FEMALE EDUCATION. 329 



an organic habit of the body. For any woman to become liable to 

 severe neuralgia is a most terrible thing. It means that while it lasts 

 life is not worth having. It paralyzes the power to work, it deprives 

 her of the power to enjoy anything, it tends toward irritability of 

 temper, it tempts to the use of narcotics and stimulants. 



There is but little doubt that a tendency to take stimulants to ex- 

 cess, a morbid craving for alcohol, or drugs that have something like 

 the same effect, goes with the nervousness engendered by school-life. 

 A healthy brain in a healthy body should have no inordinate craving 

 for stimulants. Some of the worst examples I have seen of a craving 

 for stimulants or opium, having become uncontrollable and a real dis- 

 ease, have been in our highly - educated ladies. Tea sometimes is 

 craved for, and taken to excess in such cases. 



The most important effect of all I can not very well enter on in 

 detail, for it relates to woman's highest function, that of motherhood. 

 But that this is affected, and most seriously, by over-education in bad 

 methods and under bad conditions, no physician will deny. If the 

 end of mind-culture is to be that its victim is to suffer in a more ter- 

 rible way from mother Eve's primal curse, and is to have fewer off- 

 spring, and those she has are to be of a puny kind, the risk will be 

 recognized by all thoughtful persons as too severe to be deliberately 

 run for our daughters. Perfect health is a priceless blessing to all, 

 but it means even more to women than to men. The cheerfulness and 

 vivacity that are their special characteristic, seem to exist not for 

 themselves alone, but for their families as well, and those are, gen- 

 erally speaking, wanting if the health is bad. Woman is gifted with 

 the power not only of bearing her own share of ills, but of helping to 

 bear those of others. She can't do so in the same degree if she is not 

 in health. She is a plant more difficult to rear than man in our state 

 of society. More care has to be taken of her to mature and consoli- 

 date all her organs and functions. Once fully formed as a woman, 

 she can then stand much, but she is specially liable to the effects of 

 adverse conditions during her development. The full bloom of her 

 perfection as the tender mother, the never-tiring nurse of a large fam- 

 ily of children, can not be attained if she has been stunted in her full 

 development in any way. "Whether she is an actual mother or not, 

 she is infinitely the better for having the full capacity of motherhood. 

 Be she teacher, scholar, or lady of fortune, she will be happier and do 

 her work far better, if she has all the qualities of motherhood. They 

 influence body and mind ; any process of education that lessens them 

 deprives the world of means of happiness. It stunts the woman and 

 robs the world. No intellectual results, no culture, no mental eleva- 

 tion, can make up to the world for the loss of any perceptible degree 

 of motherhood ; and, as an actual fact, physicians find that over-edu- 

 cation by bad methods and under bad conditions has this effect. 



The first appearance of the conditions called hysteria is usually 



