how often and how earnestly he is called upon to remonstrate against
this growing evil. He is, of course, well enough aware that many sturdy
girls stand the strain, but he knows also that very many do not, and
that the brain, sick with multiplied studies and unwholesome home life,
plods on, doing poor work, until somebody wonders what is the matter
with that girl; or she is left to scramble through, or break down with
weak eyes, headaches, neuralgias, or what not. I am perfectly confident
that I shall be told here that girls ought to be able to study hard
between fourteen and eighteen years without injury, if boys can do it.
Practically, however, the boys of to-day are getting their toughest
education later and later in life, while girls leave school at the same
age as they did thirty years ago. It used to be common for boys to
enter college at fourteen: at present, eighteen is a usual age of
admission at Harvard or Yale. Now, let any one compare the scale of
studies for both sexes employed half a century ago with that of to-day.
He will find that its demands are vastly more exacting than they
were,--a difference fraught with no evil for men, who attack the graver
studies later in life, but most perilous for girls, who are still
expected to leave school at eighteen or earlier.[1]

[Footnote 1: Witness Richardson's heroine, who was "perfect mistress of
the four rules of arithmetic"!]

I firmly believe--and I am not alone in this opinion--that as concerns
the physical future of women they would do far better if the brain were
very lightly tasked and the school hours but three or four a day until
they reach the age of seventeen at least. Anything, indeed, were better
than loss of health; and if it be in any case a question of doubt, the
school should be unhesitatingly abandoned or its hours lessened, as at
least in part the source of very many of the nervous maladies with which
our women are troubled. I am almost ashamed to defend a position which
is held by many competent physicians, but an intelligent friend, who has
read this page, still asks me why it is that overwork of brain should be
so serious an evil to women at the age of womanly development. My best
reply would be the experience and opinions of those of us who are called
upon to see how many school-girls are suffering in health from
confinement, want of exercise at the time of day when they most incline
to it, bad ventilation,[1] and too steady occupation of mi