Dickinson Berry, Medical Examiner to the
Technical Education Board of the London County Council, found
(_British Medical Journal_, May 28, 1904) among over 1,500 girls,
who represent the flower of the schools, since they had obtained
scholarships enabling them to proceed to higher grade schools,
that 22 per cent, presented some degree, not always pronounced,
of lateral curvature of the spine, though such cases were very
rare among the boys. In the same way among a very similar class
of select girls at the Chicago Normal School, Miss Lura Sanborn
(_Doctors' Magazine_, Dec., 1900) found 17 per cent, with spinal
curvature, in some cases of a very pronounced degree. There is no
reason why a girl should not have as straight a back as a boy,
and the cause can only lie in the defective muscular development
which was found in most of the cases, sometimes accompanied by
anaemia. Here and there nowadays, among the better social classes,
there is ample provision for the development of muscular power in
girls, but in any generalized way there is no adequate
opportunity for such exercise, and among the working class, above
all, in the section of it which touches the lower middle class,
although their lives are destined to be filled with a constant
strain on the neuro-muscular system from work at home or in
shops, etc., there is usually a minimum of healthy exercise and
physical development. Dr. W.A.B. Sellman, of Baltimore ("Causes
of Painful Menstruation in Unmarried Women," _American Journal
Obstetrics_, Nov., 1907), emphasizes the admirable results
obtained by moderate physical exercise for young women, and in
training them to care for their bodies and to rest their nervous
systems, while Dr. Charlotte Brown, of San Francisco, rightly
insists on the establishment in all towns and villages alike of
outdoor gymnastic fields for women and girls, and of a building,
in connection with every large school, for training in physical,
manual, and domestic science. The provision of special
playgrounds is necessary where the exercising of girls is so
unfamiliar as to cause an embarrassing amount of attention from
the opposite sex, though when it is an immemorial custom it can
be carried out on the village green without attracting the
slightest attention, as I have seen in Spain, where one cannot