The other party said: "We will not waste our energy in crystallizing into a form that is not the best, and that evidently cannot long keep its place in the education of men; we will start upon a plan consistent with the most enlightened educational opinion, and by our results will secure favor for our methods, and respectability for our standards." Girton College, now located at Cambridge, holds simultaneous examinations with those of the university, and uses the university examination questions. The number of its students is small, and they are for the most part those who are looking forward to teaching as a means of support.

By the second, and what seems to be considerably the stronger party, four years ago lectures were instituted in various parts of the country, to prepare women for the University Higher Examinations. The plan of these examinations and lectures is something like what I understand to be the plan at the German Universities. There is no definite curriculum connected with them. They cover a wide range of subjects, each candidate making her selection, and preparing herself for examination in one or more specific subjects, and, if successful, receives a certificate of proficiency in those, except that certain subjects must be passed before a certificate is awarded for others.

To meet a widely preferred demand, Cambridge University has recently opened these "Higher Examinations for Women," to men; and "mixed classes," as they are called, are now being formed. The university pledges itself to supply the lecturers, provided classes of a certain size are formed in towns sufficiently adjacent to be grouped together. Under this last extension of its educational advantages, the University proposes that, in each place, a lecture on one subject shall be held at some hour in the middle of the day most convenient for women to attend; and one on another subject shall be held in the evening, with reduced fees, for the benefit of the working classes. Each lecture is open to any one who will pay the fees; but, as a rule, the higher classes would go to the day lectures, and the lower classes to the evening lectures. To supplement these lectures, which in each subject occur but once a week, in each of a group of three towns, what is called a "class" is held on a second day, when, by the payment of a small additional fee, any one can go for further instruction upon any point which he was not able to grasp from the lecture. The lectures recommend a course of reading, and suggest subjects for investigation, just as is done by the lectures in the university. These examinations, as I understand, are considered as severe as the examinations for the same subjects in preparation for the B.A. degree at the university. The plan is to carry systematic instruction in the branches of university education into all the large towns, and to keep it at a cost that can be afforded by women and working men.

I have spoken only of the Cambridge University Examinations; but, though Cambridge has taken the lead in this work, the other universities have followed along at more or less remote intervals, and the London University has, here as elsewhere, placed its standards above those of the others. The present system looks something like an itinerant university; but no one can predict just what it will become. All this work is simply experimental. Plans are adopted to meet the present exigency, and new ones are at any time engrafted. But a few strongly-set tendencies are unmistakable, old forms are giving way, education is working its way down below the rich, men and women are coming together in their intellectual work, and the notion of "finishing" an education sometime between twelve and twenty-three, promises to be forgotten.

The elasticity of this more German system, into which English education is drifting, will obviate the difficulty so much complained of in the English university system, that of forcing all students, irrespective of the varying mental and physical powers, through a definite course of study in a definite period of time.

Opportunities for instruction are offered. Students choose the subjects, devote as much time to them as they like, present themselves at the annual examinations if they choose, and when they choose.

The university promises to provide good instruction, to test the thoroughness of the work of all who desire the test, and to award certificates of success to all who come up to its standards; and these certificates will doubtless eventually be able to sum up into degrees, or else degrees will lose their especial value, and be abandoned. Limiting the ages of the candidates for the several examinations, though seemingly a little arbitrary, aims to avoid encouraging too precocious advancement, while there is a willingness to make exceptions in favor of pupils who are shown to be exceptionably able.

I do not find, in the English schools, and certainly there is not in the universities, a rigid practice of giving daily marks for the work. The teachers lecture, and the pupils take notes.

In the schools these notes are carefully examined, and the pupils who give evidence of deficient knowledge of the subject, are sent to a leisure governess, for especial instruction. At the universities, the only tests are the examinations, and at the schools, the examinations are chiefly relied upon for promotions. This plan allows pupils of irregular power, and varying health, to admit these same irregularities into their work, without great prejudice to the total credit of their results. With these two systems of allowing choice in the number and kind of subjects pursued, and of testing the work by examinations, rather than daily records, provision is made for the differences of power and aptitude between different students, and for the occasional variations in physical vigor, which are likely to occur with any except those who possess the strongest constitutions—and this, with the athletic habits and general care for health that pervades English life, is likely to prove a pretty good safeguard against excessive mental work for both men and women; though, of course, individual cases occur where, driven by ambition or necessity, one incautiously puts more strain upon his powers than they can bear.

The English sentiment in regard to the advisability of encouraging young women to pursue precisely the same course of study as young men, would be expressed in this way: "It is rarely advisable for any two young men to pursue an identical course of study. The chief aim of education is to develop the mental faculties, to enable us to observe accurately, and judge correctly; the practices that secure these results are various; one set of practices may be better adapted for the training of one mind, and another set better adapted for training another mind, and no one set will fail to give good results, if pursued with energy. In the choice, we are, as a rule, safest to follow the individual inclination. As yet, women have been so limited in opportunities, that they have had little chance to discover their mental inclinations, either as a class, or as individuals."

The statement would, I think, go no farther. The question of co-education has as yet scarcely come into the popular mind. Small experiments, prompted usually by convenience, have been made, so far as I have heard, with uniform success, and the practice is making its way into the higher education of the country. Women are already admitted to the Political Economy class, and one or two other classes in University College, London; as I have said, the lectures and classes organized under the recent plan of Cambridge University, for carrying university education into the towns, are open to men and women in common; and the various governing bodies are now discussing the question of admitting women to degrees in London University, to both classes and degrees in Queen's College, Belfast, and to classes in Owen's College, Manchester, and a bill is likely to be introduced into the next session of Parliament, to empower all the universities to extend their privileges to women, if they desire to do it.

The time-honored precedents are at present against the plan, but the practice of these highest authorities will soon turn opinion in its favor. The lack of funds to educate women, the rapidly growing feeling that men and women are at present too much separated by social customs and differences in tastes, and the belief that it would promote a higher moral tone among men, are uniting to produce a strong current of interest and feeling in favor of the system. Young men at the English universities rarely overwork. Popular feeling, fashion, respectable sentiment—call it as one will—is all against considering health secondary to anything. A few evenings ago I chanced to be talking with a university young man, who was at home for the holidays. I asked, "About how many hours do your good students work?" The reply was, "Rarely more than seven. A few of the hardest reading men—those aiming at fellowships—who do not take more than two hours for exercise, work a little longer; and they work longer just before the examinations." When I smiled at the evident contempt thrown upon the "two hours for exercise," he said, "You do not think two hours enough for exercise, do you?" In all the best English schools, either for boys or girls, the plan is to work with vigor, and play with vigor. There are hours enough for sleep to secure good rest; then work is arranged to give variety, and confined within moderate limits of time, so that if a pupil does extra work, he does it by extra intensity.

After leaving school, English girls in the upper and middle classes give more time to society than American girls do; that is, society is the regular evening occupation, and in the day-time there is little to do but to recover from the previous evening.

But society is relieved of a large part of the excitability that attends it with us. The wealth and social position of the family and the ingenious tact of mammas, as a rule, win the husbands, and the daughter needs only to be in sight. It is not at all rare to go to an evening party and know no one but the host and hostess, and as introductions are rarely given, one has only to look about and go home when she is tired. At a dinner-party she is told the name of the one who leads her to the table, but she is always at liberty to talk as little as she likes, and she offends the social taste if she talk very much. English mothers of this class have very little to do except to give birth to their children, and go through the established routine of dinners and calls. If there is any complaint respecting the work they have to do, it is of the deficit, and the inferior health of the women between their school-days and their wifehood is to be accounted for by the want of occupation and independence. They have no more to do, and no more chance to exercise their wills, than during the first six years of their lives.

After the early years of marriage the health almost uniformly improves, and by the time they are forty or forty-five, they have usually attained a ripe perfection of health, which gives them a physical superiority over the men for the remaining twenty-five or thirty-five years of their lives, and also over the women who have remained unmarried.

The sentiments that pervade, and the circumstances that control our life, and the habits they engender, are very different. It is not possible for us to have habits whose regularity shall so nearly convert them into instincts as is the case with the English. We have to make our lives out of the conditions about us, and these conditions change year by year. The opportunities for acquiring wealth and social distinction are so great that they stimulate us to great exertion.

Our schools give all classes an opportunity for education, and by associating the poorer classes with the wealthier, implant in the former, tastes for the life of the latter, and a keen ambition to attain it, and this imposes upon the latter the necessity of struggling to maintain their position. All our men are over-active; our girls are educated along with the boys, and they not only acquire equal mental power, but common intellectual tastes. Men and women are able to be, and are, the companions of each other.

Our girls have a longing for an active life not felt by the girls in any other country. Wives share the hopes, fears, and anxieties of their husbands. They are eager to gain wealth and friends as a means to improve their social position. They economize in the family expenditure; they employ few or no servants, and do plain sewing, dressmaking, and millinery. Education and a varied experience gives our women a "faculty" for doing anything, and there is no national sentiment in the matter of either health or respectability to keep then from doing everything. As fast as the daughters grow up, they are drawn into this ceaseless activity. Besides the lessons there is house-work in the morning, and sewing till into the late evening.

We are a rich nation, but we are not a nation of rich individuals. Domestic service is expensive, and of poor quality, for no one is willing to occupy the position of a menial who can find anything else to do.

The intelligence of our women, combined with the necessity in our society of producing a good personal impression, together with the habit of applying their intelligence to the construction and arrangement of articles of dress, have developed among us a very high order of taste in these matters, and the skilled labor that can satisfy it, is necessarily very costly.

Our women spend all they can afford in buying these materials, and save, in using their own intelligence and hands in making them up.

Very few, in considering the work of our women, take into account the real brain-power expended in this triple combination of economy, taste, and execution. Emerson somewhere in his English Traits says, referring to the English aristocracy:—"It is surprising how much brain can go into fine manners."

It would be very pertinent to say of American women, "It is surprising how much brain-work can go into fine dressing," and our girls join their mothers in this worry and work at a very early age. Passing from work to society, the strain upon our women is no less. Social gatherings occur irregularly, have irregular hours, and an irregular regimen of food, and every one feels a keen stimulus to be both agreeable and brilliant. English faces at a party look as they do at church, and as they do at Madame Tussaud's. Contrast with them the smiles, luminous eyes, and pretty cant or toss of the head of the carefully-dressed American woman, and think of the work to be done the next day.

In place of a health-seeking instinct in America, we have a feeling which says, "I do not mind how hard a strain I have, provided I can hold out till I get through it." We are too much employed to think much of the discomfort of moderate fatigue and ill-health. Neither have we sufficient feeling respecting the permanence of the family to lead us to plan for a succession of descendants. An American says, "I had rather have forty-five or fifty years of active, satisfactory life, than sixty or seventy years of a comfortable, dawdling existence;" and, if we look at the case only as it affects himself, we cannot especially condemn the reasoning, but when we consider the constitution that this overstrained life bequeathes to the children, it assumes a different aspect.

Being accustomed to see an attenuated, sickly physique in our leading and best-bred families, the eye is mis-educated; we establish a false ideal for women, and become comparatively indifferent to a fine physique in men. Men do not marry with a view of founding or continuing a family name, and their sentiment of gallantry inclines them to be fond of protecting a weak woman.

Irregular habits are to some degree a necessity with us, and the greatest misfortune is, that we get used to the irregularity, and take little pains to avoid it. We have some rules in regard to diet and digestion, but they are for the most part practised only by those who have acquired ills, and are not very frequently applied in the rearing of children.

The extremes of climate, and our uninviting roads, discourage open air exercise, and comparatively few have much time to go out.

Our children do some more work at school than English children, and they have a good deal more of their time wasted in our system of text-books and "recitations," a word not known in England in the sense in which we use it, which requires that the able and conscientious pupils of the class shall look on while the weak and indolent ones are being drilled; which plan, judging from my own experience at school and college, I feel justified in saying, involves for them not only a waste of from one to three hours a day, but a fatigue fully or nearly equal to the same amount of time spent in study. We put great pressure upon class rank, the value of which is determined by the daily marks. This forces pupils into a very high degree of regularity in their work; at the same time it has most effect upon the most conscientious pupils; if it does not lead them to overdo in work, it is liable to make them overworry about the work, and girls suffer far more from this overworry than boys.

In considering the relation between the health of the country and the education, the few women who have had a university course of study need not be taken into account. Most of them have reached an age when people are allowed to decide upon their own habits, and, as a matter of fact, these habits have been determined by stern necessities, by the hard, money-getting circumstances that surround women, rather than by choice. At Antioch College, with few exceptions, they were women who were looking forward to self-support, and who were borrowing the whole, or a part of the money required for their current expenses, on the promise of repaying it with the wages of their subsequent work.

Many of them were absent a part of the year, teaching, were giving private lessons, or were teaching classes in the preparatory school connected with the college; and, if a few hours of leisure were left after all this employment, they were likely to be spent upon extra studies; aside from this, they did their own sewing, and many of them boarded themselves. They often overworked, but it was the necessities of their lives that were driving them, and not the curriculum of Antioch College. However, if the English feeling respecting health, and the means of preserving it, prevailed in our country, these mistakes would less frequently occur.

Unquestionably our whole nation needs some escape from its exhausting activities. We need either less work, or some more skilful combination of the different varieties of work, that will secure us more rest, and, except in a small circle of wealth, our women, as a rule, need this rest more than the men. We need repose, freedom from anxiety perhaps, more even than freedom from work. How are we to get it?

We cannot have back the caste condition of society, nor would we desire it. We cannot stop the progress of our system of free education, nor would we be willing to do it. We cannot set aside the practice and belief in equality of education for men and women; men would not like it, and women would not permit it. There are many things that can be done that will conduce to the desired result, and the best among them for women is, to organize women's work.

The education is not a mistake; the fault lies in this, that the industries of women have not kept pace with their advancing education. They have been exempt from bread-winning to a degree unknown in the old countries, and the average education is far higher than exists elsewhere among women. They have startled the world a little by attempting a few of the intellectual industries hitherto monopolized by men, and, though the opening of the professions, or, indeed, all lines of human industry, to women, is not to be undervalued, of almost infinitely greater importance is the application of scientific economical principles to the large sphere of work already in their hands, and which is remaining in a disastrously undeveloped condition, just because it is in their hands. The low rate of female wages leaves them the monopoly of it, and they dawdle along in the ways of their grandmothers, out of sight behind the advancing masculine industries.

It is surprising to foreigners that in the application of the division of labor principle to domestic work, we are actually behind them, that we still permit such excess of work and excess of waste in our domestic arrangements. Cooking and sewing, the two leading branches of domestic industry, are with them to a very large degree trades, while nursing and laundry-work are trades in a far greater degree than with us.

Upon this point of the organization of domestic industry, though one that I have long been considering, I can do no better than to refer to the suggestive article of Mrs. E. M. King in the Contemporary Review for December, 1873. The substance of this article was presented at the last meeting of the British Association. The Right Honorable Mr. Forster occupied the chair, and at the close of the discussion remarked that he should not like to give up his private home. Now, it is not to be supposed that Royalty would at once give up its palaces to rush into the society of a set of co-operative homes, nor that Right Honorables with "large fortunes" would make close bargains in domestic service. The scheme at the outset would recommend itself only to those whose incomes did not provide an adequate supply for their wants on the present wasteful plan of domestic life, and who saw in this system a means to secure larger returns for their outlay of money, and it could advance in favor only as it fulfilled this promise.

Seeing a trustworthy principle of economy in the plan, the Spectator turned pale, and declaimed against the destruction of the time-honored English homes; and London builders began to consult Mrs. King in regard to the house arrangements for carrying out her plan.

There will be no difficulty in preserving the desired privacy for the family, though the wearying privacy of many English homes leads not a few to think it is not worth preserving in the English degree.

Adopt and apply the plan of which Mrs. King suggests an outline, press the division of labor principle in woman's work as far as it will go, and the wives and daughters who make our homes will not break down from overwork.

The readiest and surest corrective for the excessive greed of our girls for society is to carry on the system of co-education. This supplies a temperate gratification to the social appetites, induces girls to remain longer in school, and to do more thorough work, thus securing to them other sources of pleasure than social amusements and the companionship of friends. The process of co-education tends to develop a well-balanced character, and to put into it a trustworthy ballast, which American girls cannot afford to do without. For confirmation of this, one need only read the reports of any school judiciously managed on this plan, or he need only use his eyes in comparing the past school days with those of girls educated in the high schools and private schools of our Western cities. Of course girls of the present average habits and inherited tendencies must not be pressed up to quite the same degree of work that may be safely required of their brothers, who have fewer domestic demands upon their time, more out-of-door exercise, a freer style of dress, and, in general, healthier habits of life. Many a girl who takes especial care of herself—and, as a rule, the able girls do this—or who has especial care from her mother, may safely do what the best boys do without especial care.

But so long as girls require from one hour and a half to three hours a day, to be, or to develop themselves into, the conventional girl, and boys require only about one-third of that time to get themselves up into the conventional pattern for a boy, girls must either be superior to boys to begin with, or they must economize their power better, if they are able to do as much school-work in a year as boys; that is, if girls must consume power in all the ways that constitute the approved specialties of girls, they cannot do the whole work of boys without doing much more than boys do.

Whether the future has possibilities for girls that will give no occasion for this deficit of available power for school-work, it is impossible to say. Oberlin College and Michigan University report that the young women are no more frequently absent from their classes on account of ill-health than the young men. But it must be remembered that the women are few in number, and in some important respects more above the average of women than the young men are above the average of young men. Especially in the respect of a prudent care for their health their necessities have made them wise—and this will be the character of most of the women who go to college for some time to come. Our schools, too, show as high an average of work for girls as for boys, but this must not be wholly put down to equal resources. Girls, on the average, are more anxious for approval than boys are, and if work is assigned them, in spite of disadvantages they are quite as likely to do it as boys are.

Nor are we to suppose that the best average education for the present girls would show just the same average in direction as the best average education for boys.

Oberlin, the oldest experiment in co-education at college, arranges its plans with especial reference to the average differences between the quantity and direction of the school-work at present demanded for men and women. It has its "Ladies' Course," as well as its University Course. The young women are allowed to pursue the University Course, though out of the four or five hundred young women who are in attendance, those who have taken degrees give only an average of about two in a year. At Antioch there was a large range of optional subjects, and among them was Greek, which the Western young men were about as much disposed to omit as the young women. The curriculums of the Western high schools have also a wide optional margin.

The growing educational sentiment is setting aside the old idea that it is well for all boys to pursue the same line of study, independent of tastes, and past and prospective circumstances in life; and another still more pernicious notion is sure soon to give way, that boys and young men, of whatever physical and brain power, are to be put through a definite course of study in just the same time. No one thinks it much of a guarantee for a man's scholarship that he holds an A.B. or an A.M. degree. This only assures us that he has spent four years at some institution that has a right to confer these degrees. When our system of schools and colleges is sufficiently flexible to meet the varying needs of boys and young men, we shall not find that it lacks anything to adapt it to the varying needs of boys and girls, or men and women. Men furnish us with examples through the whole scale of physical power and mental aptitude, and so do women.

The best girls will at least have no difficulty in carrying on three subjects of study, while the best boys carry on four; and girls not only can, but as a rule do, remain longer at school than the boys. It would be well, too, to give more credit to the specialties of girls in the schools. I can think of nothing else that would conduce so much to the thorough and satisfactory study of music as to give it an optional place in our school curriculums.

Doubtless the best plan would be to give girls a moderate amount of home work along with their school-work—that is, to develop a united domestic and intellectual taste. With the habit once formed of making this combination of pursuits, we should be much surer of their continuing their intellectual cultivation through life. If this could be done, they ought, as a rule, to be able to do more than men do in the last fifteen or twenty years of their lives.

The results of our experiments in co-education have so far indicated that there is no difference between the intellectual tastes of men and women. This I do not accept as final. The prevailing sentiment in society, that girls cannot do all that boys do, and that they are a little in discredit because they cannot, has given them an undue stimulus to prove their power by experiment; and it is well that they have done it, to silence the doubts. Moreover, the women who were looking forward to the higher places of intellectual industry occupied by men, had to test themselves by the standards established for their rivals. And the same may be said of all the money-getting pursuits for women, outside of the lines of domestic service and sewing; in order to get any ground, they have had to fall into men's ways, so that their work could be tested by men's standards. To prove that they were the equals of men, they have had to prove that they were the equals of both women and men; they have had to learn and to be all that other women know and are, and, in addition, to equal men in the points where men surpass women; while their masculine rivals are exempt from all the demands for time and thought bestowed upon the specialties of women.

When women can gain authority for their own standards—the right to work in a woman's way, tested only by the quantity and quality of their results, that is, by the value of their work to society—money-earning women will not break down in health any more than money-earning men do, nor will the total of their work appear smaller than the total of men's work. There is no intrinsic reason why women's work, done in women's way, should have less commercial value and creditable recognition than men's work, done in men's way. Poems are in as good repute and sell as well as books of philosophy, and house decorators are as much in demand, and are paid as well as architects. The present industries of women are undeveloped; there is among them, as yet, no sphere for skilled, high-class work, and many of the industries that naturally belong to women have been developed by men, and are possessed by men. The wages of women are low, because there are too many workers for the range of work they are attempting to do.

The industries that are exclusively in their hands are almost wholly at a stage where intelligent labor is not required, and so few of the industries that have been developed by men are open to them, that, owing to the great competition, even the skilled work of women, as yet, commands but a low price. They want more work, and especially a larger amount of intelligent or skilled work. They must both organize and develop, by the application of the division of labor principle, the work they already have, and they must win from men a part of their work.

But they can make their way into the industries occupied by men, only by doing the work in men's way, and underbidding men in wages. When they once get undisputed possession, they can and do apply their own methods. Mr. Mundella's Bill, to which I have already referred, will, as is believed, if it become a law, put a great obstacle in the way of their progress. It is to the interest of the mill-owners to keep their machinery at work as many hours as they can, and if men will work ten hours a day, while women are prohibited from working more than nine and a half, men will be employed in preference to women, even with the disadvantage of larger wages. But, fortunately, it is said, the women cannot be wholly driven out. In some branches of the work they do so much better than the men, that even if this reduction of hours should be enforced, the mill-owners will still find it to their advantage to employ women.

The women in these special lines have already proved the value of women's work done in women's way. I believe women have also got a similar recognition in some branches of the watchmaking trade; and in teaching, they have already proved the superiority of their methods. They get forward slowly, because of the great strain required in using men's methods to get the gates opened to them, and Mr. Mundella's Bill would put an extra bar across the gates. The wages are kept low along the line of their advance, because an army of laborers follow along so fast in the rear. I have no fear but that women will stand a fair chance with men in the industries of the world, when they once get a free and open way into them, and learn to apply scientific principles as men do. Fine manipulation in a hand is fast coming to be as valuable a quality as strength.

To secure the changes that all wise or good feeling must desire for women, many things are needed; and as I have said, first of all, we need organization in domestic work, in order to reduce the quantity, to save waste in materials, and to develop a better quality of work, by making the different departments into trades or skilled industries—thus we must put our cooking under the care of chemists and physiologists, and in a variety of ways provide work for wives and daughters suited to their intelligence, and relieved of coarse drudgery. We need women physicians, employed by the year, whose duty and interest it will be to keep the family in health, and thus avoid the occasions for curing them when they are ill; and here is the safeguard for our girls—a person familiar with both the home life and school life of the children, and whose interest would forbid her to yield either to the weak affection of the mother, or the thoughtless ambition of the teacher. The familiar conversations that would naturally spring up between competent women physicians on the one side, and mothers, children, and cooks on the other, would contribute vastly to the improved diet and general sanitary habits of the family; and open a way to more rapid progress in determining the relation between different varieties of food and peculiarities in the mental and physical powers and appetites. We need creditable wages, given in employments for women other than teaching, in order to save our schools from being the receptacle of all women who have occasion to earn money. We need some half-time system in our schools, to provide for the pupils who have less health or less time; and also to secure for them teachers from a higher class of families, who find all-day work uncomfortably exhausting or confining. We need to raise the scale of feminine wages, in order to invite the application of time-saving inventions in women's work, as they are now employed in men's work. We need a wider range of work for women.

As a means to all this we need, and as the result of all of it we shall get, a recognition of feminine methods and standards, as well as of masculine methods and standards. If the specialties in the culture of women are worth preserving, it is because they have value; many of them, I am certain, have real value, and others have a current value, so that we cannot at present dispense with them—if they have value, when we have a free and well-adjusted labor market, they will command their price. For bringing about these changes, we must have well-educated, wise women.

Our women, in matters of dress, are more completely the slaves of fashion than the women in any other civilized country. This is due to the necessity they feel for making a good personal impression. Their family position does comparatively little, either for or against them. They marry, or get forward in life, chiefly by making themselves personally agreeable. When we give them other means of influence than this, when we secure to them industrial and political power, these personal considerations will diminish in importance, and their minds will naturally turn away from them.

There are many things awry, many things that need to be improved, but we must be wise in our methods.

We cannot exactly imitate the English, nor do I believe it is worth doing. The Malthusian chorus of political economists suggests the notion that a nation may be over-physical. We want health for ourselves, and healthy tendencies for our descendants. Beyond this, we want to send our surplus force to the brain.

MARY E. BEEDY.

83 Ladbroke Road, Notting Hill, London W.



MENTAL ACTION

AND

PHYSICAL HEALTH.



MENTAL ACTION AND PHYSICAL HEALTH.

None can appreciate the weight attaching to the words of a distinguished member of an honored profession, as well as the younger members of that same profession. They know something of the toil needed to achieve a worthy reputation, and of the talent implied by the capacity for toil. They know how to discriminate between the careful opinions of mature and deliberate judgment, and the headlong assertions of rash busy-bodies and amateurs. They understand, because they feel, the inevitable esoterism that must persist at the kernel of all democracies, unless these degenerate into mere rabble and intellectual mob: they are the last, therefore, to maintain that one person's word is as good as another's; that common sense is competent to solve all questions; that freedom of thought means the right of all to think as they please. Knowing, on the contrary, the extreme complexity of all problems, and the facility with which the most upright judgment may become warped in meditating upon them, they are prepared to exact a long apprenticeship in thinking from those who assume the right to think in public, and a minute familiarity with facts from those who undertake to defend any opinion in regard to them. Whenever a writer, by previous and just reputation, offers conclusive proof of such apprenticeship, familiarity, and ability to judge, his conclusions must be examined with care, and disputed, if at all, with respect.

Yet such examination is as essential to the interests of truth as is the just ascendancy that may be acquired by repeated success in the difficult task of investigation. Those who reject it as superfluous or impertinent, or who decry opposition as shallow obstinacy, are always those least competent to measure the weight of arguments on either side, and whose approval of authority must be as valueless as the dissent from authority certainly may be.

The singular avidity with which the press and the public have seized upon the theme discussed in Dr. Clarke's book on Sex in Education, is a proof that this appeals to many interests besides those of scientific truth. The public cares little about science, except in so far as its conclusions can be made to intervene in behalf of some moral, religious, or social controversy.

In the present case, a delicate physiological problem has become as popular as theories on epigenesis, spontaneous generation, or Darwinian evolution, and for an analogous reason. As the latter are expected to decide in the doctrines of natural or revealed religion, so the former is supposed to have a casting vote in regard to the agitating claims for the extension of new powers to women. On the one hand, the inspiration of scripture, on the other, the admission of women to Harvard, is at stake, and it is these that lend the peculiar animus and animation to the discussion. In both polemics, arguments are not accepted because they are demonstrated, but enlisted because they are useful; ranged with others recruited from the most distant quarters, with nothing in common but the regiment into which they are all thrust, to be hurled against a common enemy.

A remarkable change has taken place in the tone of habitual remark on the capacities and incapacities of women. Formerly, they were denied the privileges of an intellectual education, on the ground that their natures were too exclusively animal to require it. To-day, the same education is still withheld, but on the new plea that their animal nature is too imperfectly developed to enable them to avail themselves of it. Formerly, psychology was widely separated from physiology, and the study of the mind began and ended with demonstrations of the immense gulf by which it was separated from the body. To-day, psychology has become a section of physiology, and mental philosophers busy themselves with searching out in all its details, the close dependence of the mind upon the body. Insanity has become an inflammation of the cortical substance of the brain: idiocy results from a foetal meningitis: genius is a form of scrofula closely allied to mania: in sleep, the brain loses blood, in intellectual excitement, attracts blood; in the illumination of the death-bed, or the delirium of drunkenness, the circulation through the brain is quickened; in torpidity, melancholy, stupidity, the circulation slackens and stagnates.

With this tendency, whose legitimacy we are certainly far from disputing, it is inevitable that the old doctrine of the mental inferiority of women should be defended, if at all, on a new basis; a basis organic; structural, physiological, hence incontrovertible; on an analysis, not of her reasoning faculties, her impulses, her emotions, her logic, her ignorance, but of her digestion, her nerves, her muscles, her circulation. It is inevitable, therefore, that the two great functions of parturition and ovulation, of which the latter is peculiar in form,[33] and the former altogether peculiar to the female sex, should assume peculiar importance in all discussions about women—inevitable, that to these should be attributed the inferiority of mental calibre or of mental achievement that few care more openly to maintain.[34]

A mysterious interest has indeed always attached to these functions. From the Mosaic law to Raciborski, from the denunciations of the school-men to the rhapsodies of Michelet, they have been invoked in every theory on the nature of women; that is, in every theory on the organization of society. In virtue of them, the woman has been considered, now unclean, now angelic, now touchingly (but irredeemably) helpless. In this connection, the association of ideas has been almost always too powerful and too varied to admit of a dispassionate examination of facts. Yet to-day, as already said, the old conclusions may be urged with even greater force than before, because apparently based exclusively upon such cool and impartial investigation.

The issue is certainly serious. From all sides surges testimony to the importance of physical conditions as the basis of mental and social life. According to many, it is by the absence of a few grains of iodine from the water of drinking fountains, that the people of the Alps are turned into cretins. According to others, it is by the presence of a few grains of ergot in the bread, that the people of Tuscany lose their limbs in gangrene. Endemics of abortion depend on the impalpable vapors that arise from the quicksilver mines of Spain. So delicately poised are the forces of life, that an apparent trifle suffices to entirely turn the scale. It is therefore not a priori improbable, that the marked peculiarities of physical organization that distinguish the female sex, should determine a radically different mode of mental existence, and exact radically different conditions of mental activity.

The whole question, however, is not one of probability or of possibility, but of fact. Hence, the last persons capable of judging in the matter, are those who have been vividly impressed with those circumstances that furnish, or may be made to furnish, food for the imagination. Of these, Michelet is perhaps the type, but certainly many of the reviewers who have been occupied with Dr. Clarke's book, must be ranked in the same class. Would it be disrespectful to Dr. Clarke's far better informed judgment and technical knowledge to suggest, that he himself does not seem to be perfectly free from the influence of the glamour that invests the study of physiological peculiarities in women, wherever these can be made to tell upon any social or moral relations? Dr. Clarke does not indeed affirm, with Michelet, that women are essentially diseased. "La femme est une malade." Where Michelet leaves to the healthiest women but a single week of every month for normal existence, Dr. Clarke believes that one week out of the month alone requires any special precautions, and that, with decent care at this time, "an immense amount of work" can be accomplished in the remainder. He is careful to say, and even to repeat, that the intellectual labor to which such disastrous results are attributed, is not in itself incompatible with the nature of the woman, nor, even when improperly pursued, can it be considered as the sole cause of the delicate health of American girls. Dr. Clarke indeed guards his every assertion with a care and precision that is worthy of imitation by those who draw such large deductions from his book. When, however, all illegitimate inferences have been set aside, and we come to the propositions really and categorically maintained, we find the following:

1st. During the catamenial period, i.e., during one week out of every month, a woman should abandon intellectual or physical labor, either because she is already incapacitated for it, or because she will be so ultimately, if she does not take the precautionary rest.

2d. A large number of American girls become affected with amenorrhea[35] or menorrhagia[36] solely on account of excessive mental exertion at such periodical epochs of incapacity.

3d. It is possible to educate girls properly, only by regularly intermitting their studies at such times, and by "conceding to nature her moderate but inexorable demand for rest during one week out of four."

4th. Consequently, it is chimerical to attempt to educate girls with boys, whose organization requires no such periodical intermittence.

5th. If sufficient precaution be observed during the first years of adolescence, and the establishment of menstruation, such excessive care will become unnecessary when the constitution is fully formed, i.e., after the age of eighteen, nineteen, or twenty years.

In regard to these propositions we wish to try to show—that the first contains a certain exaggeration of fact: that in the second a certain sequence of phenomena has been attributed to the wrong cause, and that much more important causes can be demonstrated: that in the third, a precaution needed for many has been unduly generalized for all: finally, that the fifth proposition entirely annuls the inference contained in the fourth.

We believe the exaggeration of fact to be twofold, that is, first, in regard to the number of girls to whose health the menstrual period makes any sensible interruption. Second, in regard to the duration of such interruption, among the majority even of those who are indeed obliged to submit to it.

Dr. Clarke himself admits that the susceptibility he describes in a certain number of cases, is not universal, but he claims that this is the rule, and the reverse the exception. Such a claim can only be substantiated by an appeal to relative statistics, which are well known to reverse many conclusions drawn from general impressions of facts. Statistics are reliable only when compiled on a large scale; but in an inquiry of this nature, a few contributions from various sources are not useless. Among twenty persons, not considering themselves invalids, of whose cases I have taken notes, in six only, had menstruation ever been the cause of any suffering whatever. The ages of the persons questioned ranged from eighteen to thirty, but the inquiry referred to the entire menstrual life. Several among these young ladies had attended mixed schools, and had never been compelled to absent themselves for a single day. Several had been engaged for three or four years in the study of medicine; some, for a much longer period, had engaged in its practice.

Among the six exceptions, one had been healthy until twenty-one, and then had suffered from ovaritis, so that, although engaging in the work of a healthy woman, she should really be classed apart. One was subject to epileptic convulsions, and may therefore be fairly ruled out for the same reason. The remaining three were in good, even robust, general health. In two, pain was experienced for two days, and a certain diminution of capacity for mental exertion, which, however, had never been sufficient to necessitate its interruption. One of these cases was a woman of thirty, who had been married for ten years without child-bearing. In the third case on the list, pain had never lasted more than six or twelve hours, and had been very greatly diminished during four years that the young lady had engaged in constant medical study. Finally, in the fourth case, the early years of adolescence were marked by quite severe dysmenorrhea, the pain only lasting, however, twelve hours. Between twenty-five and thirty, the pain disappeared, but the menstruation became menorrhagic (excessive). This was the only case on the list where no constant intellectual exertion had ever been made, but where the nervous system had been subjected to the strain of much moral emotion and anxiety. The girl belonged, moreover, to a family in which uterine disease was almost universal among the female members.

While at first glance, therefore, it would appear that the proportion of women invalidated by menstruation was nearly as high as one-third, closer inspection shows that among these cases selected at random, the proportion is only one-fifth or one-sixth, if the calculation be confined to persons who had received much intellectual training.

Among these cases, moreover, there is not one in which the period of suffering is as long as would be indicated by Dr. Clarke. Six, twelve, forty-eight hours is the outside limit. If extended beyond this, or even if very severe during this time, there is always reason to suspect actual disease of the uterus or ovaries, and the cases must be excluded from considerations only applicable to persons in average health. From this point of view, the week of rest demanded by Dr. Clarke, is as excessive as the three weeks' disturbance so imaginatively described by Michelet.

But it is true that the stand-point in Dr. Clarke's book is somewhat different from this. He scarcely alludes to the presence of pain in menstruation, because this is presumed, when existing, to itself constitute a sufficient warning against over mental exertion, indeed, to render such exertion impossible. But the warning in question is directed against a more insidious accident, that may occur without pain, and which is more easily and imprudently defied. This imminent danger is haemorrhage, or an increase of the physiological flow to such an extent that the vitality of the patient is drained as from an open vein. The constant repetition of such haemorrhage may lead to uterine congestions, or even to amenorrhea, i.e., entire absence of menstruation. But it originates in functional disturbance, in exhaustion of the nervous system by intellectual exertion. On account of the imminence of this danger, the period of real incapacity for mental effort lasts much longer than conscious discomfort is likely to do—lasts, indeed, as long as the physiological afflux of blood to the uterus—which, by the means described, may at any moment become excessive.

Dr. Clarke alleges but one kind of proof of this assertion. He relates a certain number of cases, interesting in themselves, but whose histories are lacking in many important details, where healthy girls, whose menstruation was at first perfectly normal, became, after two or three years' study at school, liable to monthly haemorrhages, so excessive that their health was completely undermined. No organic cause for such disorder could be discovered. By interruption of study, rest, amusement, travel, the haemorrhages were diminished, the health restored. In several of these cases, however, resumption of study on the old plan was followed by the immediate return of all the previous accidents, and often the constitution was entirely ruined.

We think that this argument might be exactly paralleled by the following, which should prove whisky drinking to be an efficient[37] cause of yellow fever. A physician might select twenty cases of men, personally known to him, who had lived twenty and thirty years in New York or Boston, and never had yellow fever. During this time they had taken little or no whisky, but afterwards, removing to New Orleans, they fell into the habit of drinking, and, at varying intervals from that date, caught the fever, and in many instances, died. Therefore, fever was due, at least in these cases, to the newly contracted habit of drinking whisky.

-A and -B = -C -A +B = C. Therefore, C = A.

Hamerton, in his little book on the intellectual life, accuses women, even the bright and intelligent among them, of a "plentiful lack" of intellectual curiosity. If their attention is attracted to a phenomenon, they rarely inquire as to its cause. If an assertion is made, they accept it with enthusiasm or repel it with indignation, but rarely analyze the conditions upon which the assertion is based. This remark seems justified, though perhaps not exclusively among women, by the total absence of curiosity that has been shown in regard to the physiological facts in question. The assertion that nervous excitement, produced by intellectual work, is capable of affecting an apparatus apparently so remote from the organ of the intelligence as is the vascular system of the uterus, certainly implies some most interesting physiological facts and a mechanism the reverse of simple. Into these facts and this mechanism it behooves all to inquire, who assume the responsibility of either accepting or rejecting Dr. Clarke's theory and the deductions that have been made from it.

This theory concerns exclusively one class of uterine haemorrhages, those, namely, which may be traced to the influence of the nervous system. Before analyzing such influence it is important to notice two other causes of menorrhagia, that are very frequently present in just such cases as Dr. Clarke describes. These are prolonged sedentary position, and deficiency of physical exercise. Either may determine anemia, or impoverishment of the blood, a condition which alone is sufficient to induce excessive menstrual flow.[38] But, in addition, each has a special action more direct. By long continuance of a sedentary position the equilibrium of the circulation is disturbed, the blood is driven from the limbs to the internal organs and the dependent portions of the trunk, hence to the pelvis; but almost equally to the head, that is hanging down over the school-desk. Hence, the uterine haemorrhages, that are necessarily confined to girls, are paralleled by the nose-bleeding, common to girls and boys, and very frequent in such circumstances. The cramped position of the chest interferes with respiration; the bowels are generally constipated, and both conditions again favor congestions of the visceral organs, including the uterus, but not confined to it. To deficiency of physical exercise is due, besides the disturbance in the equilibrium of the circulation, first, a loss of heat that should be evolved during the chemical processes of muscular action; second, a loss of stimulus to the spinal cord, which has, therefore, less power to control ganglionic action. This latter, therefore, becomes irregular, and the consequences of this irregularity will be presently described. The influence of these two conditions—cramped sedentary position, and deficiency of muscular exercise—either sufficient to induce uterine haemorrhage, must, therefore, be eliminated, before such accident can be attributed to any other cause less simple and direct. The first criticism to be addressed to the "statistics" contained in Dr. Clarke's clinical chapter, is, that this necessary elimination has not been made, and one possible cause arbitrarily selected out of an entire group of known causes.

As far as may be gathered from his book, Dr. Clarke's theory may be thus formulated. Two intense nervous actions cannot, without detriment, be sustained at the same time by the same organization. The mental labor demanded by school studies on the one hand, and the physiological process of menstruation on the other, are each connected with intense action of different parts of the nervous system. They are, therefore, incompatible with each other; and from the attempt to sustain them simultaneously, results, first, the imperfect accomplishment of each; second, the general exhaustion of the over-burdened nervous system. To this exhaustion is to be attributed the uterine haemorrhages upon which Dr. Clarke insists as the accident particularly liable to be induced by any continuous, i.e., non-intermitting, system of education.

For non-medical readers it is important to develop the ellipsis and explain the facts upon which, if anywhere, this theory is based.

The nervous system, though in many respects a unit, consists of two great sections, called respectively, the ganglionic system, and the cerebro-spinal; the latter formed by the brain, the spinal cord, and the medulla-oblongata, that connects them; the former, constituted by smaller masses of nervous matter distributed in three ways: First, in a double chain lying on each side of the spinal cord, from the upper part of the neck to the pelvic cavity that terminates the trunk. These masses are called especially the sympathetic ganglia. Second, in so-called plexuses, occupying different positions in the cavity of the trunk, and standing in especial relation to various organs; the solar or coeliac plexus to the stomach, liver, and spleen; the two renal plexuses to the kidneys; the mesenteric plexuses to the intestine; finally, on each side of the pelvis, the hypogastric plexus to the bladder, uterus, and ovaries—the so-called genito-urinary organs. Third, besides these principal ganglia exist others, much more minute, imbedded in the muscular walls of certain organs—as the heart (intro-cardiac ganglia), the intestine (intestinal ganglia).

Each of these nervous masses contains nerve-cells as well as nerve-fibres, and is capable of generating nerve-force. Each, therefore, acts like a minute brain; and, in fact, the entire ganglionic system of nerves is analogous to the nervous system of certain among the lower animals—the crustacea and mollusks. These possess neither brain nor spinal cord; their nerve-centres, instead of being concentrated in a cranium and vertebral canal, are entirely disseminated through the cavities of the trunk, as are the visceral plexuses in vertebrated animals. In these, however, the addition of a brain and spinal cord to the original rudimentary nervous system, powerfully modifies and controls the action of the latter. The degree of control is variable, according to the relative predominance of the one or the other; and this predominance varies, not only according to different species of vertebrated animals, but also according to different individuals, in that which presents the most conspicuous capacity for individual variation—the human species. Up to a certain point, increased development of the cerebro-spinal system, attended by an increased development of the osseo-muscular framework of the body, is also accompanied by greater elaboration of the ganglionic nerves supplying the viscera, upon whose efficient action the nutrition of this frame depends. But beyond a certain point in the ascending scale, the exactness of this correlation ceases. The muscles and bones are smaller; yet the structure of the cerebro-spinal organs, especially the brain, becomes more elaborate; and hence the control exercised over the functions of the ganglionic system is more complete, although the relative size of the two systems is not much changed.

Such control or predominance is manifested in the following ways: First. The functions of animal life, presided over by the cerebro-spinal system, become proportionately more important than those of vegetative or nutritive life, carried on by the ganglionic. That is to say, the acts of locomotion sustained by the spinal cord and the nervo-muscular apparatus, and the intellectual acts of the thought and will, sustained by the brain—are relatively more prominent than are the acts of digestion, respiration, circulation, etc., dependent on the functions of the ganglionic nerves. Second. These latter functions are themselves effected with more regularity and more force, when the activity of the cerebro-spinal system predominates over that of the ganglionic. Within certain limits, this is so true, that human beings possess over lower animals a superiority, not only of intellect, but of capacity for digesting various articles of food; and of maintaining their temperature in more various states of the external atmosphere. Third. Finally, the actions of the cerebro-spinal system, intellectual and muscular, are more regular and powerful when not liable to interruption from the operations of the ganglionic nerves, and the visceral functions presided over by them. When the boa-constrictor digests, he falls into a state of torpor that exceeds in degree, but not in kind, the drowsy rumination of a cow chewing her cud. Such animals are slaves to their nutritive functions, by which those of the brain and spinal cord may at any time be, as it were, oppressed and overwhelmed. The capacity for independence increases with every rise in the hierarchical scale of vertebrates, until it culminates in man—able to think and talk over his dinner; to manufacture heat in his limbs while drawing blood to his cerebral hemispheres; to sustain in complete unconsciousness innumerable delicate and complicated chemical metamorphoses in all the tissues of his body, while concentrating every conscious effort of his mind upon equally delicate processes of thought and will.

The peculiarities that, when coarsely emphasized, serve to distinguish different species of animals from one another, are repeated in more subtle gradations, as varieties among the different classes, and even different individuals of the human race. Here may be found, at least, faint echoes and distant reminiscences of facts that stand out in bold relief throughout the animal kingdom. The classification of sex is certainly one of those that offer an interesting opportunity for such comparison, especially in regard to the relations existing between the operations of the ganglionic, and those of the cerebro-spinal system. As the authors who have asserted the complete subordination of the brain to the instincts in woman, have thus, perhaps unconsciously, reduced her to the anatomical level of the crustacea; so those who, like Dr. Clarke, insist on the incompatibility between cerebral action and the process of ovulation, imply a predominance of ganglionic activity in women that must render them the physiological inferiors of the animals or individuals in whom no such incompatibility exists.

Were such opposition between cerebral and ganglionic functions only noted when a rhythmical intermittence was introduced into the latter, and were such rhythm observed only in the phenomena of menstruation, it might indeed be possible to fix upon women a peculiar mark of physiological inferiority, almost sufficient to amount to a stigma. But rhythmical movement is characteristic of all physiological actions—of the beating of the heart, the secretions of the stomach, the congestion of the spleen, the circulation of the brain, quite as decidedly as of the ripening of cells in the ovary. The tidal waves described by Michelet have become the exclusive theme of his eloquence, mainly because his attention was not attracted to any but those connected with the more obvious phenomena of menstruation. But many tidal waves rise and cross each other in shorter or longer cycles—waves of pulse and of temperature, of sleep and wakefulness, intermittences of secretion and excretion. In regard to the latter, it is noticeable that an intermittent excretion, as of bile or urine, is provided for by a continuous secretion, and that the same is true of the excretion upon whose rhythm an erroneously exceptional emphasis has been laid—that of the menstrual fluid. Here, as elsewhere, the intermittent phenomenon is preceded by long-continued cell growth—effected by precisely such processes of cellular assimilation and metamorphosis as take place in the elements of the liver and the kidneys. The cell growth in question is effected in the ovaries; the final stage of the process, the rupture of the containing cell or ovisac, and escape of the ovule, is attended by a concentration of nervous activity in the ganglionic masses sending nerves to those organs—analogous to that which occurs in the solar plexus at periods of digestion; the fall of the ovule is itself analogous to the shedding of epithelial cells in the gastric follicles; the afflux of blood to the utero-ovarian veins, analogous to the periodical congestion of the gastro-splenic vascular apparatus. Only, in this last case, the congestion results in the elaboration of a fluid secretion, the gastric juice; in the utero-ovarian plexus, where no secretion is required, the blood itself is discharged. It is difficult, with these facts, to understand the assertion that, "Periodicity is the grand (i.e. exclusive) characteristic of the female sex."

In normal conditions, the process of digestion and of menstruation are both accomplished without invading the consciousness of the individual whose body is the theatre of such extraordinary phenomena. Various abnormal conditions raise the one or the other to the sphere of consciousness—various stages in their evolution. Consciousness of nutritive functions is always painful, and digestion, quite as well as ovulation, may become a process most disturbing to cerebral tranquility and efficiency. The longer duration of the latter is compensated by the more frequent occurrence of the former. The ovaries are decidedly active during at least fifteen days of every month; the stomach, during three or four hours after each meal, or from nine to twelve hours a day. As a matter of fact the digestive function is much more often the occasion of conscious discomfort, than is the function of ovulation. Whenever it becomes so, the dyspeptic approaches the condition of the reptiles or ruminating animals, in whom the process of digestion so absorbs the powers of the nervous system that all other modes of its activity are suspended. But such a condition is universally regarded as an evidence of disease, nor could any considerations concerning the complexity and importance of the ganglionic nerves of the stomach, or the intermittent character of digestion, convert the misfortune of the dyspeptic into a physiological type for the race. At the most may it be admitted:

1st. That in civilized communities dyspepsia is a very common disease.

2d. That dyspeptics require rest of mind and body to facilitate the laborious process of digestion.

Caeteris paribus, these same propositions may be held of those suffering from abnormal modes of activity in another part of the ganglionic system—that connected with menstruation. A third proposition is, moreover, common to both, namely, that repose of the cerebro-spinal system is not required throughout the entire period of ganglionic activity, unless in exceptionally morbid cases. Thus, the process of digestion occupies from three to five hours, but an hour's repose after dinner is generally sufficient to avert discomfort. Similarly, the process of ovulation continues over fifteen days—menstruation lasts from three to six—but even in the cases that demand rest, six to twelve hours is usually enough, and more than enough.

It is noticeable that a slighter disturbance of normal conditions is needed to render digestion painful than to cause painful ovulation, that is, pain preceding the menstrual flow. Pain in menstruation, which is much more frequent, is dependent upon other conditions than the activity of the ovaries, and lasts a very much shorter time than does either the function of ovulation, or even than the uterine congestion secondary to it. Outside of actual uterine disease, the pain at this moment is most often dependent on uterine cramp, itself excited by a spasmodic contraction of blood-vessels that interfere with its circulation. As these remarks are addressed to non-medical readers, a word of explanation is here necessary.

It has been shown by experiment that the sudden arrest of the circulation in muscular fibre is sufficient to induce in the latter violent contractions. Thus, the cramps of the legs in cholera patients are due to the stagnation of blood in their muscles. These cramps are even more easily induced in the muscular fibre of the viscera—the unstriped, involuntary muscles—such as exist in the intestine, bladder, and uterus. Anything that will cause a sudden contraction of the blood-vessels in the uterus will, therefore, by cutting off the supply of blood, cause the muscular fibre of the uterus to contract in painful cramps. The small blood-vessels are themselves provided with circular muscular fibres, whose contraction necessarily draws the walls of the vessels together, obliterates their canal, and shuts out the blood. This contraction is effected by stimulation of the fine nerves, called vaso-motor, that are distributed to these muscular fibres, and which are derived from the sympathetic ganglia, that form part of that same ganglionic system from which the nerves of the ovaries and other viscera are supplied. The utero-ovarian blood-vessels derive their nerves from the hypogastric plexus, which, formed by branches from both sympathetic ganglia and spinal cord, is the exclusive source of the innervation of the uterus and ovaries. The ganglionic nervous excitement coincident with the maturation of the ovule and the congestion of the uterus, is easily communicated to the vaso-motor nerves of the latter organ. At the very moment, therefore, that the uterine blood-vessels are dilated, and blood is being exhaled into the uterine cavity, an excessive stimulation of the vaso-motor nerves may cause the blood-vessels to contract; the flow is then temporarily arrested, the circulation in the uterus disturbed, and its muscular fibres thrown into cramps.

Or the opposite event may occur. As the stimulation of the vaso-motor nerves causes contraction of the blood-vessels, so their exhaustion or paralysis causes relaxation of these same vessels, consequently, over-distension with blood; and, if the door to haemorrhage be once opened by the existence of the menstrual nisus, an excessive flow of blood.[39] Such vaso-motor paralysis may depend on one of three circumstances:

1st. The original stimulus may be excessive, and hence necessarily followed by reaction.

2nd. Schiff has shown that galvanization of a cerebro-spinal nerve causes a dilatation of the blood-vessels in the vicinity, as if the vaso-motor force were overpowered by the excessive stimulation of the controlling nerves. If excessive action of the brain or spinal cord be analogous in its effects to galvanism of a spinal nerve, it might be supposed to cause vaso-motor paralysis and haemorrhage.

3d. In general exhaustion of the nervous system, both of its ganglionic and cerebro-spinal apparatus, the vaso-motor nerves suffer with the rest, and the blood-vessels lose their tone in consequence. It is to such exhaustion that Dr. Clarke especially attributes excessive uterine haemorrhage in young girls, and, as already said, he refers the exhaustion to a single cause, namely, to the attempt to impose on the nervous system two actions of equal intensity, contrary to the fundamental law that an intense evolution of nerve-force in one part of the organism necessitates repose in the remainder.

Independently of the three conditions where excessive menstruation is connected with vaso-motor paralysis, a fourth may be found directly in the excitement of the ovarian plexus of nerves. This evolution of nerve-force which accompanies the maturation of the ovule, is the immediate cause of the afflux of blood to the utero-ovarian vessels. The effect upon the latter is probably due to the spinal nerve-fibres contained in the plexus, and upon which the ganglionic excitement acts like the galvanism in Schiff's experiment, already described. Direct stimulation of the vaso-motor nerves, alone, as has been said, contracts the blood-vessels. Stimulation of the spinal fibres associated with them exercises the contrary effect. An excessive stimulation of those fibres which enter into the ganglionic masses, would have an effect similar to that of excessive stimulation directly addressed to the cerebro-spinal system, and the blood-vessels would be not only dilated, but paralyzed.

Among the conditions, therefore, which may, by inducing either pain or excessive haemorrhage, render menstruation an abnormal process, and incompatible with active exertion, three are directly connected with the ganglionic system of nerves, the fourth indirectly, by the possible influence upon them of the cerebro-spinal. The first are excessive activity of the ovarian nerves, derived from the hypogastric plexus; paralysis of uterine vaso-motor nerves, as a secondary result of this excessive action: exhaustion of these same vaso-motor nerves, as an element of general nervous exhaustion. The last theoretical condition would be, excitement of the brain or spinal cord, in a manner analogous to what may be determined by a galvanic current, and followed, therefore, by the same consequence—paralysis of vaso-motor nerves, and excessive dilatation of the blood-vessels.

The two first conditions among these four are most easily induced when the activity of the ganglionic system is habitually predominant in the organism, or when this activity is habitually irregular. This irregularity, marked by vaso-motor spasm, uterine cramp, and pain, represents the lowest degree of disorder, which, if long continued, passes to the next—of vaso-motor paralysis, accompanied by excessive haemorrhage; and finally may, as Dr. Clarke has pointed out, be followed by paralysis in the ovarian plexus itself, with consequent cessation of ovulation, and amenorrhea, or absence of menstruation.

This habitual predominance or irregularity of the ganglionic nerves implies, as has been seen, a relatively deficient innervation or generation of nerve-force in the cerebro-spinal system. It could not, therefore, be ascribed to excessive activity of that system, except in the cases where this has been pushed to the point of complete exhaustion. It is, in fact, a matter of common observation, that hysterical and anemic women, in whom disordered menstruation is most frequently observed, are conspicuously destitute of habits implying either cerebral or spinal activity—that is, they neither think much, nor take much physical exercise.

The last two cases, however, of cerebro-spinal excitement or exhaustion, may be supposed to imply a predominant activity of the cerebro-spinal system.

Inquiry into the effects of cerebro-spinal excitement is rendered extremely complicated on account of the following facts:

1st. Experimental excitation, by means of galvanism or mechanical irritation, causes different results when applied to spinal nerves, to different parts of the spinal cord, or to different parts of the brain. Galvanism applied to a spinal nerve, determines, it has been said, dilatation of blood-vessels, and increased secretion in glands. But galvanism applied to the spinal cord in the neck, causes contraction of blood-vessels. Mechanical irritation of other parts of the spinal cord, on the other hand, causes vaso-motor paralysis and dilatation of blood-vessels. This is especially true of that part lying in the loins, and which contains a peculiar nervous centre, that stands in special relation to the uterus and ovaries, and is involved in many of their diseases, either as a cause or effect. Systematic galvanic irritation of the brain has been little attempted, until in some very recent experiments; but its effects are already known to be most various, according to the part to which it is applied. The brain is not a single organ, but rather a collection of organs, differing from one another in function even more than in situation, and among them only some are really concerned in the production of thought.

2d. In the medulla oblongata exists a nervous centre called the vaso-motor centre, because of its close relations with the vaso-motor nerves. Stimulation of this centre causes contraction of the blood-vessels. Severing the same part causes paralysis of the vaso-motor nerves and dilatation of the blood-vessels. The conditions of the brain that have been most clearly shown to influence the circulation, are those that can be proved to take an effect on this vaso-motor centre. If, as is probable, different forms of cerebral action induce or depend on different cerebral conditions, or involve different sections of the cranial masses, this effect would necessarily be different, and the influence on the circulation vary accordingly.

3d. No experimental proof has hitherto been obtained that stimulation of the cerebral organs lying above the vaso-motor centre, and which include those possessing the function of thought, ever paralyzes this centre; but, as it is only by such paralysis that cerebral conditions can induce dilatation of blood-vessels, it must follow that no experimental proof at present exists that stimulation of the brain ever does cause such dilatation—that is, ever does become a cause of haemorrhage. The clinical facts for such a supposition are those in which the occurrence of an emotion is followed by flushing of the face, acceleration of the pulse, hot or cold perspirations, phenomena all indicative of dilatation of the blood-vessels, with temporary paralysis of their nerves and of their vaso-motor centre. It is not proved, however, that the emotions capable of causing these effects really result from a stimulation of the brain. On the contrary, they are generally accompanied by diminished activity of that cerebral function that most certainly does depend on such stimulation—the function, namely, of thought.

Now, since the power of thought and the power of the vaso-motor centre are equally paralyzed under these circumstances, it is more probable that the phenomena which most nearly resemble those of stimulation of the brain are either confined to some special part of it, whose activity is in antagonism to the rest, or else are really phenomena of exhaustion, and therefore come under another category. But if these do not, no facts exist to prove that stimulation of the intellectual functions of the brain is in itself capable of producing vaso-motor paralysis—that is, of becoming a cause of haemorrhage; or, in other words, stimulation of the brain cannot be likened in its effect to galvanic stimulation of a spinal nerve. But if stimulation of the brain does not paralyze, it must increase the tonicity of the vaso-motor centre, and hence the force and regularity of the circulation. Up to a certain point, these characters do indeed increase, with increase of pressure in the cerebral blood-vessels. They increase also during intellectual operations, unattended by emotion, in which a similar increase of pressure must take place, on account of the afflux of blood to the cerebral hemispheres, when these are aroused to activity.

These facts already indicate a radical difference between the nature of the cerebral actions involved in emotion and in thought. From them also we should infer in all cases where vaso-motor paralysis was apparently traceable to excess of cerebral activity, either that exhaustion had already occurred, or that the activity was not intellectual but emotional. In the first case, we should be immediately brought to our fourth possible condition for uterine haemorrhage, dependent on modifications of the cerebro-spinal system. It is admitted, as the result of many experiments and pathological observations that need not here be quoted, that exhaustion of certain parts of the brain and spinal cord may induce vaso-motor paralysis, and that, if a cause for haemorrhage is already in operation, a passive flow of blood may be indefinitely increased. Such a course is the menstrual crisis, without which even the vaso-motor paralysis is usually unable to determine uterine haemorrhage.[40] In connection with it, physical exercise, pushed to the point of exhausting the spinal cord, and the peculiar centre in its lumbar portion, or mental effort so excessive and prolonged as to exhaust the brain, and the general vaso-motor centre, might become causes of menorrhagia.

It is evident, however, that if such exhaustion had been produced previous to the menstrual epoch, the effect would be precisely the same as if the morbific causes operated only at the time of menstruation. From this point of view the precaution suggested by Dr. Clarke, of intermitting intellectual effort during the menstrual period, would be inadequate whenever it was not superfluous. But in Dr. Clarke's theory this period has a peculiar influence in rendering morbific conditions that at other times are innocuous. This, in virtue of the law already quoted, that the evolution of force at one centre of the nervous system is incompatible with an evolution of equal intensity at another, since it diminishes the sum of resources distributed to the nervous system as a whole. Hence, relatively to the amount of power left in the brain, the same exertion becomes very much more fatiguing, and may easily lead to exhaustion with all its consequences.

Nothing seems more simple than this proposition when thus stated. But all physiological problems are complicated by the element of quantity—circumstance which almost indefinitely limits our power of making absolute assertions. The comparison already made between the process of digestion and that of menstruation should suffice to show that there is no absolute incompatibility between the evolution of nerve force at the ganglionic centres and at the cerebro-spinal. For if so the process of digestion would necessitate such absolute torpor of the brain and spinal cord as certainly would be quite incompatible with the exigencies of civilized life. There is a certain alternation between the periods of activity of the two systems, but this varies in infinite gradation; from the digestive torpor of the savage, analogous to that of ruminating animals, up to the unconscious digestion of healthy men of temperate habits and marked intellectual and physical activity, to whom all hours of the day are nearly equally suitable for exertion. As previously said, up to a certain point, the incompatibility diminishes with every increase in the development of the cerebral system.

But again, the evolution of nerve force required by ovulation should not normally be comparable in intensity with that effected in cerebral or spinal action. Whenever it is so the activity of the ganglionic system must be in excess, or that of the cerebro-spinal system must be deficient. It is true that among the women of highly civilized societies, one or both of these conditions very frequently exist, but it is then as truly abnormal as is the dyspepsia and spleen—equally prevalent.

Although, for certain purposes, it is necessary to consider the ganglionic and cerebro-spinal system together, as parts of a single apparatus, it is important also to remember the boundaries that lie between them. It is much easier, by intense muscular exertion, that necessitates evolution of force in the spinal cord, to render the brain incapable of function, than to do so by intense action of the ganglionic nerves, whose connection with the brain, though real, is much less direct. Were it not so, life would be much more precarious than it is, and advance in civilization impossible; because the necessarily incessant activity of the nerves involved in nutritive processes would too largely impair the action of the brain. The effect on the brain of a really irresistible and predominant activity of the nerves involved in the reproductive organs, is to be studied in the lower animals, and in phenomena that, fortunately, are rarely to be observed in healthy individuals of the human race. Still less can such confessedly morbid predominance be considered as a peculiar liability of the female sex in this race. A singular tendency exists in many quarters, and is strongly manifested in Dr. Clarke's book, to assume that considerations pertaining to sex and to the functions of reproduction exercise such an enormous influence upon one sex, and none at all upon the other. Since the discovery in 1827 of the ovule or female reproductive cell, there can be no question of the complete physiological equivalence and analogy between the essential organs of reproduction in the two sexes. The period of their development, the influence of such development on the entire nutrition of the body, the irregularities of nutritive or of cerebro-spinal action, that may be caused by irregularities in such development, are also completely analogous. It is only the organ of gestation that is peculiar to the female—the organ of maternity—the function that, although resulting from sex, transcends sex and belongs to the race. In a double sense is the uterus secondary to the ovaries.[41] For its physiological action, both in menstruation and in pregnancy, is the direct consequence of ovarian functions, and closely dependent upon them; and the period of its prominent activity does not come until after the action of the ovaries has been completely established; that is, the period of maternity is, or should be, consecutive to the period of adolescence, and the work of gestation only entered upon when the work of ovulation has long been thoroughly accomplished.