6iz THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN AND THE FAMILY. 



By LUCY M. HALL, M. D., 



ASSOCIATE PROFtSSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY AND HYGIENE AND PHYSICIAN TO YASSAR COLLEGE. 



THE address of Dr. Withers Moore, President of the British Medi- 

 cal Association, delivered before a general meeting of that body, 

 August 10, 1886, has attracted very wide attention. The importance 

 of the subject with which the paper deals can not be overestimated. 

 A few quotations will best show what it is and what are the views of 

 the author upon it : 



"Education is very expensive, physiologically as well as pecunia- 

 rily, and growing girls are not rich enough to bear the expense of being 

 trained for motherhood'''' (the italics are my own), "and also that of 

 being trained for competition with men in the severer exercises of the 

 intellect. Woman should be protected from the rude battle of life by 

 the work and labor of man. ... It is not good for the human race 

 that women should be freed from the restraints which law and custom 

 have imposed upon them, and should receive an education intended 

 to prepare them for the exercise of brain-power in competition with 

 men. . . . Bacon, for want of a mother, will not be born. She who 

 should have been his mother will, perhaps, be a distinguished col- 

 legian," etc. 



The report goes on to say that " Dr. N. S. Davis, of Chicago, cor- 

 dially sympathizes with these sentiments, and said that in America 

 they had abundant evidence of their truth." And a late number of 

 "Science" adds : "There are two channels of expenditure of physio- 

 logical force in woman — the terrible strain of higher and professional 

 education, . . . and the expense of being properly trained for mothei'- 

 hood." 



Surely no one would be more ready than I to accept the conclusions 

 of Dr. Moore and his supporters could I but be convinced that they have 

 been drawn from reliable data, and presented in an unprejudiced manner. 



It is true beyond question that in America the small and rapidly 

 diminishing numbers in the family is a matter of grave national import. 

 Dr. Nathan Allen has written much upon this subject, especially in 

 connection with the New England States, but the difference in this 

 regard between those States and other localities where the families 

 are purely American is very slight. Presuming that physical laws 

 operate much in the same manner upon both sides the Atlantic, we 

 shall confine our discussion to American soil, and thus endeavor to 

 find just what basis we have for accepting the theories which have 

 been forced upon our notice, to discover in what the "abundant evi- 

 dence" of Dr. Davis lies ; or, failing in this, to seek for the kernel of 

 truth in some other direction. 



