quitous leader of innumerable
armies of weakness and ill, laid siege to her, and captured her. Then
came insomnia, that worried her nights for month after month, and made
her beg for opium, alcohol, chloral, bromides, any thing that would
bring sleep. Neuralgia in every conceivable form tormented her, most
frequently in her back, but often, also, in her head, sometimes in her
sciatic nerves, sometimes setting up a tic douloureux, sometimes
causing a fearful dysmenorrhoea and frequently making her head ache
for days together. At other times hysteria got hold of her, and made
her fancy herself the victim of strange diseases. Mental effort of the
slightest character distressed her, and she could not bear physical
exercise of any amount. This condition, or rather these varying
conditions, continued for some years. She followed a careful and
systematic regimen, and was rewarded by a slow and gradual return of
health and strength, when a sudden accident killed her, and terminated
her struggle with weakness and pain.

Words fail to convey the lesson of this case to others with any thing
like the force that the observation of it conveyed its moral to those
about Miss F----, and especially to the physician who watched her
career through her educational life, and saw it lead to its logical
conclusion of invalidism and thence towards recovery, till life ended.
When she finished school, as the phrase goes, she was considered to be
well. The principal of any seminary or head of any college, judging
by her looks alone, would not have hesitated to call her rosy and
strong. At that time the symptoms of failure which began to appear
were called signs of previous overwork. This was true, but not so much
in the sense of overwork as of erroneously-arranged work. While a
student, she wrought continuously,--just as much during each
catamenial week as at other times. As a consequence, in her
metamorphosis of tissue, repair did little more than make up waste.
There were constant demands of force for constant growth of the system
generally, equally constant demands of force for the labor of
education, and periodical demands of force for a periodical function.
The regimen she followed did not permit all these demands to be
satisfied, and the failure fell on the nervous system. She
accomplished intellectually a good deal, but not more than she might
have done, and retained her health, had the order of her education
been a physiological one. It w