CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL.
"She girdeth her loins with strength."--SOLOMON.
Before describing the special forms of ill that exist among our
American, certainly among our New-England girls and women, and that
are often caused and fostered by our methods of education and social
customs, it is important to refer in considerable detail to a few
physiological matters. Physiology serves to disclose the cause, and
explain the _modus operandi_, of these ills, and offers the only
rational clew to their prevention and relief. The order in which the
physiological data are presented that bear upon this discussion is not
essential; their relation to the subject matter of it will be obvious
as we proceed.
The sacred number, three, dominates the human frame. There is a
trinity in our anatomy. Three systems, to which all the organs are
directly or indirectly subsidiary, divide and control the body. First,
there is the nutritive system, composed of stomach, intestines, liver,
pancreas, glands, and vessels, by which food is elaborated, effete
matter removed, the blood manufactured, and the whole organization
nourished. This is the commissariat. Secondly, there is the nervous
system, which co-ordinates all the organs and functions; which enables
man to entertain relations with the world around him, and with his
fellows; and through which intellectual power is manifested, and human
thought and reason made possible. Thirdly, there is the reproductive
system, by which the race is continued, and its grasp on the earth
assured. The first two of these systems are alike in each sex. They
are so alike, that they require a similar training in each, and yield
in each a similar result. The machinery of them is the same. No
scalpel has disclosed any difference between a man's and a woman's
liver. No microscope has revealed any structure, fibre, or cell, in
the brain of man or woman, that is not common to both. No analysis or
dynamometer has discovered or measured any chemical action or
nerve-force that stamps either of these systems as male or female.
From these anatomical and physiological data alone, the inference is
legitimate, that intellectual power, the correlation and measure of
cerebral structure and metamorphosis, is capable of equal development
in both sexes. With regard to the reproductive system, the case is
altogether different. Woman, in the interest of the race, is dowered
with a set of organs peculiar to herself, whose complexity, delicacy,
sympathies, and force are among the marvels of creation. If properly
nurtured and cared for, they are a source of strength and power to
her. If neglected and mismanaged, they retaliate upon their possessor
with weakness and disease, as well of the mind as of the body. God was
not in error, when, after Eve's creation, he looked upon his work,
and pronounced it good. Let Eve take a wise care of the temple God
made for her, and Adam of the one made for him, and both will enter
upon a career whose glory and beauty no seer has foretold or poet
sung.
Ever since the time of Hippocrates, woman has been physiologically
described as enjoying, and has always recognized herself as enjoying,
or at least as possessing, a tri-partite life. The first period
extends from birth to about the age of twelve or fifteen years; the
second, from the end of the first period to about the age of
forty-five; and the third, from the last boundary to the final passage
into the unknown. The few years that are necessary for the voyage from
the first to the second period, and those from the second to the
third, are justly called critical ones. Mothers are, or should be,
wisely anxious about the first passage for their daughters, and women
are often unduly apprehensive about the second passage for themselves.
All this is obvious and known; and yet, in our educational
arrangements, little heed is paid to the fact, that the first of
these critical voyages is made during a girl's educational life, and
extends over a very considerable portion of it.
This brief statement only hints at the vital physiological truths it
contains: it does not disclose them. Let us look at some of them a
moment. Remember, that we are now concerned only with the first of
these passages, that from a girl's childhood to her maturity. In
childhood, boys and girls are very nearly alike. If they are natural,
they talk and romp, chase butterflies and climb fences, love and hate,
with an innocent _abandon_ that is ignorant of sex. Yet even then the
difference is apparent to the observing. Inspired by the divine
instinct of motherhood, the girl that can only creep to her mother's
knees will caress a doll, that her tottling brother looks coldly upon.
The infant Achilles breaks the thin disguise of his gown and sleeves
by dropping the distaff, and grasping the sword. As maturity
approaches, the sexes diverge. An unmistakable difference marks the
form and features of each, and reveals the demand for a special
training. This divergence, however, is limited in its sweep and its
duration. The difference exists for a definite purpose, and goes only
to a definite extent. The curves of separation swell out as childhood
recedes, like an ellipse, and, as old age draws on, approach, till
they unite like an ellipse again. In old age, the second childhood,
the difference of sex becomes of as little note as it was during the
first. At that period, the picture of the
"Lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,
* * * * *
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing,"
is faithful to either sex. Not as man or woman, but as a sexless
being, does advanced age enter and pass the portals of what is called
death.
During the first of these critical periods, when the divergence of the
sexes becomes obvious to the most careless observer, the complicated
apparatus peculiar to the female enters upon a condition of functional
activity. "The ovaries, which constitute," says Dr. Dalton, "the
'essential parts'[3] of this apparatus, and certain accessory organs,
are now rapidly developed." Previously they were inactive. During
infancy and childhood all of them existed, or rather all the germs of
them existed; but they were incapable of function. At this period they
take on a process of rapid growth and development. Coincident with
this process, indicating it, and essential to it, are the periodical
phenomena which characterize woman's physique till she attains the
third division of her tripartite life. The growth of this peculiar and
marvellous apparatus, in the perfect development of which humanity has
so large an interest, occurs during the few years of a girl's
educational life. No such extraordinary task, calling for such rapid
expenditure of force, building up such a delicate and extensive
mechanism within the organism,--a house within a house, an engine
within an engine,--is imposed upon the male physique at the same
epoch.[4] The organization of the male grows steadily, gradually, and
equally, from birth to maturity. The importance of having our methods
of female education recognize this peculiar demand for growth, and of
so adjusting themselves to it, as to allow a sufficient opportunity
for the healthy development of the ovaries and their accessory organs,
and for the establishment of their periodical functions, cannot be
overestimated. Moreover, unless the work is accomplished at that
period, unless the reproductive mechanism is built and put in good
working order at that time, it is never perfectly accomplished
afterwards. "It is not enough," says Dr. Charles West, the
accomplished London physician, and lecturer on diseases of women, "it
is not enough to take precautions till menstruation has for the first
time occurred: the period for its return should, even in the
healthiest girl, be watched for, and all previous precautions should
be once more repeated; and this should be done again and again, until
at length the _habit_ of regular, healthy menstruation is established.
If this be not accomplished during the first few years of womanhood,
it will, in all probability, never be attained."[5] There have been
instances, and I have seen such, of females in whom the special
mechanism we are speaking of remained germinal,--undeveloped. It
seemed to have been aborted. They graduated from school or college
excellent scholars, but with undeveloped ovaries. Later they married,
and were sterile.[6]
The system never does two things well at the same time. The muscles
and the brain cannot _functionate_ in their best way at the same
moment. One cannot meditate a poem and drive a saw simultaneously,
without dividing his force. He may poetize fairly, and saw poorly; or
he may saw fairly, and poetize poorly; or he may both saw and poetize
indifferently. Brain-work and stomach-work interfere with each other
if attempted together. The digestion of a dinner calls force to the
stomach, and temporarily slows the brain. The experiment of trying to
digest a hearty supper, and to sleep during the process, has sometimes
cost the careless experimenter his life. The physiological principle
of doing only one thing at a time, if you would do it well, holds as
truly of the growth of the organization as it does of the performance
of any of its special functions. If excessive labor, either mental or
physical, is imposed upon children, male or female, their development
will be in some way checked. If the schoolmaster overworks the brains
of his pupils, he diverts force to the brain that is needed elsewhere.
He spends in the study of geography and arithmetic, of Latin, Greek
and chemistry, in the brain-work of the school room, force that should
have been spent in the manufacture of blood, muscle, and nerve, that
is, in growth. The results are monstrous brains and puny bodies;
abnormally active cerebration, and abnormally weak digestion; flowing
thought and constipated bowels; lofty aspirations and neuralgic
sensations;
"A youth of study an old age of _nerves_."
Nature has reserved the catamenial week for the process of ovulation,
and for the development and perfectation of the reproductive system.
Previously to the age of eighteen or twenty, opportunity must be
periodically allowed for the accomplishment of this task. Both
muscular and brain labor must be remitted enough to yield sufficient
force for the work. If the reproductive machinery is not manufactured
then, it will not be later. If it is imperfectly made then, it can
only be patched up, not made perfect, afterwards. To be well made, it
must be carefully managed. Force must be allowed to flow thither in an
ample stream, and not diverted to the brain by the school, or to the
arms by the factory, or to the feet by dancing. "Every physician,"
says a recent writer, "can point to students whose splendid cerebral
development has been paid for by emaciated limbs, enfeebled digestion,
and disordered lungs. Every biography of the intellectual great
records the dangers they have encountered, often those to which they
have succumbed, in overstepping the ordinary bounds of human capacity;
and while beckoning onward to the glories of their almost
preternatural achievements, register, by way of warning, the fearful
penalty of disease, suffering, and bodily infirmity, which Nature
exacts as the price for this partial and inharmonious grandeur. It
cannot be otherwise. The brain cannot take more than its share without
injury to other organs. It cannot _do_ more than its share without
depriving other organs of that exercise and nourishment which are
essential to their health and vigor. It is in the power of the
individual to throw, as it were, the whole vigor of the constitution
into any one part, and, by giving to this part exclusive or excessive
attention, to develop it at the expense, and to the neglect, of the
others."[7]
In the system of lichens, Nylander reckons all organs of equal
value.[8] No one of them can be neglected without evil to the whole
organization. From lichens to men and women there is no exception to
the law, that, if one member suffers, all the members suffer. What is
true of the neglect of a single organ, is true in a geometrical ratio
of the neglect of a system of organs. If the nutritive system is
wrong, the evil of poor nourishment and bad assimilation infects the
whole economy. Brain and thought are enfeebled, because the stomach
and liver are in error. If the nervous system is abnormally developed,
every organ feels the _twist_ in the nerves. The balance and
co-ordination of movement and function are destroyed, and the ill
percolates into an unhappy posterity. If the reproductive system is
aborted, there may be no future generations to pay the penalty of the
abortion, but what is left of the organism suffers sadly. When this
sort of arrest of development occurs in a man, it takes the element of
masculineness out of him, and replaces it with adipose effeminacy.
When it occurs in a woman, it not only substitutes in her case a wiry
and perhaps thin bearded masculineness for distinctive feminine traits
and power, making her an epicene, but it entails a variety of
prolonged weaknesses, that dwarf her rightful power in almost every
direction. The persistent neglect and ignoring by women, and
especially by girls, ignorantly more than wilfully, of that part of
their organization which they hold in trust for the future of the
race, has been fearfully punished here in America, where, of all the
world, they are least trammelled and should be the best, by all sorts
of female troubles. "Nature," says Lord Bacon, "is often hidden,
sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished." In the education of our
girls, the attempt to hide or overcome nature by training them as boys
has almost extinguished them as girls. Let the fact be accepted, that
there is nothing to be ashamed of in a woman's organization, and let
her whole education and life be guided by the divine requirements of
her system.
The blood, which is our life, is a complex fluid. It contains the
materials out of which the tissues are made, and also the _débris_
which results from the destruction of the same tissues,--the worn-out
cells of brain and muscle,--the cast-off clothes of emotion, thought,
and power. It is a common carrier, conveying unceasingly to every
gland and tissue, to every nerve and organ, the fibrin and albumen
which repair their constant waste, thus supplying their daily bread;
and as unceasingly conveying away from every gland and tissue, from
every nerve and organ, the oxidized refuse, which are both the result
and measure of their work. Like the water flowing through the canals
of Venice, that carries health and wealth to the portals of every
house, and filth and disease from every doorway, the blood flowing
through the canals of the organization carries nutriment to all the
tissues, and refuse from them. Its current sweeps nourishment in, and
waste out. The former, it yields to the body for assimilation; the
latter, it deposits with the organs of elimination for rejection. In
order to have good blood, then, two things are essential: first, a
regular and sufficient supply of nutriment, and, secondly, an equally
regular and sufficient removal of waste. Insufficient nourishment
starves the blood; insufficient elimination poisons it. A wise
housekeeper will look as carefully after the condition of his drains
as after the quality of his food.
The principal organs of elimination, common to both sexes, are the
bowels, kidneys, lungs, and skin. A neglect of their functions is
punished in each alike. To woman is intrusted the exclusive management
of another process of elimination, viz., the catamenial function.
This, using the blood for its channel of operation, performs, like the
blood, double duty. It is necessary to ovulation, and to the integrity
of every part of the reproductive apparatus; it also serves as a means
of elimination for the blood itself. A careless management of this
function, at any period of life during its existence, is apt to be
followed by consequences that may be serious; but a neglect of it
during the epoch of development, that is, from the age of fourteen to
eighteen or twenty, not only produces great evil at the time of the
neglect, but leaves a large legacy of evil to the future. The system
is then peculiarly susceptible; and disturbances of the delicate
mechanism we are considering, induced during the catamenial weeks of
that critical age by constrained positions, muscular effort, brain
work, and all forms of mental and physical excitement, germinate a
host of ills. Sometimes these causes, which pervade more or less the
methods of instruction in our public and private schools, which our
social customs ignore, and to which operatives of all sorts pay little
heed, produce an excessive performance of the catamenial function; and
this is equivalent to a periodical hemorrhage. Sometimes they produce
an insufficient performance of it; and this, by closing an avenue of
elimination, poisons the blood, and depraves the organization. The
host of ills thus induced are known to physicians and to the sufferers
as amenorrhoea, menorrhagia, dysmenorrhoea, hysteria, anemia, chorea,
and the like. Some of these fasten themselves on their victim for a
lifetime, and some are shaken off. Now and then they lead to an
abortion of the function, and consequent sterility. Fortunate is the
girls' school or college that does not furnish abundant examples of
these sad cases. The more completely any such school or college
succeeds, while adopting every detail and method of a boy's school,
in ignoring and neglecting the physiological conditions of sexual
development, the larger will be the number of these pathological cases
among its graduates. Clinical illustrations of these statements will
be given in another place.
The mysterious process which physiologists call metamorphosis of
tissue, or intestitial change, deserves attention in connection with
our subject. It interests both sexes alike. Unless it goes on
normally, neither boys, girls, men, nor women, can have bodies or
brains worth talking about. It is a process, without which not a step
can be taken, or muscle moved, or food digested, or nutriment
assimilated, or any function, physical or mental, performed. By its
aid, growth and development are carried on. Youth, maturity, and old
age result from changes in its character. It is alike the support and
the guide of health convalescence, and disease. It is the means by
which, in the human system, force is developed, and growth and decay
rendered possible. The process, in itself, is one of the simplest. It
is merely the replacing of one microscopic cell by another; and yet
upon this simple process hang the issues of life and death, of thought
and power.
Carpenter, in his physiology, reports the discovery, which we owe to
German investigation, "that the whole structure originates in a single
cell; that this cell gives birth to others, analogous to itself, and
these again to many future generations; and that all the varied
tissues of the animal body are developed from cells."[9] A more recent
writer adds, "In the higher animals and plants, we are presented with
structures which may be regarded as essentially aggregates of cells;
and there is now a physiological division of labor, some of the cells
being concerned with the nutriment of the organism, whilst others are
set apart, and dedicated to the function of reproduction. Every cell
in such an aggregate leads a life, which, in a certain limited sense,
may be said to be independent; and each discharges its own function in
the general economy. Each cell has a period of development, growth,
and active life, and each ultimately perishes; the life of the
organism not only not depending upon the life of its elemental
factors, but actually being kept up by their constant destruction and
as constant renewal."[10] Growth, health, and disease are cellular
manifestations. With every act of life, the movement of a finger, the
pulsation of a heart, the uttering of a word, the coining of a
thought, the thrill of an emotion, there is the destruction of a
certain number of cells. Their destruction evolves or sets free the
force that we recognize as movement, speech, thought, and emotion. The
number of cells destroyed depends upon the intensity and duration of
the effort that correlates their destruction. When a blacksmith wields
a hammer for an hour, he uses up the number of cells necessary to
yield that amount of muscular force. When a girl studies Latin for an
hour, she uses up the number of brain-cells necessary to yield that
amount of intellectual force. As fast as one cell is destroyed,
another is generated. The death of one is followed instantly by the
birth of its successor. This continual process of cellular death and
birth, the income and outgo of cells, that follow each other like the
waves of the sea, each different yet each the same, is metamorphosis
of tissue. This is life. It corresponds very nearly to Bichat's
definition that, "life is organization in action." The finer sense of
Shakspeare dictated a truer definition than the science of the French
physiologist,--
"What's yet in this
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths."
_Measure for Measure_, Act iii. Scene 1.
No physical or psychical act is possible without this change. It is a
process of continual waste and repair. Subject to its inevitable
power, the organization is continually wasting away and continually
being repaired.
The old notion that our bodies are changed every seven years, science
has long since exploded. "The matter," said Mr. John Goodsir, "of the
organized frame to its minutest parts is in a continual flux." Our
bodies are never the same for any two successive days. The feet that
Mary shall dance with next Christmas Eve will not be the same feet
that bore her triumphantly through the previous Christmas holidays.
The brain that she learns German with to-day does not contain a cell
in its convolutions that was spent in studying French one year ago.
Whether her present feet can dance better or worse than those of a
year ago, and whether her present brain can _do_ more or less German
and French than the one of the year before, depends upon how she has
used her feet and brain during the intervening time, that is, upon the
metamorphosis of her tissue.
From birth to adult age, the cells of muscle, organ, and brain that
are spent in the activities of life, such as digesting, growing,
studying, playing, working, and the like, are replaced by others of
better quality and larger number. At least, such is the case where
metamorphosis is permitted to go on normally. The result is growth and
development. This growing period or formative epoch extends from birth
to the age of twenty or twenty-five years. Its duration is shorter for
a girl than for a boy. She ripens quicker than he. In the four years
from fourteen to eighteen, she accomplishes an amount of physiological
cell change and growth which Nature does not require of a boy in less
than twice that number of years. It is obvious, that to secure the
best kind of growth during this period, and the best development at
the end of it, the waste of tissue produced by study, work, and
fashion must not be so great that repair will only equal it. It is
equally obvious that a girl upon whom Nature, for a limited period and
for a definite purpose, imposes so great a physiological task, will
not have as much power left for the tasks of the school, as the boy of
whom Nature requires less at the corresponding epoch. A margin must
be allowed for growth. The repair must be greater and better than the
waste.
During middle age, life's active period, there is an equilibrium
between the body's waste and repair: one equals the other. The
machine, when properly managed, then holds its own. A French
physiologist fixes the close of this period for the ideal man of the
future at eighty, when, he says, old age begins. Few have such
inherited power, and live with such physiological wisdom, as to keep
their machine in good repair,--in good working-order,--to that late
period. From the age of twenty-five or thirty, however, to that of
sixty or sixty-five, this equilibrium occurs. Repair then equals
waste; reconstruction equals destruction. The female organization,
like the male, is now developed: its tissues are consolidated; its
functions are established. With decent care, it can perform an immense
amount of physical and mental labor. It is now capable of its best
work. But, in order to do its best, it must obey the law of
periodicity; just as the male organization, to do its best, must obey
the law of sustained effort.
When old age begins, whether, normally, at seventy or eighty, or,
prematurely, at fifty or thirty, repair does not equal waste, and
degeneration of tissue results. More cells are destroyed by wear and
tear than are made up from nutriment. The friction of the machine rubs
the stuff of life away faster than it can be replaced. The muscles
stiffen, the hair turns white, the joints crack, the arteries ossify,
the nerve-centres harden or soften: all sorts of degeneration creep on
till death appears,--_Mors janua vitæ._ There the curves unite, and
men and women are alike again.
Sleep, whose inventor received the benediction of Sancho Panza, and
whose power Dryden apostrophized,--
"Of all the powers the best:
Oh! peace of mind, repairer of decay,
Whose balm renews the limbs to labor of the day,"--
is a most important physiological factor. Our schools are as apt in
frightening it away as our churches are in inviting it. Sleep is the
opportunity for repair. During its hours of quiet rest, when muscular
and nervous effort are stilled, millions of microscopic cells are busy
in the penetralia of the organism, like coral insects in the depths of
the sea, repairing the waste which the day's study and work have
caused. Dr. B.W. Richardson of London, one of the most ingenious and
accomplished physiologists of the present day, describes the labor of
sleep in the following language: "During this period of natural sleep,
the most important changes of nutrition are in progress: the body is
renovating, and, if young, is actually growing. If the body be
properly covered, the animal heat is being conserved, and laid up for
expenditure during the waking hours that are to follow; the
respiration is reduced, the inspirations being lessened in the
proportion of six to seven, as compared with the number made when the
body is awake; the action of the heart is reduced; the voluntary
muscles, relieved of all fatigue, and with the extensors more relaxed
than the flexors, are undergoing repair of structure, and recruiting
their excitability; and the voluntary nervous system, dead for the
time to the external vibration, or, as the older men called it,
'stimulus' from without, is also undergoing rest and repair, so that,
when it comes again into work, it may receive better the impressions
it may have to gather up, and influence more effectively the muscles
it may be called upon to animate, direct, control."[11] An American
observer and physiologist, Dr. William A. Hammond, confirms the views
of his English colleague. He tells us that "the state of general
repose which accompanies sleep is of especial value to the organism,
in allowing the nutrition of the nervous tissue to go on at a greater
rate than its destructive metamorphosis." In another place he adds,
"For the brain, there is no rest except during sleep." And, again, he
says, "The more active the mind, the greater the necessity for sleep;
just as with a steamer, the greater the number of revolutions its
engine makes, the more imperative is the demand for fuel."[12] These
statements justify and explain the instinctive demand for sleep. They
also show why it is that infants require more sleep than children, and
children than middle-age folk, and middle-age folk than old people.
Infants must have sleep for repair and rapid growth; children, for
repair and moderate growth; middle-age folk, for repair without
growth; and old people, only for the minimum of repair. Girls, between
the ages of fourteen and eighteen, must have sleep, not only for
repair and growth, like boys, but for the additional task of
constructing, or, more properly speaking, of developing and perfecting
then, a reproductive system,--the engine within an engine. The bearing
of this physiological fact upon education is obvious. Work of the
school is work of the brain. Work of the brain eats the brain away.
Sleep is the chance and laboratory of repair. If a child's brain-work
and sleep are normally proportioned to each other, each night will
more than make good each day's loss. Clear heads will greet each
welcome morn. But if the reverse occurs, the night will not repair the
day; and aching heads will signalize the advance of neuralgia,
tubercle, and disease. So Nature punishes disobedience.
It is apparent, from these physiological considerations, that, in
order to give girls a fair chance in education, four conditions at
least must be observed: first, a sufficient supply of appropriate
nutriment; secondly, a normal management of the catamenial functions,
including the building of the reproductive apparatus; thirdly, mental
and physical work so apportioned, that repair shall exceed waste, and
a margin be left for general and sexual development; and fourthly,
sufficient sleep. Evidence of the results brought about by a disregard
of these conditions will next be given.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Human Physiology, p. 546.
[4] As might be expected, the mortality of girls is greater at this
period than that of boys, an additional reason for imposing less labor
on the former at that time. According to the authority of MM. Quetelet
and Smits, the mortality of the two sexes is equal in childhood, or
that of the male is greatest; but that of the female rises between the
ages of fourteen and sixteen to 1.28 to one male death. For the next
four years, it falls again to 1.05 females to one male death.--_Sur la
Reproduction et la Mortalité de l'Homme. 8vo. Bruxelles._
[5] Lectures on Diseases of Women. Am. ed., p. 48.
[6] "Much less uncommon than the absence of either ovary is the
persistence of both through the whole or greater part of life in the
condition which they present in infancy and early childhood, with
scarcely a trace of graafian vesicles in their tissue. This want of
development of the ovaries is generally, though not invariably,
associated with want of development of the uterus and other sexual
organs; and I need not say that women in whom it exists are
sterile."--_Lectures on the Diseases of Women, by Charles West, M.D.
Am. ed., p. 37._
[7] Enigmas of Life, pp. 165-8.
[8] Tuckerman's Genera Lichenum, Introduction, p. v.
[9] Carpenter's Human Physiology, p. 455.
[10] Nicholson, Study of Biology, p. 79.
[11] Popular Science Monthly, August, 1872, p. 411.
[12] Sleep and its Derangements, pp. 9, 10, 13.