o evils is worse in itself, and which
leaves the largest legacy of ills behind, it is difficult to say. Let
us examine some illustrations of this sort of arrest.

Miss D---- entered Vassar College at the age of fourteen. Up to that
age, she had been a healthy girl, judged by the standard of American
girls. Her parents were apparently strong enough to yield her a fair
dower of force. The catamenial function first showed signs of activity
in her Sophomore Year, when she was fifteen years old. Its appearance
at this age[13] is confirmatory evidence of the normal state of her
health at that period of her college career. Its commencement was
normal, without pain or excess. She performed all her college duties
regularly and steadily. She studied, recited, stood at the blackboard,
walked, and went through her gymnastic exercises, from the beginning
to the end of the term, just as boys do. Her account of her regimen
there was so nearly that of a boy's regimen, that it would puzzle a
physiologist to determine, from the account alone, whether the subject
of it was male or female. She was an average scholar, who maintained a
fair position in her class, not one of the anxious sort, that are
ambitious of leading all the rest. Her first warning was fainting
away, while exercising in the gymnasium, at a time when she should
have been comparatively quiet, both mentally and physically. This
warning was repeated several times, under the same circumstances.
Finally she was compelled to renounce gymnastic exercises altogether.
In her Junior Year, the organism's periodical function began to be
performed with pain, moderate at first, but more and more severe with
each returning month. When between seventeen and eighteen years old,
dysmenorrhoea was established as the order of that function.
Coincident with the appearance of pain, there was a diminution of
excretion; and, as the former increased, the latter became more
marked. In other respects she was well; and, in all respects, she
appeared to be well to her companions and to the faculty of the
college. She graduated before nineteen, with fair honors and a poor
physique. The year succeeding her graduation was one of
steadily-advancing invalidism. She was tortured for two or three days
out of every month; and, for two or three days after each season of
torture, was weak and miserable, so that about one sixth or fifth of
her time was consumed in this way. The excretion from the blood, which