d H. Clarke,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington
Boston:
Stereotyped and Printed by Rand, Avery, & Co.

"An American female constitution, which collapses just in the
middle third of life, and comes out vulcanized India-rubber,
if it happen to live through the period when health and
strength are most wanted."
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES: _Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_.

"He reverenced and upheld, in every form in which it came
before him, _womanhood_.... What a woman should demand is
respect for her as she is a woman. Let her first lesson be,
with sweet Susan Winstanley, _to reverence her sex_."
CHARLES LAMB: _Essays of Elia_.

"We trust that the time now approaches when man's condition
shall be progressively improved by the force of reason and
truth, when the brute part of nature shall be crushed, that
the god-like spirit may unfold."
GUIZOT: _History of Civilization_, I., 34.

CONTENTS.

PART I.

INTRODUCTORY 11

PART II.

CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL 31

PART III.

CHIEFLY CLINICAL 61

PART IV.

CO-EDUCATION 118

PART V.

THE EUROPEAN WAY 162

PREFACE.

About a year ago the author was honored by an invitation to address
the New-England Women's Club in Boston. He accepted the invitation,
and selected for his subject the relation of sex to the education of
women. The essay excited an unexpected amount of discussion. Brief
reports of it found their way into the public journals. Teachers and
others interested in the education of girls, in different parts of the
country, who read these reports, or heard of them, made inquiry, by
letter or otherwise, respecting it. Various and conflicting criticisms
were passed upon it. This manifestation of interest in a brief and
unstudied lecture to a small club appeared to the author to indicate a
general appreciation of the importance of the theme he had chosen,
compelled him to review carefully the statements he had made, and has
emboldened him to think that their publication in a more comprehensive
form, with added physiological details and clinical illustrations,
might contribute something, however little, to the cause of sound
education. Moreover, his own con