HYGIENE IN THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 527 



health. Much might be written on this subject ; suffice it at present 

 to state that the useless and insipid lives that most young ladies lead, 

 the total want of an intelligent interest and occupation, and the un- 

 natural and artificial existence pursued, are highly calculated to inju- 

 riously enhance that natural affectability with which she has been 

 endowed. The system of fashionable boarding-schools, whose anxiety 

 to render their pupils accomplished and fascinating at all costs re- 

 sults in a forced and at the same time imperfect training, combined 

 with luxurious living, absence of exercise, and other healthy circum- 

 stances, tends to increase the irritability of the nervous system and to 

 foster a precocious evolution of character. As this is increased, tone 

 and energy are diminished. The girl returns from school a wayward, 

 capricious, and hysterical young lady, weak and unstable in mind, hab- 

 its, and pursuits. She enters into society, and there her whole mode 

 of life further contributes to her unfortunate condition. The competi- 

 tions, disappointed affection and vanity, the artificial excitements of 

 balls, public entertainments, late hours, and all the frivolities and 

 pleasures of fashion, tend in the same direction. The cultivation of 

 music, poetry, novels, and other inflammatory literature nourish illu- 

 sions contrary to the actual state of society. Her very dress seems 

 made on purpose to interfere with the healthy function of her most 

 vital organs, and to prevent the free play of muscular action essential 

 to a sound constitution. Girls subjected to such a regime, when their 

 minds and bodies should be guided in a totally opposite direction, 

 have one order of faculties alone exercised, and these, predominating 

 over the reasoning powers, cause a host of nervous, vaporous, hysteri- 

 cal, and hypochondriacal disorders. Thus women from their earliest 

 days are constantly subjected to the yoke of prejudices, are under the 

 necessity of a perpetual state of acting and deception, of dissembling 

 their desires and real inclinations for the sake of propriety, of keejjing 

 to themselves the most powerful passions and the strongest propensi- 

 ties, and of feigning a calmness and indifference when they are de- 

 voured by a burning fire. 



As to education, we have already pointed out the general unsatis- 

 factory nature of the intellectual studies of most women. That idle- 

 ness and the absence of suitable and substantial occupation for the 

 mind which so commonly exists in the higher ranks of society are the 

 sources of great evils no one will deny. For the frivolous and luxu- 

 rious so-called duties of fashionable life, although exhausting and fa- 

 tiguing, can not be said to constitute that healthy exercise of mind or 

 body which is desirable for young women to stave off disease and 

 maintain sound health. Study and occupation, at the same time posi- 

 tive, useful, and attractive, are the best correctives of an imagination 

 ardent and disordered, of a nervous system susceptible and hypersen- 

 sitive. These considerations being made patent, many women, with 

 the impulse characteristic of their sex, have rushed to the opposite ex- 



