f these is, they cannot describe
physical and mental suffering. These are things that must be
experienced.

=Personal Experience Necessary.=--After you have once suffered, how ready
you are to sympathize with those who are going through the same severe
trials. If a member of your own home or a friend is passing through the
trying ordeal of motherhood, and you have suffered the same, how you can
advise, suggest, comfort, guide! If you have had a personal experience
of intense agony once every month, do you not think you are in a far
better position to talk with one who is suffering in the same way than
you would be if you had never gone through all this?

=You Best Understand Yourself.=--But let us go a little farther in this
study. When you listen to an eminent orator, you have but little idea
whether he is nervous or not, but little idea whether he is undergoing a
severe strain or not; for you have never been in his place, cannot
understand just that condition.

Men become greatly interested in political matters; perhaps it often
seems to you that they become too much disturbed; and yet how can you
judge, for you have never been in their place? And so we might go on,
giving illustration after illustration as additional proof to this one
great fact.

IT TAKES A WOMAN TO UNDERSTAND A WOMAN.

=Man Cannot Know Woman's Suffering.=--What does a man know about the
thousand and one aches and pains peculiar to a woman? He may have seen
manifestations of suffering, he may have read something about these
things in books, but that is all. Even though he might be exceedingly
learned in the medical profession, yet what more can he know aside from
that which the books teach? Did a man ever have a backache like the
dragging, pulling, tearing ache of a woman? No. It is impossible.

=Even Medical Men Cannot Understand These Things.=--To a man, all pain
must be of his kind; it must be a man-pain, not a woman-pain. Take, for
instance, the long list of diseases and discomforts which come directly
from some derangement of the female generative organs; as, for instance,
the bearing-down pains, excessive flowing, uterine cramps, and
leucorrhoea. Do you think it possible for a man to understand these
things? Granting that he may be the most learned man in the medical
profession, how can he know anything about them only in a general way?
You know, we know, everybody knows that he cannot.

A WOMAN CAN BEST PRESCRIBE FOR A WOMAN.

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