New York, but one child under fifteen years of age, to each thousand nubile women, when there ought to be three; and the same is true of our other large cities. — The Nation, Aug. 28, 1873, p. 145. CO-EDUCATION. 141 and educated classes have smaller families than the lower and uneduicated is, that the former criminally prevent or destroy increase. The pulpit,* as well as the medical press, has cried out against this enormity. That a dis- position to do this thing exists, and is often carried into effect, is not to be denied, and cannot be too strongly condemned. On the other hand, it should be proclaimed, to the credit and honor of our cultivated women, and as a reproach to the identical education of the sexes, that many of them bear in silence the accusation of self-tampering, who are denied the oft-prayed-for trial, blessing, and responsibility of offspring. As a matter of personal experience, my advice has been much more frequently and earnestly sought by those of our best classes who desired U S Department ol 0 3NIDI03W JO AMVSan IVNOIIVN 5 TbbESOSD U1N £191 S/.6S0 V1D NLM050539915