FEMALE EDUCATION, 319 



FEMALE EDUCATION FKOM A MEDICAL POINT OF 



VIEW* 



By T. S. CLOUSTON, M. D. 



AS the result of my inquiries among pupils and teachers in the 

 advanced schools for young ladies, I find that about five or six 

 hours of actual school- work, and from two to four hours of preparation 

 at home, may be taken as the time that is each day occupied in educa- 

 tion. Many of the ambitious, clever girls, in order to take high places 

 and prizes, work far longer than the time I have mentioned in prepar- 

 ing at home, especially if the musical practicing is taken into account. 

 At certain times of the year, before examination, some of these girls will 

 work twelve and fourteen hours a day, and take no exercise to speak 

 of, and but little fresh air. For those who attend the day-schools a 

 somewhat solemn walk to and from school is the chief means the body 

 has of keeping healthy at all. To satisfy the requirements of the 

 brain, and the blood, and the muscles, and the digestion, and the nu- 

 trition, and the general growth, we have a girl getting up at seven 

 o'clock in the dark winter morning, dressing, eating a hasty breakfast 

 (as if that was a secondary matter that was too unimportant to waste 

 much time over), having a revise of some special subject learned the 

 night before, walking to school in perhaps thin-soled boots, and doing 

 the most physiologically profitable thing of the day in the chat and 

 gossip on the way. School and lessons from nine o'clock till two or 

 three, or four often, in questionably aired, overheated, and dull class- 

 rooms, with not a bright bit of paint or color in them to counteract the 

 sunless gloom of our Scotch winter weather. Who ever saw a class- 

 room in a school where taste had been exercised in the decoration and 

 painting ? In my opinion our school-rooms should be made at least 

 as nice as our drawing-rooms. Then the walk home, a hurried dinner, 

 a little rest, and to work till nine or ten o'clock at night in gas-light. 

 That is the sort of life, and these are the conditions, under which we 

 expect not only prodigies of learning in all the sciences, but sweet 

 tempers and sweetly healthful bodies to be developed. That is the 

 actual treatment to which thousands of our girls are subjected during 

 the most momentous period of their lives, physiologically ; when the 

 growth of the body is being completed, its symmetry and perfection 

 are being reached, when the latent energies for a life's work are being 

 or should be accumulating, and when a certain amount of joy and fun 

 and play is Nature's best aid to health of body and mind. 



There is another class of young women who have even a harder lot 

 in many cases, and these are the pupil-teachers in the board-schools. 



* The second of two lectures delivered at the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh, 

 November, 1882. 



