e lives of
their children may every day depend? I say--women as well as men. I
should have said women rather than men. For it is the women who have the
ordering of the household, the bringing up of the children; the women who
bide at home, while the men are away, it may be at the other end of the
earth.

And if any say, as they have a right to say--"But these are subjects
which can hardly be taught to young women in public lectures;" I
rejoin,--Of course not, unless they are taught by women,--by women, of
course, duly educated and legally qualified. Let such teach to women,
what every woman ought to know, and what her parents will very properly
object to her hearing from almost any man. This is one of the main
reasons why I have, for twenty years past, advocated the training of
women for the medical profession; and one which countervails, in my mind,
all possible objections to such a movement. And now, thank God, I am
seeing the common sense of Great Britain, and indeed of every civilised
nation, gradually coming round to that which seemed to me, when I first
conceived of it, a dream too chimerical to be cherished save in
secret--the restoring woman to her natural share in that sacred office of
healer, which she held in the Middle Ages, and from which she was thrust
out during the sixteenth century.

I am most happy to see, for instance, that the National Health Society,
{15} which I earnestly recommend to the attention of my readers,
announces a "Course of Lectures for Ladies on Elementary Physiology and
Hygiene, by Miss Chessar," to which I am also most happy to see,
governesses are admitted at half-fees. Alas! how much misery, disease,
and even death, might have been prevented, had governesses been taught
such matters thirty years ago, I, for one, know too well. May the day
soon come when there will be educated women enough to give such lectures
throughout these realms, to rich as well as poor,--for the rich, strange
to say, need them often as much as the poor do,--and that we may live to
see, in every great town, health classes for women as well as for men,
sending forth year by year more young women and young men taught, not
only to take care of themselves and of their families, but to exercise
moral influence over their fellow-citizens, as champions in the battle
against dirt and drunkenness, disease and death.

There may be those who would answer--or rather, there would certainly
have been those who wo