292 MEDICAL SECTION 



disturbed nervous and nutritional states that result 

 from abnormal menstruation can have an effect on 

 future reproduction. 



There has been a vague impression that college 

 men and women have fewer children than the general 

 population. In the twenty years from 1880 to 1900, 

 two hundred women graduated from the University 

 of Illinois. This is a co-educational school in the 

 Middle West. Seventy-four never married, and 

 the remaining 126 had 235 surviving children, or 

 1*91 child per marriage, or n child per woman 

 in the whole group. Of the married, 29 had no 

 surviving children. I have no data on the survival 

 of children of women matriculates of the same period, 

 who did not graduate. Reliable testimony goes to 

 show that they married in at least as great a pro- 

 portion as the graduates. This proportion corre- 

 sponds closely to the number married in the whole 

 population of Illinois, according to the census of 1890, 

 but the graduates have a smaller number of children 

 per family than is given in the same census for 

 native-born white women in that district. 



In the register published this year of Wellesley, 

 one of the largest women's colleges in the United 

 States, are the records, so far as can be ascertained, 

 of 8,000 women who have been in attendance. The 

 first class graduated in 1879, and from that time 

 until 1900, 4,448 women were in the college. Of 

 these, 2,096 have never married ; 1,001 have married 

 but have no surviving children; 1,351 have married 

 and have surviving children numbering 3,138 1,599 

 sons and 1,539 daughters, or 2*3 children in the 

 families who have surviving children, 1*3 child per 

 family of all the married in the group, or 0*7 child 

 per woman for the group of 4,448. Compulsory 

 education in this school would certainly put Malthus' 

 ghost at rest for several centuries. 



The new President of Wellesley, installed last 



