222 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in its working by slight causes. The calls on the inherent vital energy 

 to carry on and to bring to the harmonious perfection of full woman- 

 hood all these combined bodily and mental qualities I have referred 

 to, during these ten or twelve years, is very great indeed. 



We physicians maintain that this period is one of momentous im- 

 portance, and we have good reason to know this, for we are often 

 called on to treat diseases that arise then, and, having originated then, 

 have been fully matured afterward. The risks and the dangers to 

 body and mind are then very great indeed. We count it a fearful 

 risk to run, not merely that actual disease should be brought on, but 

 that a girl capable of being developed into a healthy and happy 

 woman, with a rounded feminine constitution after Nature's type — the 

 only type that secures happiness and satisfaction to a woman — should 

 by bad management, misdirected education, or bad conditions of life, 

 grow into a distorted, unnatural, and therefore unhappy woman, who 

 can not get out of the life that she has only to live once all that it is 

 capable of yielding her. Like all the other physiological eras of life, 

 that of adolescence only comes once. If the developing process, which 

 is its chief characteristic, is not completed, then it is missed for life. 

 Whatever is done then is final ; whatever is left undone is also final. 

 If a woman is not formed at twenty-five, the chances are she will never 

 be so ; if she is not healthy then, she probably will not be so. Who 

 in his senses can deny that it is far better for nineteen women out 

 of twenty to be healthy than to be intellectually well educated ? No 

 acquirements of knowledge can possibly make up for health in after- 

 life. There is an organic happiness that goes only with good health 

 and a harmoniously constituted body and mind. Without that or- 

 ganic happiness life is not worth having. Cheerfulness is one of the 

 best outward signs of this perfect health, and what woman has not 

 missed her vocation in the world who is not cheerful ? A general 

 sense of well-being is the best conscious proof of perfect health. It 

 underlies all enduring happiness. It mieans good and harmonious de- 

 velopment of mind and body, properly working functions, and satis- 

 fied organic needs. Any method of education that impairs this must 

 be bad and one-sided. 



Here it may be necessary to correct a too common notion that the 

 brain only subserves mental work. To hear the common expression 

 " brain- work," one would imagine that muscular exercise, ordinary 

 employments, and digestion, could go on without the brain's working 

 at all. No idea could be more mistaken. The brain is a most com- 

 plicated organ in structure and function, that regulates the working 

 of every portion of the body, that has certain portions of it devoted 

 to motion and feeling, and passion, and digestion, and body-growth, 

 and nutrition, etc. It is the one organ that dominates all the others, 

 regulating and harmonizing all their functions. If one side of it is 

 injured during growth, the opposite side of the body is left stunted 



