rmur over
her heart. Palpitation and labored respiration accompanied and impeded
effort. She complained most of her head, which felt "queer," would not
go to sleep as formerly, and often gave her turns, in which there was
a mingling of dizziness, semi-consciousness, and fear. Her education
and work, or rather method of work, had wrought out for her anemia and
epileptiform attacks. She got two or three physiological lectures,
was ordered to take iron, and other nourishing food, allow time for
sleep, and, above all, to arrange her professional work in harmony
with the rhythmical or periodical action of woman's constitution. She
made the effort to do this, and, in six months, reported herself in
better health--though far from well--than she had been for six years
before.
This case scarcely requires analysis in order to see how it bears on
the question of a girl's education and woman's work. A gifted and
healthy girl, obliged to get her education and earn her bread at the
same time, labored upon the two tasks zealously, perhaps over-much,
and did this at the epoch when the female organization is busy with
the development of its reproductive apparatus. Nor is this all. She
labored continuously, yielding nothing to Nature's periodical demand
for force. She worked her engine up to highest pressure, just as much
at flood-tide as at other times. Naturally there was not nervous power
enough developed in the uterine and associated ganglia to restrain
the laboring orifices of the circulation, to close the gates; and the
flood of blood gushed through. With the frequent repetition of the
flooding, came inevitably the evils she suffered from,--Nature's
penalties. She now reports herself better; but whether convalescence
will continue will depend upon her method of work for the future.
Let us take the next illustration from a walk in life different from
either of the foregoing. Miss C---- was a bookkeeper in a mercantile
house. The length of time she remained in the employ of the house, and
its character, are a sufficient guaranty that she did her work well.
Like the other clerks, she was at her post, _standing_, during
business hours, from Monday morning till Saturday night. The female
pelvis being wider than that of the male, the weight of the body, in
the upright posture, tends to press the upper extremities of the
thighs out laterally in females more than in males. Hence the former
can stand less long with comfort than the latt
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