cautious in our conclusions.

The times are gone by when the clergyman uttered the authoritative words
of superior knowledge to an ignorant and unquestioning audience. Every
clergyman preaches now to a congregation of critics, many of whom are
his equals, sometimes his superiors, in general information, and who sit
in judgment, more or less adequate, on the statements he may make. In
the same manner, the days are past when the physician was the only one
who understood anything of the structure and functions of the body, and
whose prescriptions were written in an unknown tongue. It is undeniable
that the majority, perhaps, of both men and women, are deplorably
ignorant of their structure, and the operations of the delicate and
exquisite machinery which they bear about with them; but there is also a
large number who are not so ignorant, and who trace, with the genuine
scientific interest, the phenomena of health and disease. The general
diffusion of printed matter is rapidly diffusing knowledge in the
department of medicine, as well as in that of theology. The elements of
anatomy, physiology, and hygiene, are taught in all our high schools
and academies, and it is no uncommon sight to see a class of girls
handling the bones of a human skeleton, or, unmindful of stained
fingers, searching for the semi-lunar valves in an ox's heart, with as
much delight and intelligent interest as that with which they examine
the parts of a watch or the machinery of a locomotive; while they can
sketch on the black-board, in a few minutes, the form and relative
location of all the important organs of the body, and follow the course
of the blood from left auricle back to left auricle again, and that of
the food, from the teeth to the descending _vena cava_. And with this
basis for study already laid in school, as a part of the common
education of a woman, the latest researches and discoveries of the
wisest men and women are open to her as well as they are to the
physician, and the census reports are at her hand; while, moreover, her
knowledge of Latin and chemistry makes plain to her the nature of the
remedies proposed in the prescription which she gives to the apothecary.

As a result of our American schools, we have such women now by the
hundreds--I am not speaking of those belonging to the medical
profession--and does not this question belong to them? As far as the
records of experience go they are ready, nay, anxious to receive them,
but