446 PLAIN FACTS FOE OLD AND YOUNG 



ease is threatening the life of a loved daughter, not 

 infrequently originates in this way. Much of the 

 hysteria which renders wretched the lives of thousands 

 of young ladies and the fond friends who are obliged 

 to care for and attend them, arises from sexual trans- 

 gression of the kind of which we are speaking. The 

 blanched cheeks, hollow, expressionless eyes, and rough, 

 pimply skins of many schoolgirls, are due to this cause 

 alone. We do not mean by this to intimate that every 

 girl who has pimples upon her face is guilty of secret 

 vice; but this sin is undoubtedly a very frequent cause 

 of the unpleasant eruption which so often appears upon 

 the foreheads of both sexes. It would be very unjust, 

 however, to charge a person with the sin unless on 

 further evidence than that of an eruption on the face. 



The inability to study, to apply the mind in any 

 way except when stimulated by something of a very 

 exciting character, is in a large proportion of cases 

 due to the practice of which we are writing. Often 

 enough the effects which are attributed to overstudy, 

 are properly due to this debasing habit. We have little 

 faith in the great outcry made in certain quarters about 

 the damaging effects of study upon the health of young 

 ladies. A far less worthy cause is in many cases the 

 true one, to which is attributable the decline in health 

 at a critical period when all the vital forces of the 

 system are necessarily called into action to establish 

 a new function. 



Hundreds of girls break down in health just as they 

 are entering womanhood. At from twelve to eighteen 

 years of age the change naturally occurs which trans- 

 forms the girl into a woman by the development of 

 functions previously latent. This critical period is one 

 through which every girl in health ought to pass with 



