Part 14 (1/2)

MENTAL ACTION AND PHYSICAL HEALTH

None can appreciate the weight attaching to the words of a distinguished erof the toil needed to achieve a worthy reputation, and of the talent implied by the capacity for toil

They kno to discriminate between the careful opinions ofassertions of rash busy-bodies and amateurs They understand, because they feel, the inevitable esoterism that must persist at the kernel of all deenerate into mere rabble and intellectual mob: they are the last, therefore, to ood as another's; that common sense is coht , on the contrary, the extreme complexity of all proble upon the apprenticeshi+p in thinking froht to think in public, and a minute familiarity with facts froard to them Whenever a writer, by previous and just reputation, offers conclusive proof of such apprenticeshi+p, fae, 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 couments on either side, and whose approval of authority must be as valueless as the dissent froular avidity hich 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 ious, or social controversy

In the present case, a delicate physiological probleenesis, 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 foritating claims for the extension of neers 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 aniuments are not accepted because they are deed with others recruited fro in coiainst a coe has taken place in the tone of habitual remark on the capacities and incapacities of woes 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 they idely separated froan and ended with deulf by which it was separated froy has becoy, andout 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 froenius 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 deliriuh the brain is quickened; in torpidity, nates

With this tendency, whose legiti, it is inevitable that the old doctrine of the mental inferiority of woanic; structural, physiological, hence incontrovertible; on an analysis, not of her reasoning faculties, her inorance, 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 forether 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 woanization of society In virtue of theelic, 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 reater force than before, because apparently based exclusively upon such cool and iation

The issue is certainly serious Froes testimony to the importance of physical conditions as the basis ofto rains of iodine fro 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 lirene 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_ ianization 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 ination Of these, Michelet is perhaps the type, but certainly many of the revieho 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 inforest, that he himself does not seelaical 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 wole 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 Auards his every assertion with a care and precision that is worthy of ie deductions froitimate inferences have been set aside, and we cooricallythe cata 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 nuirls becoia[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 inter to nature herone week out of four”

4th Consequently, it is chianization 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 forhteen, nineteen, or twenty years

In regard to these propositions ish to try to show--that the first contains a certain exaggeration of fact: that in the second a certain sequence of pheno cause, and that much more important causes can be demonstrated: that in the third, a precaution needed for eneralized 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 nuirls to whose health the menstrual period ard to the duration of such interruption, aed 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 eneral impressions of facts

Statistics are reliable only when coe scale; but in an inquiry of this nature, a few contributions fro twenty persons, not considering themselves invalids, of whose cases I have taken notes, in six only, hadwhatever The ages of the persons questioned ranged frohteen to thirty, but the inquiry referred to the entireladies had attended mixed schools, and had never been cole day Several had been engaged for three or four years in the study of ed in its practice

A the six exceptions, one had been healthy until twenty-one, and then had suffered fro 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 saeneral 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 beenIn the third case on the list, pain had never lasted reatly died in constant medical study

Finally, in the fourth case, the early years of adolescence were , however, twelve hours Between twenty-five and thirty, the pain disappeared, but the ic (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 ed, moreover, to a fa the felance, therefore, it would appear that the proportion of woh as one-third, closer inspection shows that a these cases selected at random, the proportion is only one-fifth or one-sixth, if the calculation be confined to persons who had receivedthese cases,is as long as would be indicated by Dr Clarke Six, twelve, forty-eight hours is the outside li this time, there is always reason to suspect actual disease of the uterus or ovaries, and the cases must be excluded froe health From this point of view, the week of rest demanded by Dr Clarke, is as excessive as the three weeks' disturbance so iinatively described by Michelet