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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



tees ; fourteen, teachers of experience, and 

 six, superintendents of schools. The Board 

 requested that all the replies should be 

 " based on personal observation." The 

 question, " Is one sex more liable than the 

 other to suffer in health from attendance on 

 school ? " was answered substantially as 

 follows : 



Females more liable than males, by 109 



Males more liable than females, by 1 



Both alike liable, by 81 



Neither is in danger, by 4 



Not in district schools, by 1 



Not if both sexes exercise alike in the 



open air, by 1 



Unable to answer, by 5 



To the question, "Does the advent of 

 puberty increase this liability?" the an- 

 swers came : 



Yes, by 120 



No, by 12 



Uncertain, by 9 



Many of the correspondents accompa- 

 nied their replies with comments which 

 were mostly in the following strain : 



" The female scholars are more suscep- 

 tible to emotional influences, and if there 

 be stimuli in school, appealing to pride and 

 vanity, they are so emulous as to injure 

 themselves." 



Again : " This baleful result becomes 

 very strikingly manifested as the girls ap- 

 proach the age of puberty. Under the ab- 

 normal conditions of the physical system 

 produced by this cause, not only do the 

 more emulous and studious girls suffer from 

 the study which they evidently ought to 

 intermit, but the ordinary and habitual 

 task-work necessary to keep abreast of the 

 studies is far too severe a draught on many 

 constitutions." 



Again : " This greater liability in the 

 female is an established fact ; and our State 

 and local School Boards should at once 

 take steps to modify our system of educa- 

 tion in accordance with the fact, however 

 great may be the change required." 



From various communications received 

 by Dr. Clarke with reference to the work- 

 ings of co-education, we extract the follow- 

 ing from that of D. H. Cochran, LL. D., 

 the distinguished head of the Brooklyn Col- 

 legiate and Polytechnic Institute, who had 

 ten years' experience of co-education in the 



New York State Normal School. Dr. Coch- 

 ran says it had been observed that a large 

 number of students who left the institution 

 were unfitted for teaching by impaired 

 health, so that Dr. Woolworth made an 

 appeal to the commissioners "to send only 

 such students to the school as possessed 

 a sound physical organization. . . . 



" Notwithstanding his earnest efforts, 

 the evils of failing health on the part of our 

 female pupils continued, and the consequent 

 incapacity to discharge the duties for which 

 the State was educating them. But the 

 facts were hardly suspected until suggested 

 accidentally, in 1866, and then the reports 

 of Dr. Bailey, who had been consulted by 

 a large number of the female pupils, and 

 of a lady in the faculty of the school, re- 

 vealed the astounding fact that, among 

 about one hundred and eighty female pu- 

 pils then in the school, there were over 

 twenty cases in which the periodical func- 

 tions peculiar to the sex had ceased for 

 over two months, and that there was a much 

 larger number of similar cases, less serious. 

 Even then, the causes were attributed to 

 stairs, bad ventilation, and recklessness of 

 health, without suspicion that the evils were 

 inherent in a system which imposed upon 

 the female continuous labor, and in amount 

 equal to that of the male, who was in many, 

 and perhaps in the majority of cases, her 

 intellectual inferior, but who was the in- 

 heritor of continuously rugged health. . . . 



" The logic of facts, to which our eyes 

 were so slowly, and I fear unwillingly, 

 opened, finally led to a more elastic course, 

 optional to the females. But, while this 

 gave relief to a part of the pupils, it aug- 

 mented the evils to others ; for the more 

 ambitious regarded the exemption from 

 advanced mathematics as a reflection upon 

 their intellectual ability, and persisted in 

 taking the severer course in spite of the 

 advice of their teachers. . . . 



" This spirit was indicated in the remark 

 of one of these pupils to a lady-teacher who 

 was advising her to drop the mathematics 

 of the senior year, on account of failing 

 health. She said, ' I will do it, if it kills 

 me.' We can hardly wonder that the teach- 

 er impatiently replied : ' If it killed you, 

 perhaps it would not so much matter ; but 

 are you quite willing to impose upon your 



