s
of growing girls; who has been intimately acquainted with their habits
and their health; has held their confidence, and has watched them
carefully day after day, not infrequently being called on for direct
medical advice as well--has had an opportunity for acquiring a fund of
practical knowledge on the subject which is available to no man, even
though he be physician. It were well to be just. Let the teachers have
credit at least for intelligence and honesty as well as the physicians.

Does any one assert that Dr. Clarke does not blame the teachers? We
answer, as we shall show more fully in another place, that any
reflection on what is known in technical language as the school "system"
of any country, is a reflection on the teachers of those schools. If any
one doubts the power of the teachers as a body to mould the internal
arrangements and details of the schools, the school records of more than
one city will furnish him with cases where the teachers have forced upon
the committee and the schools, measures by them judged necessary,
text-books of which they approved, and their candidates for vacant
places, till their power and influence will appear no longer doubtful.

The book does not ostensibly on its title-page claim to be a work on
co-education, but none the less is that the subject considered from
first to last. In the preface, the author remarks in an apology for
plainness of speech: "The nature of the subject which the Essay
discusses, the general misapprehension both of the strong and weak
points of the woman question, _and the ignorance displayed by many, of
what the co-education of the sexes really means_, all forbid that
ambiguity of language or euphemism of expression should be employed in
the discussion." The italics are ours, but the words are Dr. Clarke's;
and unmistakably show that the main drift of the book is to stem and if
possible to turn the tide of popular conviction which is opening our
colleges, new and old, to students, without regard to sex.[54]

Again, the volume is divided into five parts, as follows, to quote the
table of contents:

I. Introductory.
II. Chiefly Physiological.
III. Chiefly Clinical.
IV. Co-Education.
V. The European Way.

Part I. asserts that there is a difference between men and women;
accuses woman of neglecting the proper care of her body; demands her
physical development as a woman--not forgetting, however, on page 24, to
call attention to co-education as a gre