emperament to have any chance; since rude health, however
obtuse, will in the end overmatch disease, however finely strung.

But the fact must always be kept in mind that the whole problem
of female health is most closely intertwined with that of social
conditions. The Anglo-Saxon organization is being modified not only in
America, but also in England, with the changing habits of the people. In
the days of Henry VIII. it was "a wyve's occupation to winnow all manner
of cornes, to make malte, to wash and ironyng, to make hay, shere corne,
and in time of nede to help her husband fill the muchpayne, drive the
plough, load hay, corne, and such other, and go or ride to the market to
sell butter, cheese, egges, chekyns, capons, hens, pigs, geese, and all
manner of cornes." But now there is everywhere complaint of the growing
delicacy and fragility of the English female population, even in rural
regions; and the king of sanitary reformers, Edwin Chadwick, has lately
made this complaint the subject of a special report before the National
Association. He assumes, as a matter settled by medical authority, that
the proportion of mothers who can suckle their children is decidedly
diminishing among the upper and middle classes, that deaths from
childbirth are eight times as great among these classes as among the
peasantry, and that spinal distortion, hysteria, and painful disorders
are on the increase. Nine-tenths of the evil he attributes to the long
hours of school study, and to the neglect of physical exercises for
girls.

This shows that the symptoms of ill-health among women are not a matter
of climate only, but indicate a change in social conditions, producing
a change of personal habits. It is something which reaches all; for the
standard of health in the farm-houses is with us no higher than in the
cities. It is something which, unless removed, stands as a bar to any
substantial progress in civilization. It is a mere mockery for the
millionnaire to create galleries of Art, bringing from Italy a Venus on
canvas or a stone Diana, if meanwhile a lovelier bloom than ever artist
painted is fading from his own child's cheek, and a firmer vigor than
that of marble is vanishing from her enfeebled arms. What use to found
colleges for girls whom even the high-school breaks down, or to induct
them into new industrial pursuits when they have not strength to stand
behind a counter? How appeal to any woman to enlarge her thoughts beyond